Jeremy Patzer, PhD

• SOC 2610 - Sociology of Criminal Justice and Corrections
• SOC 3310 - Theorizing Crime, Law, and Social Justice
• SOC 3700 - Sociology of Law
• SOC 3762 - Law, Justice, and Indigenous Peoples
• SOC 7300 - Sociology of Law and Social Control

With my maternal side of the family being Indigenous from the West Interlake region of Manitoba (Métis and Saulteaux/Aninishinaabe; Family names: Spence, Monkman, Pottinger, Dumas), I was drawn to sociology as a discipline because I was searching for the tools to analyze and critique the work of the courts in determining and shaping Indigenous rights. I continue this work, but am extending it to an international and comparative level as well.

• PhD (Sociology), Carleton University, 2016
• MA (Sociology), University of Manitoba, 2008
• BEd, University of Winnipeg, 2003
• BA, University of Manitoba, 1998

Research interests

• Indigenous rights (treaty rights, Aboriginal rights and title)
• Sociology of law, sociolegal studies
• Comparative Indigenous rights, UNDRIP
• Indigenous peoples and the law (including criminal justice)
• Sociological theory

Research summary

My research interests lie in Indigenous rights (particularly in settler state courts), the forms of legal-political resolution and repair employed by settler states in the wake of colonial dispossession, as well as the sociology of law and contemporary theory.

I am currently developing a research project bridging (socio)legal and political scholarship on Indigenous rights, seeking to study the perspectives of Indigenous rights advocates, leaders and claimants in Commonwealth settler states as they perceive and navigate the relative opportunities, obstacles and strategies for advancing Indigenous rights through the adjacent fields of law and politics. I would like to examine how differences in the legal and political structures of settler state obligation toward Indigenous peoples affect the rights aspirations of Indigenous peoples in different national settings. (For example, how significant is it to have Indigenous rights recognized in a constitution? Or courts, tribunals, or governments that take notice of the UNDRIP?)
 

Research affiliations

• Member, Global Indigenous Rights Research Network
• Faculty Partner, Mamawipawin: Centre for Indigenous Governance and Community-Based Research, Faculty of Arts, University of Manitoba

Recent journal articles

• Patzer, Jeremy & Kiera Ladner. (2022). Charting unknown waters: Indigenous rights and the Charter at forty. Review of Constitutional Studies, 26/27(2/1), 15-38.
• Patzer, Jeremy. (2019). Indigenous rights and the legal politics of Canadian coloniality: What is happening to free, prior and informed consent in Canada? International Journal of Human Rights, 23(1-2), 214-233. [UNDRIP Special Issue]

Recent book chapters

• Patzer, Jeremy. (Forthcoming). Frail legitimacies: Examining the settler colonial legal-politics underlying the Wet’suwet’en crisis. In K.M. Campbell & S. Wellman (Eds.), Justice, Indigenous people and Canada: A history of courage and resistance. Routledge.
• Patzer, Jeremy & Kiera Ladner. (2022.) Indigenous rights and the Constitution Act, 1982: Forty years on and still fishing for rights. In K. Puddister & E. Macfarlane (Eds.), Constitutional crossroads: Reflections on Charter rights, reconciliation, and change. (pp.348-366) UBC Press.
• Patzer, Jeremy. (2021). Indigenous rights and the legal politics of Canadian coloniality: What is happening to free, prior and informed consent in Canada? In D. Short, C. Lennox, J. Burger & J. Hohmann (Eds.), The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A contemporary evaluation. (pp.214-233) Routledge (reprint of journal article).
• Patzer, Jeremy. (2021). Manitoba Métis Federation and Daniels: “Post-Legal” reconciliation and western Métis. In Y. Boyer & L. Chartrand (Eds.), Bead by bead: Constitutional rights and Métis identity (pp.113-130). UBC Press.