The University of Manitoba campuses and research spaces are located on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Ininiwak, Anisininewuk, Dakota Oyate, Dene and Inuit, and on the National Homeland of the Red River Métis. More
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada, R3T 2N2
Faculty of Arts
Department of Sociology and Criminology
Adjunct, Department of Indigenous Studies
309 Isbister
183 Dafoe Road
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2
Phone: 204-480-1039
Jeremy.Patzer@umanitoba.ca
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 in Canada. This work continues, but it has expanded to an international scale in recent years.
While my research summary focuses on my work concerning Indigenous rights, students should note that both my teaching and my research are built upon broad and polyvalent sociolegal foundations. I would therefore encourage potential honours and graduate students to think about the ways in which sociolegal research may be important for their own substantive areas of interest. (E.g. how courts and legislation have interacted with racialized policing, disability rights, gender, etc.) I can therefore help guide students through critical research on how the courts, legislation, constitutions, and politics affect other categories of rights and justice which are of interest to them.
In addition, Indigenous rights overlap regularly with areas such as environmental racism, ecocide, green criminology, natural resource development, securitization and policing, and politics. Lastly, because of its significance to contemporary Indigenous rights disputes, I have also engaged in historical and archival research to investigate the historical experiences of Indigenous peoples and the Crown’s conduct toward them.
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. While not an exhaustive list, my research encompasses inherent Aboriginal rights, inherent Aboriginal title, treaty rights, the duty to consult, the infringement of and the failure to protect Indigenous rights and Indigenous territory, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. To this I should also add the interactions of politics and legislation with Indigenous rights and the courts.
My Indigenous rights research has expanded to an international scale in recent years. Through funded research within an international network of primarily Indigenous researchers, I have been able to engage in consultations and collaboration with Indigenous peoples from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Norway, Finland, and Sweden. In October 2024 I was named Canada Research Chair in Comparative Indigenous Rights, and I am principal investigator of a SSHRC Insight Grant (2025-2029) entitled In law and politics: Advancing Indigenous rights in the contemporary Anglosphere. At a moment when Indigenous peoples in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada face both potentiality and complexity in the defence and advancement of their rights, this project seeks to engage with Indigenous rights proponents on the increasingly varied (and internationalized) repertoire of tools and avenues through which they seek change. In short, it is Indigenous-centered research cognizant of the fact that Indigenous peoples navigate courtrooms, government corridors, the UN system, truth commissions, and even protest barricades.
