Listen to 37-year-old B.C. articling student Doug White talk about how law has shaped his life today and the word “community” comes up repeatedly in the conversation. “A sense of community is important to First Nations people,” he says, and it’s that dedication to his community that has inspired him to practice law as it relates to First Nations issues. “This is still really a whole new field,” says White, who is articling with Victoria’s Devlin Gailus Barristers and Solicitors, specializing in First Nations issues. “The aspect of common law that deals with First Nations is still very nascent, and has been vigorously developing since s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 entrenched aboriginal and treaty rights.”

One of the earliest and most significant cases was fought in White’s own First Nations community, Snuneymuxw in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. It was the 1965 landmark case Regina v. White and Bob, which was won when the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a B.C. Court of Appeal ruling. The decision found that early agreements inked by B.C.’s first governor and Hudson Bay chief factor James Douglas were treaties within the meaning of the Indian Act and recognized First Nations peoples’ rights to hunt in exclusion of the B.C. Game Act. The case involved Clifford White, a relation of Doug White’s grandfather, Chief Douglas White I, who was chief of the Snuneymuxw at the time.

“That case became part of our community and family history,” he says, as it was told to him and discussed in the community. It drew in prominent figures, such as Tom Berger, who served as counsel on the treaty-rights case, Guy Williams, president of the Native Brotherhood of B.C., and former MP and MLA Dr. Frank Calder, a Nisga’a Nation member who in 1973 would bring forward, along with Berger, the seminal Calder case on aboriginal title that took up the legal arguments first put before the courts in R. v. White and Bob.

The rich environment of discussion and debate — also fuelled by uncle and lawyer Hugh M.G. Braker — eventually led White into law after spending 10 years working as a consultant for First Nations groups and on related issues. Many of these issues involved legal matters, such as treaty negotiations, treaty-implementation planning, electoral-law development, and constitutional- and legislative-development land-claims research.

White completed his BA in First Nations studies (with distinction) at Malaspina College. He graduated from the University of Victoria’s law faculty in December 2006, but is currently working on a master’s degree in public administration, which is expected to be complete in spring 2008. While White carried a hefty load of courses at university and also worked at his consulting business, he never lost sight of the need to remain attached to community and outside interests.

“It is important to me to stay connected by working for my community, because law school is three years out of your life,” he says. In Victoria, he became a board member for the local Cool Aid Society, which provides shelter, medical aid, and other social  support systems for the homeless, many of whom are aboriginals drawn to urban cities from rural communities. Such work helped provide insight into many of the problems that the courts deal with today. “It definitely helps you keep a good perspective on why you are in school. It is easy to get lost and spend years in the library reading books and cases — although that is important as well — but I felt it was just as important to connect the information you are learning with the real world,” he says.