Professor Kimberly Murray, Queen’s National Scholar in Indigenous Legal Studies, has received funding from the Law Society of Ontario for her research project to demonstrate how legal processes and systems can be more accessible and less harmful to Indigenous Peoples. (Photo by Garrett Elliott)
Professor Kimberly Murray, Queen’s National Scholar in Indigenous Legal Studies, has received funding from the Law Society of Ontario for her research project to demonstrate how legal processes and systems can be more accessible and less harmful to Indigenous Peoples. (Photo by Garrett Elliott)

The Law Society of Ontario (LSO) is funding Professor Kimberly Murray to support her research into the national response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) Calls to Action.

Murray, who joined the faculty in January as Queen’s University’s National Scholar in Indigenous Legal Studies, has received $32,734 to explore practices that have emerged in various provinces and territories since the TRC released its final report in 2015.

Her study, “Lawyering for Reconciliation: Decolonizing the Practice of Law,” is one of seven projects the LSO is funding through a $250,000-grant program to support research on equity and reconciliation within the legal professions and their impact on client service and access to justice.

By identifying practices across provinces and territories, Murray’s project seeks to assist justice-sector workers in understanding how they can foster reconciliation in their day-to-day work and apply their cultural competency training into practice. The research will demonstrate how legal processes and systems can be more accessible and less harmful to Indigenous Peoples.

“I am grateful to the LSO for supporting this research,” says Murray. “It has been almost 10 years since the TRC issued its Calls to Action. This research will focus on the TRC’s Calls to Action that are directed at the legal profession and will showcase emerging practices that support the advancement of reconciliation across the country.”

She will present this work at an equity summit the LSO will convene in fall 2025.

Before coming to Queen’s, Murray completed a federal appointment as Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites. In October 2024, she released her Final Report: Upholding Sacred Obligations, which includes Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience, recommending a new federal legal framework to protect the graves and burial sites of Indigenous children who died while at Indian Residential Schools and other institutions.

By Tracy Weaver