Johnny Mack

Professor Johnny Mack is from the Toquaht Nation (Nuu-chah-nulth) and is Assistant Professor at UBC Allard School of Law. From 2014-2018 he was jointly appointed across First Nations and Indigenous Studies and Allard Law at UBC. His research investigates the legal relationship between Indigenous and settler peoples in contemporary settler states, particularly Canada, as well as Indigenous constitutionalism, subjectivity, critical theory, and legal pluralism.

Professor Mack’s graduate research earned a CGS scholarship from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and he is an alumnus of the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation, where he was a 2011 Trudeau Scholar. He has been co-investigator on numerous SSHRC grants, including two Partnership Development Grants and one Partnership Grant supporting collaborative anti-colonial research. He has served on the Dean’s Advisory Committee on Truth and Reconciliation. Professor Mack sits on the editorial board of Indigenous Peoples and the Law book series for Routledge Press, led by Claire Charters, Glen Coulthard, Denise Ferreira da Silva, and Mark Harris.

An impassioned advocate for Indigenous peoples on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, Professor Mack’s involvement has been both formal, as a policy analyst for Aboriginal organizations, and informal, as a community activist working to create constructive critical dialogue on the subject of contemporary Treaty negotiations. He is the recipient of the Courage in Law Award from the Indigenous Law Students’ Association. In 2022, he received the George Curtis Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence and the UBC Killam Teaching Prize.

Professor Mack is grateful for the opportunity to reside and work on the ancestral, traditional and unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.