Dr. Alan Hanna PhD

PhD (Victoria)
JD (Victoria)
MA (Victoria)
BA (Hons) (Victoria)

Dr. Alan Hanna began teaching law in 2016 as a sessional instructor and became an Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria in 2019 in the new dual degree JD/JID program. His role as a professor is informed by many teachings that have been gifted to him over the years combined with his work as a lawyer representing First Nation governments, both of which continue to the present.

Dr. Hanna's teaching and research interests include Indigenous laws and jurisdiction, governance, rights and title, and environmental sustainability under Indigenous legal traditions, Aboriginal law and jurisprudence, and the many intersections of these disparate systems. He has taught courses that focus on the impacts of the application of Canadian common law to Indigenous Peoples; that teach law students to develop skills for learning and understanding Indigenous laws and legal reasoning; that contemplate how agreements and resulting obligations arise in different Indigenous legal orders as alternate conceptions of contract; and field schools in Indigenous law in the Northwest Territories.

Dr. Hanna is a citizen of the Métis Nation – Saskatchewan with ancestral connections to the Duck Lake and Prince Albert areas. He is connected to the Northern Secwepemc community of T’exelc in Williams Lake, BC. His PhD work involved analyses of Tsilhqot’in law applied to the access and use of surface water to provide a framework for informing contemporary Tsilhqot’in watershed governance.

Current

• Law 232.3: Kwayeskastasowin Setting things right
• Law 346.3: Canadian Aboriginal Law
• Law 498.3: Indigenous Legal Theory and Intersocietal Legal Reasoning

Previous

• Indigenous Lands, Rights, and Governments
• Indigenous Law: Research, Methods and Practice
• Transsystemic Contract Law
• Indigenous Field Course in Indigenous Law

Books and Chapters in a Book

Indigenous Law in Context: Tŝilhqot’in Dechen Ts’edilhtan in the Governance of Water (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2026).

“Research Methods for Contracts in Indigenous Legal Orders,” in Yuliya Chernykh and Joshua Karton, eds, Research Methods for Contract Law and Scholarship (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025).

“An Introduction to Indigenous and Aboriginal Laws in Contracts” in Stephanie Ben-Ishai and David Percy, eds., Contracts: Cases and Commentaries, Eleventh Edition (Thomson Reuters, 2022).

 

Journal Articles

Alan Hanna and Emmaline English, “Can a Moose Be a Party to a Contract? Nuanced Spaces for Indigenous Perspectives in Canadian Contract Law” (2023) vol 109 SCLR.

“Going Circular: Indigenous Legal Research Methodology as Legal Practice” (2020) 65:4 McGill LJ 671.

“Reconciliation Through Relationality in Indigenous Legal Orders” (2019) 56:3 Alb L Rev 817.

“Spaces for Sharing: Searching for Indigenous Law on the Canadian Legal Landscape” (2018) 51:1 UBC L Rev 105.

“Making the Round: Aboriginal Title in the Common Law from a Tsilhqot’in Legal Perspective” (2015) 45:3 Ottawa L Rev 365.

 

SSHRC – Insight Development Grant

Written on the Land: Exploring Drafting Indigenous Laws as Legislation for Contemporary Governance