2022 NMC Learning Day in Winnipeg

Brandi Wright is the Acting Senior Practitioner with Department of National Defence Conflict Solutions and Services.  She has over 26 years of experience in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution with 13 of those with the Department of National Defence.  She has a Bachelor of Social Work from the University of Manitoba and a Certificate in Mediation from Mediation Services.  She has experience in Restorative Justice processes as well as many years focusing on workplace conflicts.

Carolyn Laude has worked on a broad range of complex Indigenous affairs policy and program files at the First Nation, non-profit, post-secondary education, and government sector levels.  Over the last few years, she has worked on files associated with the First Nation Oil and Gas Industry, and the topics of Anti-Racism, Reconciliation Competence and Indigenous Innovation, and Diversity and Inclusion touching on Conscious and Unconscious Bias in the workplace. She is presently completing a PhD in Legal Studies at Carleton University.   

For her Comprehensive Exam, Carolyn examined the Tsilhqot’in Nation decision to understand how settler-colonial modes of reconciliation account for and/or contradict Indigenous inherent rights and socio-legal ordering on Indigenous land. Moreover, the project studied how Indigenous peoples, academics, policy commentators, the courts and government officials understand and seek reconciliation.   

In her PhD work, Carolyn is presently examining whether An Act respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples can protect Indigenous inherent rights (focus on land and sovereignty in relation to resource extraction) through legislation, policies, and practices. Carolyn is exploring whether the tension between distinct lifeworld modes can be resolved. She plans to apply an Indigenous analytical framework to offer a decolonial alternative to the liberalizing of Indigenous inherent rights. One that investigates whether Indigenous ways can create ethical settler-Indigenous spaces and relations that uphold Indigenous rights, ways of knowing and being, equality, and human dignity while addressing systemic racism.  

She is regularly asked to speak and has provided training to various federal departments (e.g., CIRNAC, ISC, DFO, Immigration and Citizenship, PCO, ESDC, and NRCan officials – management and staff levels) on a variety of topics, for example: •Building Shared Understanding of Reconciliation and Innovating the Path-Forward.
•Championing Inclusive Diversity in the Workplace – Building Cultural Safety Through Leadership Competencies.
•Systemic Racism.
•Cultural Safety and Indigeneity. 
•Brave and Safe Spaces.
•Indigenous Inclusion.

Carolyn holds a Master’s in Legal Studies and a Bachelor of Arts Honours in Political Science with a concentration in Canadian Studies. When asked she also provides subject matter expertise on the topic of reconciliation and has taught a fourth-year undergraduate course on Indigeneity in the City for several years.