Patricia Monture-Angus – Mohawk, lawyer, activist, educator, author

In May 1988 Monture-Angus graduated from Queen’s University law school. She was 29 when she was called to the bar.

The Ontario Law Society asked her to swear a mandatory oath of allegiance to the Queen.

She refused. Without doing so Monture-Angus would not be allowed to practice law.

Monture-Angus filed a suit challenging the practice, arguing she was a member of a sovereign nation. The case never went to court. The Law Society agreed to change its rules.

Monture-Angus became a lawyer.

Over the next 20 years she served on nearly every inquiry, commission and blue-ribbon panel convened on Aboriginal issues, including the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

She taught at Dalhousie University, University of Ottawa and the University of Saskatchewan and published three books.

She spent her life reshaping Canadian law to include Indigenous rights.