MMIWG recommendations prompt additional training for Alberta legal aid lawyers

Two weeks after the MMIWG released its recommendations on reconciliation, lawyers working for Legal Aid Alberta say they need to do better in representing their Indigenous clients.

Legal aid introduced mandatory cultural-sensitivity training for its lawyers in 2016 in an effort to betterhelp Indigenous clients, especially when it comes to sentencing.

"We did not necessarily possess the knowledge we should have for assisting our indigenous clients, so it started as in-house training," said Danny Lynn,senior advisory councilwith Legal Aid Alberta.

Now, following the recommendations made by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry, Legal Aid Alberta wants to enhance thetraining.

April Kellett, one of the first lawyers totakethetraining, said the half-day coursechanged her perspective when working with herIndigenous clients.

"I'm looking more at trying to pin the past to the present and how the systems need to help persons who come from that path in perhaps a different way," Kellett said.

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The traininghelped Kellett see her clients and their individual historyas separate from one another,makingher realize she needed to look deeper at the historyof each of her clients, she said.

This has guided heron how to approach each client as unique, she said.

A critical step

The training was provided by Patti LaBoucane-Benson, a Mtis Indigenous advocateand now a senator.

LaBoucane-Benson focused on how to provide historic trauma-informed services for Indigenous Peoples, she said in an email to CBC News.

"Understanding our history and particularly the experience of Indigenous peoples in Canadian history and how it informs clients' thoughts and behaviours is one critical step in the reconciliation process,"LaBoucane-Benson said.

Sharon Gladue, vice president of SixtiesScoop Indigenous Society of Alberta,said not only does the public service,lawyers and judges need thetraining, butit should beprovided to mainstream Albertans.

With up to 30 per cent of Legal Aid Albertaclients being from the Indigenous community, thetraining will not stop, Lynn said.

Other public servants have also taken the course.

More than 32,000 staff at Alberta Health Services have taken the training since the former NDP government made the coursemandatoryfor many public servants.