Candace Charlie

Contact Details

Candace Charlie

Assistant: Kathleen McKerracher

She/Her

As one of Woodward and Company’s lawyers, Candace’s work focuses on Aboriginal rights and title, environmental assessments, and lands and resource governance. Her greatest motivation is to help change Indigenous peoples’ experiences in and with the colonial legal system. 

Candace is a Cowichan Tribes member from the Kwa’mutsun (Quamichan) village. She was born and raised in Quw’utsun territory, on Cowichan Indian Reserve #1. After graduating high school, she attended the UBC Faculty of Music as a pianist and vocal major, later returning to Kwantlen Polytechnic University where she pursued an undergraduate degree in Sustainability Policy Studies. She attended the University of Saskatchewan’s Program of Legal Studies for Native People in 2017. She completed her law degree at the University of Victoria in December 2021, where she received multiple academic awards including Cowichan Tribes Academic Achievement Award (2014); Arthur Rhodes Scholarship for Outstanding Graduate of the Program of Legal Studies for Native People (2017); University of Victoria Faculty of Law Access Bursary (2018); Blakes Scholar Award (2019); Honourable Mention, First Peoples Law Indigenous Law Student Scholarship Award (2020); and Blakes Scholar Award (2020). 

Prior to serving as one of the firm’s lawyers, Candace worked for Cowichan Tribes’ Lulumexun Lands & Governance Department from 2015-2021, where she worked as Referrals/Crown Consultation Coordinator, Land Code Coordinator, and Matrimonial Real Property Law Coordinator. Having previously articled at the firm as a student, Candace returned to join Woodward and Company as a lawyer in early 2023 after she became a member of the B.C. Bar. 

Throughout the course of her work, Candace seeks to create space in the legal sphere for Indigenous peoples to govern themselves, their territories, and their relations with all living beings according to their own sacred directives, as unencumbered by colonial interests as is possible. 

Membership & Professional Affiliations

  • Member, Law Society of BC (2022)

Practice Areas

  • Aboriginal and Treaty Rights
  • Additions to Reserve
  • Consultation and Accommodation
  • Corporate and Commercial Law
  • First Nation Constitutions, Laws & Policy
  • Governance support
  • Land Code
  • Land Interests
  • Natural Resources
  • Regulatory Processes and Hearings