As Senior Counsel at Woodward and Company, Kate is specialized in Indigenous rights, decolonization litigation and large-scale negotiations, and governance and self-determination. Her driving motivator is to decolonize the legal systems in Canada that have caused harm to human–and other-than–human–environments.
Kate holds a BBA from the University of New Brunswick, a master’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communications from the University of Western Ontario, and a law degree from the University of Toronto. Kate was first called to the Ontario bar in 2001, then to the bar in Manitoba in 2001. In 2022, she was called to the bar in British Columbia.
Kate began her practice of Indigenous Rights Law in 2001 and has worked on an enormous array of matters pertaining to Indigenous Peoples. Until the end of ‘22, Kate was a senior partner at a national Indigenous rights law firm based out of Toronto. A member of the B.C., Ontario, and Manitoba Bars, she has won a number of significant cases and has been involved in major breakthroughs in Crown-Business-Indigenous Nations relations and developments.
Having found success at the helm of many important legal battles across Canada, Kate has been recognized in Lexpert’s Most Frequently Recommended, Best Lawyers in America®, and as a Lexpert®-ranked lawyer in the field of Aboriginal Law. She has won multiple important cases on injunctions against development, treaty rights defences, and judicial reviews on the duty to consult and accommodate.