Navjot Jassar (she/her/hers) is a Staff Lawyer at West Coast and works primarily with the RELAW team. She is Punjabi, with roots in farming villages from the land of the five rivers that flow from the western Himalayas. She has spent most of her life in Treaty 7 lands, the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, and the Métis Nation (Region 3).
Navjot has been engaged in collective surviving and thriving while dismantling colonial violence throughout her life. She was accepted into the inaugural cohort of the JD/JID Joint program in common law and Indigenous legal orders at the University of Victoria, after which she completed her articles with West Coast.
Navjot has provided justice-oriented legal services to clients and community partners from diverse backgrounds and on diverse legal issues. She has worked most closely with the Indigenous legal orders of coastal peoples and primarily serves community partners in implementing Indigenous Protected and Conserved areas in both marine and terrestrial contexts. Navjot has also provided legal services in other public interest capacities including in the areas of marine law, access to necessities of life, administrative law, civil litigation and international Indigenous human rights law.
Creative movement, plant medicine and felines are some of the life-affirming forces Navjot cherishes most. She is grateful for the privilege to learn the first laws of the lands occupied by Canada and to work alongside Indigenous peoples in revitalizing their legal orders.