Description
The name Donald Marshall Jr. is synonymous with wrongful conviction and the fight for Indigenous rights in Canada. In Truth and Conviction, Jane McMillan Marshall's former partner, an acclaimed anthropologist, and an original defendant in the Supreme Court's Marshall decision on Indigenous fishing rights tells the story of how Marshall's fight against injustice permeated Canadian legal consciousness and revitalized Indigenous law.
Marshall was destined to assume the role of hereditary chief of the Mi'kmaw Nation when, in 1971, he was wrongly convicted of murder. He spent more than eleven years in jail before a royal commission exonerated him and exposed the entrenched racism underlying the terrible miscarriage of justice. Four years later, in 1993, he was charged with fishing eels without a licence. With the backing of Mi'kmaw chiefs, he took the case all the way to the Supreme Court to vindicate Indigenous treaty rights in the landmark Marshall de
