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Legal Considerations for Indigenous Artists & Designers

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While many legal resources exist, few focus on addressing questions, topics, and barriers specifically relevant to Indigenous creatives. Despite existing limitations and gaps in how Canadian laws support the rights of Indigenous creatives, this resource aims to provide concepts and tools that can help creatives better understand their rights, voice their expectations, and advocate for themselves and their work.

Legal Considerations for Indigenous Artists & Designers: An introductory guide is the result of a collaboration between:

This collaboration was formed to provide free summary legal information, non-legal peer support, and other resources for Indigenous artists spanning a variety of industries and disciplines.

As part of this ongoing collaboration, we have hosted two roundtables and a webinar on legal considerations for Indigenous Artists in Film and Media Arts. We have developed this resource in response to themes that emerged from these prior events and conversations.

Indigenous women* are becoming increasingly visible in the arts, with a rising number of actors, comedians, musicians, authors, visual artists, craftspeople, and dancers being represented across major artistic platforms. Although a substantial proportion of artists can be considered entrepreneurs, freelance artists and creatives are often overlooked in discussions of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. The aim of this resource is to support creative women entrepreneurs by providing information and tools that can assist them in their creative endeavors and businesses.

*Note: Our use of the term women is inclusive, including cis women, trans women, Two Spirit, genderqueer, gender fluid, and non-binary folks.

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