About me
Chair and Professor, Department of Anthropology at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Her PhD is from the University of British Columbia (2003). From 2006-2016, Professor McMillan held the Canada Research Chair for Indigenous Peoples and Sustainable Communities. She served as President of the Canadian Law and Society Association from 2012 to 2014. As a legal anthropologist, she has had the privilege of working with Indigenous communities for more than 25 years, conducting community-driven participatory research and applied policy analysis, and advocating for justice, self- determination and Indigenous treaty and livelihood rights. A former eel fisher and one of the original defendants in the Supreme Court of Canada’s Marshall decision (1999), she keenly studies the progress of rights implementation in Mi’kma’ki.
Professor McMillan is the author of numerous publications, including the award- winning Truth and Conviction: Donald Marshall Jr. and the Mi’kmaw Quest for Justice (UBC Press 2018) and received the Outreach Award from StFX University in 2021. She is a member of the Mi’kmaq / Nova Scotia / Canada Tripartite Forum Justice Committee, the Atlantic Policy Congress First Nations Chief Secretariat’s steering and research subcommittees, and the advisory committee of the ndigenous Justice Strategy. She served on the Research Advisory Board of the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission and, more recently, an “Expert” Advisory Panel to Corrections Service Canada. Dr. McMillan was appointed Special Advisor, Indigenous Research and Learning Partnerships at St. Francis Xavier University in 2022. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Innocence Canada.
