Northern Beat Podcast
Written By Fran Yanor
Published December 13, 2025
Tom Isaac pulls few punches.
He has been around the block on the Indigenous law circuit. Make that many blocks. And all levels of court, in provincial, territorial and federal jurisdictions across Canada, representing businesses, industries and governments on Aboriginal law and related constitutional matters, and more.
He hasn’t just written dozens of legal articles, news OpEds, 17 books, and multiple editions of legal textbooks, he wrote THE book on Aboriginal Law. His latest is as timely as ever and written with colleague Grace Wu: Canada and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The point being, he knows Aboriginal and constitutional law. Not only that, he led negotiations on the single largest class action suit settlement for residential school survivors in the country’s history, resulting in a $2.8 billion settlement held in trust and disbursed over 20 years.“I’m really trying to stay out of the politics of all this, but it’s very difficult to when the behaviour that I see is not acting in the public interest and I believe is negligent.”
Listen to the podcast here:
https://northernbeat.ca/podcast/podcast-tom-isaac-this-issue-demands-clarity