Richard Overstall practices law with the firm Buri, Overstall in Smithers, with a particular interest in aboriginal and natural resource law.
Richard is a graduate geologist and worked in mining exploration in northwestern Canada and Ireland for more than ten years. After a stint as a sawmill worker in the Bulkley Valley, he joined local efforts to improve forest practices and ensure a sustainable timber supply. He was involved as a researcher and advocate in the successful campaign to stop the damming and diversion of the Bulkley River headwaters for Alcan's Kemano expansion project. Some of this work was through the medium of an environmental newsletter, for which he wrote extensively and edited.
For 25 years, Richard has acted as a researcher, negotiator and lawyer for a number of aboriginal groups. He was the research director for the Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en peoples in their Delgamuukw court action and subsequently helped with treaty and other negotiations, particularly in the areas of self-government, land and resources. In the course of this work, he helped design a number of effective programs, including those in restorative justice, wildlife habitat mapping and ecosystem-based territory management. He also assisted as co-producer and script-writer for two documentary films on the Gitxsan aboriginal rights and title struggle.
His academic publications include co-authorship of the book Tribal Boundaries in the Nass Watershed, as well as peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on the use of statistics to evaluate DNA evidence in criminal cases, the use of the trust as an interface between aboriginal and western legal orders, and an account of Gitxsan concepts of Òproperty.Ó