IQALUIT - Marie Belleau, a law student from Iqaluit, anticipates a growing need for Inuit to defend their own interests on the legal battlefield.

Law student Marie Belleau introduces fellow Inuk Siila Watt-Cloutier (not pictured), who spoke at a conference at Belleau's school Universite Laval in Quebec City in 2008. - photo courtesy of Marie Belleau

"I'm interested in the Northwest Passage," she said. "In the coming years, that's something Canada is going to have to look into."

She is interested in the Law of the Sea, the set of international rules which govern how much control a country has over the waters off its shores, the basis for legal wranglings over the Northwest Passage.

Belleau's interest in law grew out of a trip to Nuuk, Greenland in 2006. The International Treaties Centre of Indigenous Peoples brought activists from aboriginal people all over the world. Belleau heard about human rights worldwide, and how international law applies to aboriginal rights.

When she returned to Universite Laval in Quebec City, Belleau asked an instructor there about taking some law courses. At the time she was thinking just to learn a few things, not dedicated herself to pursuing a law career. But she said the instructor said something which changed her mind: "You can be a dog that barks or a dog that bites."

So Belleau enrolled as quickly as she could and started studying law halfway through the school year, in January 2007.

In addition, Belleau has been the president of Laval's Aboriginal Students Association, one of only two Inuit in the group. Most of the rest of the membership come from the First Nations of Quebec.

"While I'm there I try to stay connected with promoting our rights and informing people about Inuit," she said. "There's a lot of stereotypes."

After graduating in April 2010, she has to take another year learning English common law, the basis for the Canadian civil legal system outside of Quebec. The Quebec civil law she is learning is based on French law.

After that would come studying and passing the bar exam and then articling at a law firm.

"I want to come back here and apply these things I had to learn in the Qallunaat world and apply them somehow," she said.