University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog

"Until Next Time" - An Interview With Team ReconciliAction YEG

Team ReconciliAction YEG - Mrs. Arcand-Kootenay, Ms. Cave, Ms. Creelman, & Ms. Cleveland (left to right)

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

        For the final post of the 2017-2018 Law and Social Media Project, Team ReconciliAction YEG got together to speak openly about our blogging experience over the last 8 months. Read on to see what the team has to say about the challenges and highlights from the journey.

What was the biggest challenge you each faced with this project?

Ms. Cave: My biggest challenge was opening up on social media. While I do enjoy social media, I try to avoid the “comments” section and rarely post my thoughts in a debate. I don’t like engaging that way and don’t consider myself a “keyboard warrior”. Admittedly, I also don’t like confrontation or too much criticism (weird for someone who wants to be a defense lawyer, I know). So opening myself up to potential criticism from my peers and the online community was intimidating at first and still is, especially when we are posting about contentious issues, such as the Colten Boushie and Tina Fontaine cases. It was challenging striking a balance between law and personal opinion, but I think each of us found our voice by the end.

Ms. Cleveland: The hardest thing for me was actually the content we engaged with. Some of our posts included extremely affective material, and it was sometimes hard to leave the work on the screen at the end of the day. The section that I struggled with most was when we wrote about missing and murdered Indigenous women. No matter how many articles you read and no matter how familiar you are with the statistics, that feeling of deep despair does not go away. You don’t just write a blog and forget about the women whose names you typed out and how many more there may be in the future if nothing changes. Each one of us experienced feelings of helplessness and hopelessness at some point over the year, but we were lucky to have one another to lean on, and to have Professor Hadley Friedland support and guide us through the especially heavy sections. I think that by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, and by committing ourselves to humanizing the people we wrote about, we were able to find and create a little light in the darkness.

Mrs. Arcand-Kootenay: The biggest challenge for me was twofold: 1) the content we covered on the residential schools, sixties scoop, and MMIWG, and 2) feeling that reconciliation was a hopeless feat. In regards to the former, despite my familiarity with this content, it didn’t make it any easier to work with. I’m honestly not sure if going through this dark history, and how Indigenous peoples have been/continue to be mistreated, will ever get easier to face. However, following the recent Boushie and Fontaine decisions, I believe unpacking this history is essential. This leads me to my second challenge, of feeling hopelessness as we strive for reconciliation – something brought on tenfold after these decisions. All we can do as a team is try to educate those who fall victim to the false stereotypes of Indigenous peoples. However, it is up to those individuals if they want to listen.

Ms. Creelman: My biggest challenge during this experience was undergoing the emotional experience when the academic interacted with the emotional. It is easy to read a case “logically”, and understand how the law is changed or not. However, it is not always easy to read a case while recognizing the effects on the individuals of that case. Writing this blog forced us to to see, recognize, and interact with the human affect while also researching the academic. This was something that I did not fully expect, or fully understand how it would affect both me and my writing.

What was your favourite moment from the past year of blogging?

Ms. Cave: Interviewing Cindy Blackstock. It was such an honour to meet someone who I admire and look up to. She is such a fantastic speaker and has such thoughtful and thorough answers to what I thought were too simple of questions. It was so fun attending the Spirit Bear Teddy Bear Tea Party & Book Launch event where she read her book, “Spirit Bear and Children Making History”. Seeing so many young children engaged in the topic and responding so enthusiastically and genuinely was amazing. It was an experience I will never forget.

Ms. Cleveland: Choosing one favourite moment is tricky because we had such a special year. That said, my top moment has to be when I was grading a student’s assignment and realized that they had cited our blog! Being able to see (in such a concrete way) that people are building on the knowledge we’re putting out there was so impactful. We’ve been able to create such a strong community across the campus, city, and even country, and that, for me, has made it all worthwhile.

Mrs. Arcand-Kootenay: My favourite moment with the blog was probably when we had the interview with Global Edmonton. It got me out of my comfort zone (I always dreaded public speaking, let alone being aired on TV!), and the support from my family, friends, and colleagues after the interview was incredible. It was a once in a lifetime experience, and so valuable to our readership – with our followers expanding dramatically across our social media platforms after it aired.

Ms. Creelman: My favourite moment isn’t really a moment at all -- but a larger effect from participating in this experience. In self-reflecting about how much I have learned over the past year, I realized I’ve not only learned from completing my own research and writing, but from my three team members. I have also become so much more aware of the differences that Indigenous people still face in Canada -- not only in Canada as a whole, but as a micro level, within the law school I attend. I am so excited to continue this learning, and share it with our readers on the blog next year.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Team ReconciliAction YEG wants to extend a huge thank you to all of our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and email followers from over the past year. We couldn’t have done this without you. As a result of the project’s success, some of our team members will be returning in the fall to continue the important work that we began in September 2017. Come back then for another year of reconciliaction with us!

The Hat I Don’t Take Off

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

image retrieved from: http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/oise/News/blog_natl_aboriginal_day.html

          Writing my last post for this year is bittersweet. Writing a blog almost every week for the past eight months ended up being a lot more work than I expected. That work, however, was meaningful, challenging, and rewarding. Some days, I feel like I have a lot more questions than answers and feel more hopeless than I do hopeful. There was a lot of senseless injustice in the last few months. It disappoints me to hear my peers discuss this so flippantly and dismiss learning activities such as the KAIROS blanket exercise without even having tried it. It disappoints me that people can get into a heated debate about this without any Indigenous input in the conversation but fail to attend Indigenous Voices where all were invited to attend as part of a peaceful discussion where all perspectives can be heard, even if not agreed with. It disappoints me that there are no plans to implement Call to Action 28 here in the law school. It makes me uncomfortable to discuss this all the time and I sometimes feel like I am being too abrasive. However, being Indigenous is not a hat I get to take off when I exit the law school doors each day. I have had to remind myself constantly that making people uncomfortable for fifteen minutes while they read my blog post is what I have experienced my entire life. I have had to hide my own identity, then learned how to embrace it, and now have to defend it.

        I am not here to tell you what reconciliation looks like because I am Indigenous. Again, this burden should not fall to Indigenous people alone. If we all want reconciliation to happen, we need to all be a part of reconciliation, which starts with truth. We need to go beyond our bar debates and become involved in the meaningful discussions, ESPECIALLY if we have opposing opinions. It is okay to have opposing opinions. It is not okay to oppress others because of our opinions. We have a duty as law students and as human beings to respond meaningfully to the Calls to Action. If you read this blog only a couple of times, thank you. If you have read it faithfully everyday and call yourself our #1 blog fan, thank you. If this is your first read, thank you. Opening your mind to these conversations and engaging with the topic is a huge step that we all must take.

        With my frustration comes a great amount of gratitude for those who have allied with us and have become a part of this journey. The Faculty of Law has a number of professors who have continually offered their support to Indigenous students and worked hard to incorporate content that addresses Indigenous issues, either throughout their class material or through specific courses. I am also grateful for the number of friends and allies I have in this faculty. It never fails to put a smile on my face when a friend steps out of their own comfort zone attends an ILSA event or stand up for others when they see injustices happening. I am also thankful to have been part of this team and to have three peers in my life who have worked just as tirelessly to bring awareness to these issues. I am so excited that the Faculty of Law is welcoming two Indigenous professors next year, Josh Nichols and Darcy Lindberg. I am hopeful for the future and am excited to see what next year brings.

Until next time,

Katelynn Cave

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram: @reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

It Must Be More Than Learning

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

For me personally, I started the process of this blog with an open mind -- simply ready to learn and ready to share those learnings through daily blog posts. As someone who has never really interacted with this subject matter in an academic way, I knew that I had two goals: to further my own learning and enhance my perspective through research into the TRC, and to share this research with the public to ideally create conversation about that day’s post topic.

I was struck by the amount of stories and the details of those stories, that I had never once encountered throughout my education. Through 12 years in elementary, junior high, and high school, and then 6 years in post-secondary, I had never learned about the intricacies of treaty interpretation, how exactly the Indian Act governed Indigenous peoples, and the extent to which the residential schools program destroyed Indigenous people and attempted to annihilate their culture. I learned about concepts like intergenerational trauma and sifted through both older and more recent Supreme Court decisions that effectively altered the realities of Indigenous people across Canada. Through my own learning, I’ve been able to unlearn and work to understand new things for me, and fully realize why words or acknowledgment of Indigenous peoples are simply not enough.

Throughout the process, I wanted to ask our readers what their thoughts are about reconciliation. I did so through two online surveys: one distributed in September 2017 and another in March 2018. We asked respondents to tell us what the first thing they thought of when they heard the word ‘reconciliation.’ These were some of the responses, amalgamated from both surveys:

The responses to this question largely remained the same from September 2017-March 2018. But that is a problem with the ideas surrounding reconciliation: it is clearly something that cannot happen in less than 8 months, let alone 5 years. The hurt, injustice, and inequality is too intense for that. But there is no restriction on starting that process, today. Starting to truly complete each of the 94 Calls to Action will generate a culture change; a culture change that requires every party to reconciliation, and therefore every person in Canada, to genuinely commit to the actions that the process requires.

The responses to our survey, and to our blog itself, indicate that the TRC and Indigenous legal issues are something that people want to learn more about. But learning is only step 1. As a student who has been learning about reconciliation for the past 8 months, I implore you to take action. These actions can be small. Tell someone about a comment that is racist or share a dialogue about a news story that is affecting you. Be an ally to those who know more than you do and support them when current events disturb them personally and deeply.

Once thought turns to action, it is unstoppable and will spark the change in our culture that we all so desperately need to move forward with Indigenous people, together, in reconciliation.

I am so looking forward to continue my own learning and sharing it with you, once we start again in September.

 

Until next time,

Katherine Creelman

 

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

Reconciliation Moving Forward

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

    I started the year off asking the question, “what does reconciliation mean to Canadians?” Following last week’s posts on reconcili-action or inaction on campus, I decided to ask students and faculty at the University of Alberta what reconciliation means to them. Despite the notion of universities as being sites that foster the colonial perspective, there are still members within our academic community who choose not to be persuaded by this rhetoric. These individuals encompass what it means to move forward in Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations, and are willing to work towards a reconciled Canada.     

 

“What does reconciliation mean to you?”

  

   Personally, this project has opened up my eyes to the upward battle of reconciliation. It’s not an easy task to achieve, and there will often be times when you want to give up. Moving forward, my reconcili-action to myself, to our readers, and to the warriors out there striving for reconciliation is: don’t give up. If we change the perspective of at least one person, that is in itself a huge success.

    I am looking forward to continuing this journey with the blog as we strive to educate, empower, and work towards a future in reconciliation. Kinanâskomitin (thank you) to all our readers – see you in September!    

 

Until next time,

Breanna Arcand-Kootenay

A Member of Team ReconciliAction YEG

Where Do We Go From Here?

Image retrieved from http://artprofsamerica.com/tag/activism/

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

        Our last week of posts provided an institutional critique of the university as a site where a specific form of colonial knowledge is shaped and sustained. Course content and curricula still prioritize Eurocentric knowledge,[1] and like racialized students, racialized faculty members still face “being marginalized, ghettoized, and tokenized”[2] on a regular basis. Relatively low proportions of non-white faculty means fewer students are “exposed to the particular knowledge that racialized and Indigenous faculty can potentially bring to their teaching,”[3] and even when Indigenous faculty members are hired, they often face higher teaching loads and “a double burden, with expectations to mentor more students and [...] frequent requests to sit on a large number of committees to represent symbolic representation.”[4] Together, these factors combine to make academia extraordinarily arduous for Indigenous scholars.

        The deeper you dig, the clearer it becomes that current “policies and practices to address racism are limited or ineffective.”[5] So what do we do about it?! In The Equity Myth, Malinda S. Smith and her colleagues propose specific solutions to address the challenges described above. To begin with, universities must develop “support mechanisms for racialized and Indigenous faculty that recognize their experiences and the unique demands resulting from cultural taxation which have an effect on their career trajectories.”[6] There needs to be more “policies, data, modes of monitoring and evaluating equity, and practices [created] from a multidimensional rather than a unidimensional perspective.”[7] Even individual faculties have work to do - they must commit to “disrupting established ways of doing things and challenging normative notions of selection, appointment, and promotion.”[8] With a lot of time and even more effort, reforms such as these have the potential to undo the substantive and procedural inequities that exist within Canadian universities.

        But institutional change is slow and hard to come by, and in the meantime, students also a have a role to play in transforming the university classroom from an oppressive space to one of liberation and resistance. Students take what they learn in the classroom and apply it in their communities. Both within the classroom and beyond it, students must be encouraged to take an active role in theorizing new perspectives and making space for change. In law school especially, where students graduate and go on to make, interpret, and apply the law as legislators, lawyers, and judges, we must be empowered to think and act in anti-racist and decolonizing ways.

        Settler and Indigenous students alike can intervene when we witness or experience racism on a personal or structural scale. We can show up for walks to protest violence against Indigenous women. We can stand in at “round dances, flash mobs, and teach-ins,”[9] and add our voices to movements like Occupy Ottawa or Justice for Colten. We can join community groups and participate in discussion series. We can collaborate together on decolonizing projects and use social media to build new relationships and support systems. In taking on the responsibility to genuinely connect our academic work to political purpose and action, we can contribute to shaping a world we actually want to live in.

        I would like to end my time as team lead of ReconciliAction YEG by encouraging all of our readers to go forth and be activists. Create. Resist. Be brave. Speak out when you see injustice. Never stop learning and unlearning. Thank you for an amazing eight months!

Until next time,

Grace Cleveland

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] See Frances Henry and Audrey Kobayashi, “The Everyday World of Racialized and Indigenous Faculty Members in Canadian Universities” in Frances Henry, Enakshi Dua, Carl E. James, Audrey Kobayashi, Peter Li, Howard Ramos, and Malinda S. Smith, The Equity Myth: Racialization & Indigeneity at Canadian Universities (UBC Press: Vancouver, 2017) at 131.

[2] Carl E. James and Selon Chapman-Nyaho, “‘Would never be hired these days’: The Precarious Work Situation of Racialized and Indigenous Faculty Members” in Frances Henry, Enakshi Dua, Carl E. James, Audrey Kobayashi, Peter Li, Howard Ramos, and Malinda S. Smith, The Equity Myth: Racialization & Indigeneity at Canadian Universities (UBC Press: Vancouver, 2017) at 91.

[3] Frances Henry, Audrey Kobayashi, and Andrea Choi, “Representational Analysis: Comparing Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia” in Frances Henry, Enakshi Dua, Carl E. James, Audrey Kobayashi, Peter Li, Howard Ramos, and Malinda S. Smith, The Equity Myth: Racialization & Indigeneity at Canadian Universities (UBC Press: Vancouver, 2017) at 29.

[4] Howard Ramos and Rochelle Wijesingyha, “Academic Production, Reward, and Perceptions of Racialized Faculty Members” in Frances Henry, Enakshi Dua, Carl E. James, Audrey Kobayashi, Peter Li, Howard Ramos, and Malinda S. Smith, The Equity Myth: Racialization & Indigeneity at Canadian Universities (UBC Press: Vancouver, 2017) at 68-69.

[5] “Conclusion” in Frances Henry, Enakshi Dua, Carl E. James, Audrey Kobayashi, Peter Li, Howard Ramos, and Malinda S. Smith, The Equity Myth: Racialization & Indigeneity at Canadian Universities (UBC Press: Vancouver, 2017) at 298.

[6] Ibid, at 315.

[7] Ibid, at 316.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Margaret Kovach, “Treaties, Truths and Transgressive Pedagogies: Re-Imagining Indigenous Presence in the Classroom” (2013) Socialist Studies 9:1:109-27 at 122.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

In the Media: "Beyond 94"

Screengrab from “Beyond 94” online: <newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform-single/beyond-94?&cta=1>.

 

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

The CBC has recently announced an online reconciliation tracker that can be used by the public to see how Canada has responded to the 94 Calls of Action released by the TRC in 2015. As of March 2018, just 10 of the 94 Calls to Action have been completed. What’s been completed, and the 84 others that haven’t been responded to sufficiently, are each detailed on the new, interactive website.

The project provides a number of ways to interact with the content. One feature of the website is the ability to hearing stories of survivors on-demand that had been presented during the TRC tour across Canada. Each call to action is categorized into 6 different types:

• "Not started": “no action plan has been developed and/or no funds have been committed to implement the Call to Action.”
• "In Progress — Projects proposed": relevant parties involved “have either committed to an action plan or funding, but not yet followed through with it.”
• "In Progress — Projects underway": relevant parties involved are “actively working towards implementing that call, with both a timeline and (where needed) the funding to make it happen.”
• "Complete": these Calls to Action have been “fully implemented.”

Which calls to action have been completed?

 

• Call to Action #13: Acknowledge that Aboriginal rights include Aboriginal language rights.
  • Completed by the Federal Government in June 2017.

 

• Call to Action #39: Collect and publish data on the criminal victimization of Aboriginal people.
  • Completed by a federal Department of Justice’s report called "Indigenous overrepresentation in the criminal justice system” in January 2017.

 

• Call to Action #41: Appoint a public inquiry into the causes of, and remedies for, the disproportionate victimization of Aboriginal women and girls
  • This call is considered complete as of December 2015, when the federal government announced the launch of a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

 

• Call to Action #59: Church parties to residential school settlement to educate congregations on why apologies necessary
  • “KAIROS Canada’s Blanket Exercise is a particularly important educational resource that many of the churches use to teach their congregations about the history of residential schools.”

 

• Call to Action #83: Canada Council for the Arts to establish a strategy for Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to undertake collaborative projects
  • Completed by inclusion in the Council for the Arts strategic plan.

 

• Call to Action #84: Restore and increase funding to the CBC/Radio-Canada to enable it to support reconciliation
  • Although the funding for CBC/Radio-Canada was increased by 75 million in 2016’s Budget, “public funding cannot be tied to specific types of programming which would conflict with the programming independence set out in the Broadcasting Act.”

 

• Call to Action  #85: Aboriginal Peoples Television Network to support reconciliation
  • “APTN produces 75 per cent Canadian content, the vast majority which reflects the cultures, languages and perspectives of Aboriginal peoples.”

 

• Call to Action #87: Tell the stories of Aboriginal athletes in history
  • Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame launched an online exhibit that includes a segment about Indigenous Athletes in December 2017.

 

• Call to Action #88: Continued support for the North American Indigenous Games
  • In April 2017, the federal government increased and confirmed continuous yearly funding for the North American Indigenous Games.

 

• Call to Action #90: Ensure that national sports policies, programs and initiatives are inclusive of Aboriginal Peoples
  • Sport Canada reinstated funding to the Aboriginal Sport Circle, a national organization that advocates for athletic resources for Indigenous, Métis and Inuit peoples in 2015.

It seems that a common trend among completed objectives is that they require funding from the federal government, or acknowledgment in some way. However, the TRC was released in 2015 -- it is now 2018 and only 11% of the calls have been completed. It is time for more of these calls to action to be responded to, and ultimately, completed. Zero calls to action regarding child welfare, education, or health have been completed. One call has been completed regarding language and culture. Two calls have been completed regarding justice.

This is unacceptable. The TRC Calls to Action are not a to-do list to be completed over the next 20 years; they are steps that must be taken imminently to better the plight of Indigenous survivors in Canada. For more information and to explore the new interactive website, follow this link: http://bit.ly/2u1KnAt.

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] All information obtained from: “Beyond 94”, CBC News, online: <newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform-single/beyond-94?&cta=>.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

Call to Action 28: How Are We Doing?

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

Call to Action 28 [1]; Image retrieved from CBC Radio's Unreserved <https://librarianship.ca/news/cbc-unreserved-trc-visuals/>.

 

       Call to Action 28 is incredibly important to the legal profession, particularly for future lawyers who will one day be practicing and likely dealing with Indigenous clientele. Our laws are rooted in colonialism, often neglecting Indigenous issues and further oppressing Indigenous peoples through various judicial institutions. Call to Action 28 is not ambiguous in nature. It is specific and requires direct action from law schools, demanding the implementation of a mandatory course regarding Aboriginal people in the law. Meeting the goals of the TRC requires two components: indigenization and decolonization.

        Indigenization involves the inclusion of community-based Indigenous researchers and knowledge-keepers in the creation of “a space where Indigenous values and knowledges are respected”.[2] Unfortunately, indigenization has begun to act as a buzzword for universities due to its oversimplified and inconsistent incorporation.[3] Efforts to make faculties or course content “indigenous-friendly” or “a little less oppressive” does not address underlying issues[4]. Including a chapter on “Indigenous peoples” (which is sometimes skipped over in order to make up lost time in some classes) and advertising it as an Indigenous initiative, or allowing students to practice a cultural practice smudging in a designated room, are both examples of indigenization.

        Jeffery Hewitt, an assistant professor at the University of Windsor’s Faculty of Law, urges that indigenization must be accompanied by decolonization.[5] Decolonization is “the complicated work of acknowledging historic and ongoing wrongdoings along with claiming responsibility through naming, dismantling, countering and neutralizing both the collective and individual assertions and assumptions made in relation to Indigenous peoples.”[6] Schools must commit to fully addressing the ongoing injustices that are faced by Indigenous people today in order to properly reconcile harms that were inflicted in the past.[7] Learning about Indigenous laws, issues, and history in law school means that we must not simply be assigned a chapter titled “Indigenous Peoples” but strive to understand the history and law that has led to the gross overrepresentation of Indigenous people in our legal systems. Indigenization without decolonization leaves the colonial power-structures in place and perpetuates the injustices that Indigenous people have historically faced.[8] Implementing Call to Action 28 through a mandatory course would effectively involve the process of indigenization and decolonization.

        A number of law schools across Canada have made serious efforts to meet Call to Action by implementing a required course in Aboriginal peoples and the law. McGill University has implemented a one week-long intensive course on Indigenous laws as a part of their first year law “Integration Workshop”.[9] Most recently, Osgoode Hall announced that they will be implementing a mandatory Indigenous law course for all students beginning September 2018.[10] Other schools have begun discussions about implementation of a mandatory course, however, official information has not yet been received as of publication.

        The dedication of each of these schools to reconciliation provides inspiration to law students and professors who are hoping that one day Call to Action 28 will one day be met in their law school, including the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Law.

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (Winnipeg: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada), 2015.

[2] Taiaiake Alfred, Devon Abbott Mihesuah, & Angela Cavender Wilson, “Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities” (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).

[3] Jeffery G Hewitt, “Decolonizing and Indigenizing: Some Considerations for Law Schools” (2016) 33:1 Windsor YB Access Just at 69 [Hewitt].

[4] Patricia Barkaskas and Sarah Buhler, "Beyond Reconciliation: Decolonizing Clinical Legal Education." (2017) 26 Journal of Law and Social Policy at 14 (Osgoode Digital Commons).

[5] Hewitt, supra at 70.

[6] Sarah Buhler, Priscilla Settee, & Nancy Van Styvendale, “Teaching and Learning about Justice through Wahkohtowin” (2014) 4 The Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research at 183 [Buhler].

[7] Hewitt, supra at 70.

[8] Buhler, supra at 14.

[9] Cherry Wu, “McGill Introduces Intensive Course on Indigenous Law” McGill Tribune (January 17, 2017), online: <http://www.mcgilltribune.com/news/mcgill-faculty-of-law-introduces-intensive-course-on-indigenous-law-097235/>

[10] Osgoode Indigenous Students’ Association, News Release, “Osgoode Hall Responds to TRC #28 with Introduction of Mandatory Indigenous Law Requirement” (18 March 2018).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram: @reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

Efforts of Reconciliation at the U of A

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

One environment that has been called on to embrace the TRC’s Calls to Action is post-secondary institutions. The link between an education that teaches both the realities, stories, and history of Indigenous peoples and Canadians on a large-scale moving towards a path of reconciliation is clear. Instead of relying on politicized rhetoric or stereotypes of days past, Canadians must learn about the realities of Indigenous stories. But for widespread education, true Indigenous history must be taught in our institutions. How has the University of Alberta changed their approach to ensure an environment open to reconciliation? The University’s administration established an Indigenous Initiatives Office to “facilitate institutional collaboration and communication to support the development and implementation of programs, services and initiatives related to Indigenous engagement at the University of Alberta.” In other words, this office is supposed to connect the different Indigenous initiatives so that the entire University works together in implementing supports, programs, and other initiatives. [1] 

The Faculty of Law has not yet made a course in Indigenous Law mandatory in response to a call to action directed specifically toward law schools -- Call to Action #28 asking for a mandatory class will be discussed in tomorrow’s post. However, the Faculty has taken small steps in other ways. For example, the Foundations course (mandatory for all incoming first-year law students) now includes a look at Indigenous issues in law, as well as including a blanket exercise. The KAIROS blanket exercise is both a thought and physical experience that allows students to become exposed to and attempt to understand the concept of colonization and destruction of the Indigenous people in Canada. [2] The three-hour experience walks “participants through hundreds of years of Indigenous and Canadian history...to highlight the effects of law, legislation and policy on the lives of Indigenous peoples in Canada.”[3]

The Faculty of Law also offers other courses in both Aboriginal law and Indigenous issues. To highlight one, the Faculty is now offering a Gladue Sentencing Principles course for upper-year students. This course is an experiential learning course that allows law students to gain experience writing and working with Gladue reports, to see the Gladue sentencing principles in action. [4]

The Faculty has also made efforts to hire more professors that study Indigenous or Aboriginal laws or are of Indigenous descent. For example, the Faculty recently brought on Dr. Hadley Friedland (in 2016) who focuses on Indigenous laws, Aboriginal law, family and child welfare law, just to name a few. She was also the Research Director of the Indigenous Law Research Unit at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law from 2012-2016.[5]  Very recently the Faculty announced the appointment of Indigenous scholar Darcy Lindberg, who will be joining the Faculty in January 2019. [6]

However, institutional change in the university setting can only be driven further, and faster, by its advocates. In the postsecondary context, these important advocates include professors and students -- this places a high level of importance on the work that these groups do, and the work that they will continually labour at for the foreseeable future. One example of important advocacy that students, professors and other advocates can do was described in yesterday’s post, highlighting the student walkouts at many law schools across Canada in response to the recent injustices in the realm of criminal law. Specifically in the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta, the Indigenous Law Students’ Association does important work to critique their environment and work intensely to promote change within it. Have you seen another change at the University of Alberta, or another school, that has exemplified steps towards reconciliation? Let us know about these ‘reconcili-ACTIONS’ in the comments below.

 

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] “Indigenous Initiatives”, University of Alberta Provost’s Office, website, online: <www.ualberta.ca/provost/our-initiatives/indigenous-initiatives>.

[2] “Foundations course includes important social issues”, University of Alberta Faculty of Law, website, online: <www.ualberta.ca/law/news/main-news/2016/november/foundations-course-includes-important-social-issues>

[3] Ibid.

[4] “UAlberta Law Now Offers One-of-a-Kind Course on Gladue Sentencing Principles”, University of Alberta Faculty of Law, website, online: <www.ualberta.ca/law/news/main-news/2017/january/gladue-sentencing-principles>.

[5] “Hadley Friedland”, University of Alberta Faculty of Law, website, online: <www.ualberta.ca/law/faculty-staff/profiles/hadley-friedland>.

[6] “Darcy Lindberg”, University of Alberta Faculty of Law, website, online: <www.ualberta.ca/law/news/main-news/2018/march/darcy-lindberg>.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

Law Students Stand Up for Justice

UVic students at their walkout to protest discrimination against Indigenous people in Canada’s criminal justice system, image retrieved from http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/at-uvic-hundreds-march-to-protest-built-in-racism-in-justice-system-1.23202181.

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

Last Wednesday, law students across Canada participated in walkouts, teach-ins and protests to bring awareness to the recent injustices felt by Indigenous peoples in our criminal justice system. Our blog covered the recent acquittal of Gerald Stanley, who was charged with second-degree murder for shooting Colten Boushie, 22. Injustice was further perpetuated in the acquittal of Raymond Cormier, who was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Tina Fontaine, 15. For many Canadians, these decisions solidified the systemic legal issues that Indigenous people continue to experience in the justice system. For Indigenous law students and allies, these protests were an effort to raise awareness of these injustices and to open up a dialogue in the law schools on issues that remained unaddressed.

At the University of Toronto, approximately 100 law students and faculty walked out of class and gathered for a teach-in. Leslie Anne St. Amour, a member of the Indigenous Law Students Association (ILSA) at U of T, explained that Indigenous perspectives need to be brought into the law school classroom, and that students and faculty need to be educated on systemic issues. Furthermore, law students need to be taught that there are Indigenous legal traditions that exist as well. [1]

In the West, both the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria also engaged in walkouts to draw awareness to the issue. At UBC, Dawn Johnson, a second-year law student and a member of ILSA, explained that the walkout “forces people to take a look and realize that this is happening and that this is very real in our society.”[2] The protest moved outside, accompanied by drummers, where a large circle was formed where attendees voiced their opinion on the recent cases as well as the marginalization of Indigenous people. Richard Rupertson, an education student, spoke out about his experience with the justice system as an Indigenous youth, stating, “As a 13-year-old, I remember being picked up by the police for something I didn’t do and then taken to the police station and made to walk home with no shoes, and they wouldn’t let me make a phone call.”[3]

The University of Victoria’s walkout had the largest turnout of protesters, with roughly 300 students and faculty present. The protest was aimed at drawing attention to a system that is failing Indigenous peoples. Sarah Robinson, a member of the Fort Nelson First Nation and Salteau People, and spokesperson for UVic’s ILSA, explained that the system is starting to reveal itself as a one designed to enforce power and authority, often at the expense of basic fairness. She stated as an example, that people of colour are more frequently “carded” (stopped by police and asked for identification). [4]

Although the Indigenous Law Students’ Association at the University of Alberta did not participate in the walkouts and teach-ins on March 14th, they marked their support for their fellow law students participating in the protests on their facebook page. In an effort to start a discussion on these issues, the group will be hosting “Indigenous Voices” this Friday, March 23rd. The event will have a panel of speakers from the Faculty of Native Studies, a bundle carrier for MMIWG, as well as Indigenous legal professionals, who will engage in round-table discussions with the law students and faculty members to discuss these injustices and promote awareness within the Faculty of Law.

We thank all the Legal Warriors who are standing up for Indigenous people in this fight for justice. Kinanâskomitin.

 

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] Rhiannon Johnson, “U of T law students walk out of class for teach-in on Colten Boushie, Tina Fontaine cases”, CBC News (14 March 2018), online: http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/toronto-law-students-walkout-teach-in-boushie-fontaine-1.4576369.

[2] Joshua Azizi and Aidan Tong, “Students walk out to protest systemic legal issues facing Indigenous people”, The Ubyssey (14 March 2018), online: https://www.ubyssey.ca/news/day-of-action-walk-out/.

[3] Ibid.

[4] “At UVic, hundreds march to protest ‘built-in racism’ in justice system”, Times Colonist (14 March 2018), online: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/at-uvic-hundreds-march-to-protest-built-in-racism-in-justice-system-1.23202181.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

An Interview With Chelsea Vowel

Image retrieved from https://www.redmanlaughing.com/listen/2014/4/red-man-laughing-the-chelsea-vowel-interview.

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

        The team is honoured to open our blog’s final section on racism and reconciliation in the university environment with the help of Chelsea Vowel. Teacher, academic, author, blogger, social media star (@apihtawikosisan), mom, and much, much more, Vowel is in a unique position to comment on the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to Indigenous and settler relations in educational contexts. We hope you will learn as much from this interview as we did!

Can you tell our followers a little bit about yourself?

I was born and raised in manitow-sâkahikan territory, (Lac Ste. Anne) which is a Métis community in Alberta, about 70 km west of Edmonton. My mom is Métis and my dad is white. I am a mother of four girls, and a step-mother to two more. I have a BEd and taught for some time in Inuvik, Northwest Territories.  I obtained my LLB from the University of Alberta and then moved to Montreal for seven years where I taught Inuit youth in care, and worked with Inuit youth sentenced under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. In 2016, my family and I moved back to Alberta and I began an MA program with the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta.

What has your experience been like with academia?

When I was a kid, I did well in school, probably in great part because I am not visibly Indigenous. However, I really disliked the curriculum. We [Indigenous people] were never really in it at all, and it was only until later that I began to realize we were missing. I would hear my family talking about our stories in the Lac St. Anne area, but I thought it was gossip – I didn’t consider it as history. It wasn’t until university that I realized those stories are real history! In elementary and high school, the teachers and texts impressed on me the idea that if Europeans hadn’t come to ‘save’ Indigenous people, we would have killed each other off. My mom learned that, too. It was all about erasure – we were either missing from the curriculum content, or included in really problematic ways.

That’s why I decided to become a teacher, because I could bring in stories that otherwise wouldn’t be. There is some room for teachers to bring in and focus on the topics they want. My first teaching job was in Inuvik. The elementary school was in the old residential school building. There were often complaints from the school staff about absentee parents, but what they didn’t realize was that for these parents the building was a place of deep trauma, and they just couldn’t expect people to come there. Going out into the community was where the magic happened.

There were limits to what I could accomplish as a teacher however, and that’s what brought me into law; to be a better advocate and to have the skillset to make fundamental change. The silo of the classroom wasn’t enough and I needed to find the words and use the laws on a wider basis to get schools to be more responsive to the needs of communities. At least, that was the plan. I’m pretty cynical now about making “change from within” which is why I am not a lawyer.

I’m a first-generation university student, so I had no one to guide me through the process. In some ways, it’s been really freeing, because there were no lines in the sand and I took courses that actually interested me. But I never had an Indigenous professor, and never took courses with Indigenous content other than one education course with a brief but really condescending bit about Indigenous peoples. Native Studies did exist but I didn’t know about it! It’s been my graduate degree that has allowed me to work with Indigenous content and Indigenous people and I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if I had come here to begin with. I think it would have been life-changing because most of the learning and unlearning I had to do before this was on my own. Feeling lied to makes you question everything you’ve been taught! In its current state, the Canadian education system focuses on economic priorities and creating citizens. What we need to be focusing on is how we can live on this land better in relationship, we need to be incorporating these conversations safely and comprehensively into the public education system.

Do you find that the university’s focus on reconciliation has had more of a positive or more of a negative effect?

My biggest concern with reconciliation is in the way that it’s being rolled out in institutions. It’s so informed by white saviourism – there’s this belief that maybe Indigenous peoples should be consulted but that we don’t understand how things work in the real world. It’s always, “that’s a great idea, but…” so Indigenous people are saying what they need but then the restraints come in and chip away the original vision so much that we no longer recognize what’s been created! I think that happens for lots of reasons (budgets, policies, time, effort…), but I also think that our vision gets filtered through a non-Indigenous understanding that ultimately takes what we’re saying and changes it into something completely different. It’s frustrating because it follows a wider pattern throughout Canadian history where ‘consultation’ occurs and we put in so much time and energy to build bridges and create understanding and in the end the people in power simply do things the way they’ve always done them anyway. People are really tired of that work – we’ve had these discussions over and over again, and have yet to see enough substantive institutional shifts.

Last year especially, there was a wave of reconciliation, and at the height of that wave we got a lot of promises but very little in the way of action. As that crest collapses, it’s less likely that we are going to get what we ask for. Despite people who are really well-meaning and want to make change, these institutions are just not set up to be decolonial! You can’t just add in a few courses and/ or have a few discussions with Elders and overcome it. There needs to be much more. So many generations have gone through these struggles, and you have to look at what’s been done and whether it’s been enough. It hasn’t! It speaks to the fundamental inability of colonial systems to change – the only change that is allowed is super incremental and super co optedcoopted! We can’t continue to do it this way. It’s just not fast enough! We know what we need and we can do it if people would just let us.

What is the number one thing you would like to see change around here when it comes to settler and Indigenous relationships?

I would apply this to all our relationships: settlers have to trust that Indigenous people are capable of making decisions about our own lives. You can’t screen it, you can’t say “tell me your plan, and I’ll evaluate it and choose what to support, what not to support, and what isn’t feasible.” Real allyship is supporting what it is that we say we need for ourselves. Settlers need to overcome what they’ve been taught about us, that is, that we lack the capacity to make those decisions. It’s hard because since contact we’ve been framed as people who don’t know how to do things the right way, but as a society we need to turn that around and realize that all people need to be able to make decisions about their own lives!

There’s also no one vision – that’s the other major issue. Settlers want a single vision for how Indigenous peoples can move forward, but even in a single community there can be many political divisions. That’s normal! That’s doesn’t mean we need settlers coming in and deciding which one group to support. It’s an internal issue that our communities can and will deal with. Simply, we should be empowered to decide what our futures look like.

Any parting words?

After Colten [Boushie] and Tina [Fontaine], and the total lack of justice for them, I’ve really decided that reconciliation is a concept whose time has not yet come. We need to put it on the shelf and go back to truth first. We’re not ready for reconciliation because Indigenous people are still not treated with equality, and until we fix that power differential we cannot resolve anything. We need to turn our minds to telling the truth and understanding that colonization is ongoing and that white supremacy is a real thing and we’re not going to get rid of it by pretending it doesn’t exist. We have to actively dismantle those systems and if we can’t even name them or admit they’re there, then they will just remain in the background and continue to warp all that we try to do.

Thanks, Chelsea!

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook:www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

ILSA Speaker Series: Maria Campbell

Image retrieved from https://www.congress2017.ca/calendar/1004.

“Our stories had seasons and cycles, some stories were about family, others were about heroes and the people we grew up with.” - Maria Campbell, from the ILSA’s Annual Aboriginal Law Speaker Series, March 9, 2018.

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

    Today we conclude our week’s coverage on the Aboriginal Law Speaker Series, with an overview of Friday’s speaker: Maria Campbell. Campbell is a a Métis author, playwright, theatre producer, filmmaker, broadcaster, educator, and Elder. Her first book, a memoir titled Half-Breed, continues to be taught in schools across Canada. Famous for her story-telling, it was only fitting that Campbell presented the audience with a series of stories, all drawing back to the title of her talk, “Wahkohtowin and Indigenous Justice.”

    Before Campbell began to share her stories, she warned us of what we may lose when we recount a story. She made a comparison to a cup, explaining, “we pull a word out and we look at it, and we try to deconstruct it. As Indigenous people, many of us are doing that, and what we’re doing is leaving a lot of stuff in the cup.” Campbell explained that this is the reason that it’s difficult to teach the Cree concept of wahkohtowin (meaning the laws that govern all relations). She explained how the “story belongs to these words,” and that “once you take them out of the stories they don’t work anymore.” Despite these challenges, Campbell recounted the stories told to her, along with her own stories, in an effort to help the audience understand the meaning of wahkohtowin.

    One story in particular was a family story, describing when Campbell returned home for the Summer holidays to spend time with her father. She asked her father if he had any moose meat, but not having any at the time, he set out on a three day hunting trip for their feast. On the third morning of his trip, he took a canoe out onto the lake. He stayed on the edge of the lake searching, eventually finding a moose eating water lilies. He picked up his gun and raised it to shoot the moose, but suddenly the moose looked up, locking eyes with her father. He could sense the moose questioning him, “why are you doing this grandson? I always gave myself to you, why do you want to shoot me now? This is not what you should do to the relatives.” Her father put his gun down. The moose had always taken care of their family when they were hungry and needed food. Campbell recalled that her father never hunted again after this experience, concluding that you shouldn’t hunt because you have a right to hunt, but rather for sustenance, to survive.

    Another story Campbell shared was of the beaver, being the closest relative to humans, with marriages occurring between the two long ago. She spoke of a time when her father had set traps to catch a beaver, waking up to find all the traps were sprung. Asking a nearby Elder why this happened, the Elder responded, “that’s because there is an old man beaver here, you have to move someplace else because he doesn’t want you trapping here.” The following day he set up a better trap, and returned to find the beaver’s hind leg caught in the trap (he had chewed it off to escape). At this point, her father understood what it meant to break something – he was so ashamed. Many years later, he was diagnosed with gangrene in his leg. The night before his surgery to amputate his leg he said to Campbell, “I always knew that old beaver was going to come and get my leg.” Finally understanding the Elder’s explanation: once you do something to an animal, it will get back to you.

    Although the above stories only brush the surface of what Campbell shared with the audience, they do provide us with a better understanding of how stories are intertwined with the concept of wahkohtowin. How everything is interconnected – our roles and obligations to each other, animals, and all of the things that live within wahkohtowin. Campbell concluded by encouraging the audience to seek out the knowledge keepers, so that these stories aren’t lost (something key to ensuring Indigenous laws continue to exist). Echoing the words of Thomas King, she stated “the truth about stories is, that’s all we are.”

 

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

 

ILSA Speaker Series: Damien Lee

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

 

Fort William First Nation School Bus; Photo by: Olivia Pelletier, December 20, 2016; Used here with permission.

    On March 8, 2018 Professor Damien Lee of the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Indigenous Studies presented at ILSA’s Aboriginal Law Speakers Series. Professor Lee’s 45 minutes flew by as he recounted his personal experience of adoption at Fort Williams First Nation and framed it through the context of Anishinaabe citizenship law. Citizenship regarding Indigenous peoples is most commonly understood as the ways in which someone is granted status or membership to their Indigenous community according to Canadian law. The Indian Act, for example, grants “Indian status” to First Nations individuals who can trace their lineage back to an Indigenous parent and provide proof of this ancestry. This colonialist classification system disregards the complexities of family systems and perpetuates the notion that membership to a group is based solely on the blood quantum of a person. Professor Lee provided us with a very different interpretation of the meaning of “citizenship” according to the Anishinaabe.

        Professor Lee describes himself as a “racially Caucasian man” who was adopted by an Anishinaabe family at six months old. He was careful to remind the audience of this, saying, “My whiteness doesn't disappear just because I was adopted. We live in a society where whiteness is privilege… It is important for you to know my positionality.” Professor Lee had to navigate his own belonging to an Indigenous community despite his race and lack of genetic relation to his parents and siblings. This encouraged his research later in life where he endeavoured to determine how his community approaches citizenship law. He found that citizenship law to the Anishinaabe in Fort Williams First Nation is vastly different from the colonial framework of citizenship.

        Professor Lee met with 13 people in his community who were knowledge holders regarding adoption. Each individual described the school bus as central to “claiming” (accepting into the community) those who are adopted. The school bus drove the children from the reserve to the city every day. While socializing takes place on the bus, another important process takes place as the children step off of the bus. Adopted children have a choice here: to go play with the other non-Indigenous students and abandon the group, or remain with the reserve children. If an adoptee chose to spend their time away from the rest of the community and ignore their obligations to the community, they were not claimed as Indigenous. Professor Lee describes this process as “co-constitutive”, meaning that the collective of the group decides on membership based on the individuals allegiance to the community.

    Professor Lee then described citizenship as an ongoing process or one that must be renewed continually. He told the story of the late Franky Banning, a war veteran who was Italian Canadian by birth but adopted under Anishinaabe citizenship law at one years old. Banning realized that there was no way to honour Indigenous war veterans on the reserve, so in 1995 he began a Remembrance Day celebration on the reserve. The annual ceremony continues every year and the community continued to claim Banning as one of their own. Professor Lee describes this process as a “renewal”. Banning continued each year to honour members of his community and in turn, the community continued to claim his as their own.

    These adoption stories exemplify the uniqueness of Anishinaabe citizenship law in contrast to Canadian citizenship law. Anishinaabe citizenship is decentralized; it does not come from just the family or the band office, but instead comes from the entire community. It is based on accountability to the community. It is non-essentialist and does not claim people based on racialization and blood lines. Finally, it allows for full inclusion. Once a person is claimed by the community, they are allowed to fully participate in the community.

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram: @reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

ILSA Speaker Series: Joyce King

Image retrieved from http://www.akwesasne.ca/justice.

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

    We continue our coverage of last week’s Aboriginal Law Speaker Series, organized by the Indigenous Law Students’ Association and hosted by the Faculty of Law. Wednesday’s speaker was Joyce King, Director of the Department of Justice of the Akwesasne Court. Her presentation was entitled, “An Indigenous Justice System: You want it, we got it.”

       King spoke of the Mohawks of Akwesasne, and their creation of a justice system by and for Indigenous people. The unique principles of the Akwesasne justice system differ from that of the Canadian common law system, which is often based on themes of societal order and standards of conduct. Instead, the Akwesasne justice system reflects unique principles to the Mohawk, such as a kinship/clan system, emphasis on collective rights, as well as principles of Ka’nikonriio (good mind). Their justice system reflects their values of peace, respect, trust, openness and friendship. In addition, it is “in the spirit of the two row wampum,” which enables the Mohawks of Akwesasne to negotiate in good faith on a government to government basis, as well as “in the spirit of the Royal Proclamation (1763),” which ensures the protection of the inherent rights of all.

    King went on to explain that the Akwesasne justice system involves not only the Akwesasne Court in the adjudication stage, but also plays a role in the legislative, or lawmaking stage, as well as in the enforcement of those laws. In other words, there are three parts to their justice system: 1) Law-Making, 2) Adjudication, and 3) Enforcement.

                        

    In terms of law-making, the principles which guide the legislative development of the Akwesasne are grounded in: the Wolf Belt (the “Charter” to the Akwesasne, with each bead representing a person’s agreeance), traditional law principles (peace, strength, righteousness), UNDRIP, the Royal Proclamation (1763), the Constitution Act (1867) and Constitution Act (1982) section 35, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and section 81 of the Indian Act. Considerations to potential legislative enactments include whether or not the law is consistent with community values, in line with self-determination and jurisdiction, and ensures the continuity between past relationships, rights and treaties. Akwesasne laws created to date include the Akwesasne Election Law (2005), Akwesasne Tekaia’torehtha:ke Kaianerenhsera/Court Law (2016), Akwesasne Wildlife Conservation Law (1989), and Ethical Conduct Law (1997)  – to name only a few.

        Within the adjudicative stage, King described the “Vision for Akwesasne,” which includes an all Indigenous court (Justices, prosecutors, defense counsel, clerks), with community-driven sentences/sanctions. The “justice needs” of the Mohawk community thus involve addressing the core problems of the offender in an effort to reduce recidivism, as well as protecting the rights of the community and individuals involved. Remedies are thus flexible, and include: remediation (fines/penalties), the offender taking responsibility for their actions, restoration (ie. community service), or restitution. In addition, orders made within the Akwesasne Court must respect a restorative justice approach.

        Enforcement and compliance with the law is then overseen by the Akwesasne Police Commission (Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service). Their workforce is made up of compliance officers and conservation officers, who may impose sanctions such as denial of non-essential services for community members not abiding by the law.

        King’s discussions of an Indigenous justice system sparked much excitement for those in the audience who envisioned a similar system within their own home communities. King highlighted the challenges to an Indigenous-run justice system – integration, expansion, Indigenization, and funding; however, despite these challenges, the Akwesasne justice system has nonetheless paved a path for Indigenous communities to follow. Perhaps with more Indigenous justice systems implemented nationwide, we can begin to address these challenges, and come up with solutions to ensure Indigenous legal traditions continue to thrive.

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com. 

ILSA Speaker Series: James Sákéj Youngblood Henderson

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

Today’s discussion will continue our review of the annual Aboriginal Law Speaker Series, organized by the Indigenous Law Students’ Association and hosted by the Faculty of Law. To address this year’s theme of Indigenous Law: Theory & Practice,  James Sákéj Youngblood Henderson presented: “The Indigenous Law Foundation of Victorian Treaties.”

Before his talk, Professor Youngblood Henderson was awarded the “Aboriginal Justice Award” by the Law Faculty’s Vice Dean Yahya. He was awarded for his longstanding commitment and dedication to the promotion of Aboriginal rights through his work as a lawyer, law professor, constitutional advisor through the 1980s, and one of the drafters of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Professor Youngblood Henderson (center right) holding the Aboriginal Justice Award; Indigenous Law Students' Association President, Katelynn Cave (left); Indigenous Law Students' Association 1L Rep, Sarah Bidniak (center left); and Vice Dean Yahya (right).

 

To ground his presentation on the treaties between Indigenous people and the Crown, Professor Youngblood Henderson first discussed the nature of Indigenous laws. He explained how Indigenous laws are “based on the life-giver’s blessings and ecological sovereignty”, and “arise implicitly from spiritual covenants and cognitive training.” These covenants are made and taught from an entanglement of spirituality with knowledge and responsibilities. He also explained how many Indigenous laws exist as “golden threads”; these threads run through and underlie British laws in North America and are “ recognition[s] of the ancestral laws and customs of the Aboriginal people who occupied the land prior to European settlement.”

He explained how Indigenous laws are “synesthetic”, meaning that they are intertwined with language, ceremony, and oral traditions. Indigenous laws animate thinking with living order, and cannot be seen. Law is felt and comprehended -- and made by performing (following the law) not coercion (forcing the law, or implementing the idea of ‘throwing the book at someone.) Indigenous law is so much more than just a list of bylaws written down on a page in a big book -- it is learned from spirits of the ecology, translated and performed in ceremonies, and interpreted and memorialized through stories, songs and dances.

Professor Youngblood Henderson then went on to describe the basis of the Victorian Treaties, otherwise known as Canada’s numbered treaties. He proposed a framework for understanding these treaties that stems from an ‘Aboriginal originalist’ view of the treaties. This view aims to understand the perspective of the Indigenous representatives at the time of signing the treaty, and asks that treaties be interpreted and enforced in a way that uses this perspective.

He then reviewed different sections of Treaty 6 to explain how they would have been interpreted by the two parties: the Indigenous chiefs and representatives and the Queen’s representatives, i.e. the Crown. One example is a term of the treaty that stipulated the chief and headman, on behalf of “all other Indians”, promise and engage that they will in all respect and obey the law.” But whose law? There is no indication in the treaty that this law was British law, or later, Canadian law. The originalist perspective of this term is that the Indigenous chiefs and headmen agreed to respect their own laws of the land. There is no evidence in the treaty’s text that they agreed to subscribe to and respect the enforcement of British law.

One of my favourite parts of Professor Youngblood Henderson’s talk was that he provided actions to move forward in reconciliation in the realm of treaty and provincial federalism. I interpreted these suggestions as a version of “reconcili-actions” that could be taken. His suggestions included making treaty territories equal partner to the provinces in a renewed Canadian federalism. This process would be based on legitimate consent, and chosen procedures of each Treaty territory. Allowing treaty territories to become equal to provinces would be a “manifestation of constitutional self-determination and human rights of treaty people.”

Listening to Professor Youngblood Henderson’s talk encouraged further thought about how a renewed federalism framework could enable the concepts of treaty federalism and provincial federalism -- to recognize how intertwined they are, and be used to realize change in the governance structures of Canada.

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

ILSA Speaker Series: Darcy Lindberg

Image retrieved from https://twitter.com/Darcy13Lindberg 

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

        Every year at the University of Alberta, the Aboriginal Law Speaker Series is organized by the Indigenous Law Students’ Association and hosted by the Faculty of Law. This year’s theme was Indigenous Law: Theory & Practice and it featured some of the biggest names from contemporary Indigenous legal scholarship in Canada. For the rest of this week, we will provide you with a brief overview of each speaker, beginning with Darcy Lindberg’s presentation “Practicing Our Relations Beautifully: The Role of Aesthetics in the Vitality of Nehiyaw Law.”

        Lindberg is of Nehiyaw heritage and has relations in Samson Cree Nation in Alberta. He is currently a lawyer and PhD student studying the legal theories of the Plains Cree peoples, especially as found in their relationships to lands, waters, and animals. His research interests also include Indigenous stories, songs, ceremonies, and protocols, and the laws contained within them.

        As Lindberg pointed out last Monday, there is an important difference between Indigenous laws and Aboriginal law – the former refers to Indigenous legal orders that come from and exists within Indigenous communities; the latter refers to Canadian law, and how it has reacted to and dealt with Indigenous peoples. Throughout his talk, Lindberg revisited the themes of persuasion and disruption, and ultimately chose to focus on Indigenous laws.

        He drew the audience in with four stories. In the first story, “Buffalo Lake,” Lindberg told the audience about how the lake came to be. He spoke about the ways that passing this story down through generations also meant passing down the legal knowledge it holds as the people in the story have specific obligations to each other and to the land and animals on it. He then told “Buffalo Stone,” a story that includes specific protocol for how to hunt in an ethical and sustainable way. Lindberg noted that the law in this story ensured the balance between taking from the land and giving back to it would be maintained. He said that these stories also shed light on the idea of disruption and the ways that these relationships have been interrupted today.

        Lindberg’s third story was a shared one – “How Canada Came to Be.” By looking at policies of separation (such as taking land from Indigenous peoples to provide to settlers, the reservation system, and the residential school system), the story tells us not only about the violence that has been done to Indigenous peoples and cultures, but also the violence that has been done to Indigenous legal orders. Lindberg was quick to remind listeners that resistance has always accompanied the violence. For example, in response to sweats being banned, people took to doing sweat lodge ceremonies in their kitchens just to keep it alive. He also encouraged the audience to consider how this history has led to the injustices that we see today, in particular, the killing of Colten Boushie.

        The fourth and final story was “Wasakechak and the Dog Council” and Lindberg said this is one of those stories where we learn not only from the main character’s wisdom, but also from his mistakes. The story exemplified what happens when there are power imbalances and (unwelcome) intervention. A member of the audience asked Lindberg whether he interpreted the story as providing a commentary on the current trend of reconciliation. His answer drew attention to the tension between what stories mean versus what they mean to different individuals, and he explained that interpretation is often unique to the listener. Leaving the interpretation up to the listeners, he said, most of the time “the stories I’ve been told do not come with an interpretation from the storyteller.”

        Drawing Indigenous laws from stories is less about pinpointing a single takeaway and more about identifying different principles, processes, and relations, and figuring out how they might be applied today. In the end, Lindberg persuaded the audience of the relevance that Indigenous laws hold in contemporary contexts, and disrupted our understanding of what law in Canada looks like now with his ideas about what it can be. His captivating introduction set the stage for a week of exciting and important conversations about Indigenous laws. Come back tomorrow to hear about Tuesday’s speaker, James Sákéj Youngblood Henderson!

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

In the Media: Kawaskimhon National Aboriginal Moot 2018

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

Pictured above: Moira Lavoie, Katelynn Cave, Troy Chalifoux, Dr. Hadley Friedland, Breanna Arcand-Kootenay, and Camille Goodheart at the Kawaskimhon Moot, Montreal, Quebec.

  

    The middle of winter term is always a stressful but exciting time for law students. 1Ls are nervously putting on robes for their first time as they await arguing in front of a panel of judges, while upper years travel all across Canada to bravely participate in national moot court competitions. The University of Alberta has already taken home a number of trophies, including the Bowman National Tax Moot, the Wilson Moot, and the Gale Cup Moot. This past weekend, four students and their coaches travelled to McGill University in Montreal to participate in the Kawaskimhon National Aboriginal Moot.

        Kawaskimhon, a Cree word meaning “speaking with knowledge”, takes a format that is unique from the other moots. While most moots take place in a courtroom, the Kawaskimhon takes a non-competitive format. Each school sends two to six students to represent a specific party. Each party was then separated into pairs or trios and sent to a table, hoping to find the best outcome for their party by entering negotiations over three days.

        This year, the problem centered on a problem that is very real to the Mohawks (Kanien’kehá:ka) of Kanehsatà:ke, an Indigenous group that has populated Quebec since time immemorial. The Kanien’kehá:ka have traditionally occupied and used the area near the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers, but it was granted to Catholic Sulpicians in 1717 by King Louis XIV, despite persistent protests by the Kanien’kehá:ka. Most of this land was eventually sold to private sellers and the Municipality of Oka was created in 1867. The remaining 20 parcels of land were purchased by the Federal Government and set aside as “Indian lands” under s 91(24) of the Constitution, but not designated as reserves. The Mohawks continued to occupy the land and in 1975 filed a joint comprehensive claim (title claim) with two other Mohawk groups. This was rejected on the grounds that the title had been extinguished through the original grants and through third party sales. Another specific claim was filed in 1977. In 1990, the municipality proposed to expand a golf course and build sixty condominiums in a scared forest that includes Mohawk burial sites. This lead to a 78 day armed standoff between the Mohawks and the police and army. The municipality abandoned their development plans and the Federal Government purchased the lands instead. The Federal Government created the Kanesatake Interim Land Base Governance Act in 2001 and set aside these lands for use by the Mohawks of Kanehsatà:ke under section 91(24).

Today, the tensions continue to build as the Mohawks assert that the land was not legally ceded and they have an inherent right to the land and cultural artifacts that have been discovered. Of particular tension is a provincial park, Parc National d’Oka, where the public can go to dig and thousands of archaeological sites and items have been found. A person may take any item that they excavate, which of course is very alarming when these objects once belonged to the people of Kanehsatà:ke. The Government of Quebec asserts their rights over these objects, as do the Kanehsatà:ke, and the Municipality has sold the private lands in which artifacts were discovered. Adding another layer of complication is the creation of the Mohawk Council of Kanehsatà:ke (MCK) in 1991, which is recognized as a band council and therefore given authority over the Mohawks of Kanehsatà:ke, according to the Indian Act. Prior to the creation of the MCK, the “Great People of the Law” was recognized as the traditional governing body by the people of Kanehsatà:ke. A tension existed as both the MCK and the Great People of the Law seek to be seen as the legitimate authority of the people of Kanehsatà:ke.

        Participants were required to consider a number of legal issues including land claims, title issues, burial sites, cultural artifacts, municipal bylaws, the Quebec Civil Code, Provincial-Crown lands, and federal lands under s 91(24). The University of Alberta represented the Federal Government. Needless to say, three days was not nearly enough to sufficiently deal with a complex problem that has existed for decades. Participants at all tables, however, were up to the task and came to framework agreements that would hypothetically lead Canada, Quebec, and the municipality towards reconciliation with the people of Kanehsatà:ke. It will be interesting how this problem actually develops and if a step towards reconciliation is met by the real parties.

        Congratulations to the Kawaskimhon team for all the hard work they put into representing the University of Alberta Faculty of Law! Congratulations to all other students who participated in a moot and good luck to the 1Ls who will be entering the courtroom soon!

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram: @reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

Inuit Stories and Legal Orders

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

“We are told today that Inuit never had laws or maligait.[1] Why? They say because they are not written on paper. When I think of paper, I think you can tear it up, and the laws are gone. The laws of the Inuit are not on paper.”[2]

        Oral tradition has guided many Indigenous cultures since time immemorial. Though it has been key to passing along traditions, ceremony, and legal orders for centuries, it was only in 1998 that the Supreme Court of Canada began accepting oral tradition as evidence. Despite their recent acceptance, oral traditions such as story-telling have consistently guided the ways in which legal orders are established and handled in Indigenous communities. Inuit communities in particular continue to utilize these oral traditions to shape their legal orders and institutions, which is important when considering legal pluralism and alternatives to the colonial legal system.

        The notion that laws did not exist for the Inuit prior to colonialism is false, despite the popularity of this assumption by colonizers.[3] The Inuit have historically recorded everything orally and continue to do so today. Lessons are passed from generation to generation through stories, songs, art, dances, performances, and practices.[4] These lessons tell the listener about natural law and legal-reasoning. Stories specifically have been central to understanding these legal processes. Much like common law cases, these stories are dependent on interpretation in order to determine their legal significance.

        In the Western Inuit story, The Wife Killer (also referred to as Lake of Worms, The Man Who Threw His Wives into Worm Lake, The Man Who Lost His Wives and Kopilgok), the main character married a woman, took her on a hunting trip and killed her.[5] He returned to the community and claimed that she had died from illness. He pretended to grieve and received comfort from his in-laws. He did this same thing to two other women. The third woman’s spirit returned to the community and told her relatives what happened to her. The man denied her account, but her brothers did not believe him and immediately killed the man. Later, however, the brothers felt bad about killing the man because “murder was what the man did to their sister”.[6]

        Authors Lori Groft and Rebecca Johnson of “Journeying North: Reflecting on Inuit Stories as Law” used a case-briefing methodology when understanding The Wife Killer as law. They ask: “1) What is the main human problem the story focuses on? 2) What facts matter? 3) What is decided or how is the issue resolved? 4) What is the reason behind the decision or resolution? Is there an explanation in the story? Said? Unsaid? 5) Other Questions?”[7] In this story, the legal problems are related to harm and the legal responses to harm. Specifically, the response of the woman who was harmed, her family’s response to the harm she endured, the community’s response to the harm, and the fact that other women were at risk of being harmed by the man. This story forces readers to think about appropriate responses to harm, how it impacts communities, and who is making decisions in the community. The reader/listener must also consider what was not explicitly said in the story, so that they engage more thoughtfully with the content and gain a greater understanding.

        Though this was only an introduction to Inuit stories and law, we would encourage you to read the Inuit stories that have been written in books (see the Appendix in Groft and Johnson). These stories are just as important as the case studies we read in class and give us insight to a legal world that we do not spend much time learning about in school.

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] Maligait: “things that have to be followed”

[2] Mariano Aupilaarijuk et al. Interviewing Elders, vol. 2, Perspectives on Traditional Law, Jarich Oosten, Frederic Laugrand, & Wim Rasing eds. (Iqaluit: Nunavut Arctic College, 1999) at 4.

[3] Lori Groft and Rebecca Johnson, “Journeying North: Reflecting on Inuit Stories as Law” (date??) Accessing Justice and Reconciliation at 4.

[4] Ibid at 5.

[5] Ibid at 23.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid at 23-24.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram: @reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

Cree Legal Traditions

“A Separate Reality” by Norval Morrisseau

 

“The Court’s judgment in Delgamuukw concluded with the words,

“Let us face it,we are all here to stay.”

True enough: but if in the face of this reality we are to find

space for multiple legal orders to co-exist, and if

we are ultimately to achieve an equal reconciliation,

we must recognize that to stay must also be to learn.”

 -Chief Justice Lance S.G. Finch [1]

 

 Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

    Chief Justice Finch emphasizes a “duty to learn” Indigenous laws for Canadian citizens in a largely multi-juridical society.² As Monday’s post explained, this duty presents challenges for those willing to take it on, but is an essential task in reaching reconciliation. Despite these challenges, efforts have been taken to create resources for those interested in learning more about Indigenous laws. The Accessing Justice and Reconciliation Project, a national collaborative research project by UVic Indigenous Law Research Clinic, the Indigenous Bar Association and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, is a great example of resources available for Canadians interested in the often forgotten laws that existed long before our common law and civil law systems.³

    The project not only conducted research of Anishinabek legal traditions, which we introduced in yesterday’s post, but also created a summary of Cree legal traditions thanks to the community participation of the Aseniwuche winewak Nation. Given the complex nature of Indigenous legal traditions, the project acknowledges its work as merely “scratching the surface,” noting legal principles that stood out throughout their research within the community.⁴

    The framework of the project’s summary includes questions on the following five legal principles: legal processes, legal responses and resolutions, legal obligations, legal rights, and general underlying principles. Although all of these principles are equally important in addressing harm and conflict, today’s blog post will introduce our readers to the first Cree legal principle outlined within the report, answering the following question: who has the final say as authoritative decision-makers?⁵ 

Medicine People: Medicine people with specialized spiritual and medicine knowledge are often relied upon by Cree communities to use their power to address harms and protect the community.⁶ In the story Killing of a Wife, Meskino (acting on the guidance of mistabeo, a spiritual helper in the shaking tent) investigates the killing and publically tells the man he knows he killed his wife. Meskino goes on to say that what the man did was wrong, and he would not live long as a result of his actions.⁷

Elders: Elders may take on a role as authoritative decision-makers when there is both an immediate or non-immediate risk of danger or harm. In regards to the former, if an Elder has greater knowledge, they may collectively act/direct action to prevent harm. In cases where this is no immediate danger, an Elder may take on a more persuasive role.⁸ For example, Elder Marie McDonald explains a story where a wetiko was nearby an isolate family, and posing a safety risk. The Elders directed community members to retrieve the family and bring them back to the community in order to protect them from the wetiko.⁹

Family Members: Family members are also given authority to make decisions, particularly under the following circumstances: 1) “the family members of the person who has caused harm may act to remedy the harm or prevent further harm from occurring”, 2) “family members may take a pro-active role to prevent harm from occurring”, and 3) “family members take [on] a persuasive role in resolving interpersonal conflict.”¹⁰ In the story of The Thunderwomen, a brother seeks to remedy the harm committed by his brother, who shot his wife with an arrow. He sought forgiveness from her family, and returned after the long journey with their forgiveness.¹¹

Group: A group is also deemed as authoritative decision-makers, with important decisions made collectively by the group. In the story of Mi-She-Shek-Kak, in a time before humans existed, a giant skunk was feared by the other animals due to its size, age and smell. In order to protect themselves from the harm caused by the giant skunk, the animals decided collectively how to get rid of the skunk.¹²

    Although this briefly highlights only one aspect of Cree law, it shows us the differences between our Canadian legal system and Cree legal traditions. Despite these differences, Canada as a multi-juridical society must find space to fit Indigenous law within its legal landscape. Works like the Accessing Justice and Reconciliation Project provide a framework that we can work with to begin teaching and understanding Indigenous laws, and show us that a future for Canada can include the laws of its First People.

 

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] Lance Finch, “The Duty to Learn: Taking Account of indigenous Legal orders in Practice” (2012) CLE BC Materials at 9.

[2] Ibid at 10.

[3] The AJR Project Cree Legal Traditions Report (May 2014), prepared for the Accessing Justice and Reconciliation Project, on file with the University of Victoria Indigenous Law Research Unit, the Indigenous Bar Association, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, the Ontario Law Foundation, and the Aseniwuche Winewak at 43 [AJR].

[4] AJR at 3.

[5] AJR at 5.

[6] AJR at 6.

[7] Ibid.

[8] AJR at 5.

[9] AJR at 7.

[10] AJR at 5.

[11] AJR at 8.

[12] AJR at 9.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

Who decides? A Study of Anishinabek Laws

 

Photo retrieved from: www.sootoday.com/local-news/we-are-not-aboriginal-canadians-we-are-anishinabek-636827

 

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

One major legal question that is asked of every system of laws is: who has the authority to make decisions? Different groups may answer this question in a multitude of ways, and the Anishinabek legal tradition is no different in this sense. The Accessing Justice and Reconciliation Project conducted research on Neyaashiinigmiing 27 (“Neyaash”), formerly known as the Cape Croker Indian Reserve No. 27, on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, with researchers identifying legal principles from approximately 40 Anishinabek stories and interviews with elders. [1]  

The Project’s research identified that Anishinabek have multiple ways of making authoritative and legitimate decisions.[2] These practices include: a collective community process, the consulting of elders, decisions made by chiefs on behalf of the community, individuals, and animal communities making decisions regarding harms committed by humans.[3] In the summary and final report, the researchers indicate in which story or tradition they observed evidence of one legal tradition or another.

Collective community process: Decisions made in this manner were typically large-scale, highly impactive, and designed to address serious harms. The Legal Summary describes the Mayamaking Case, in which a man, named Mayamaking, began to act very differently, doing things like “devouring a whole deer at two meals” and “tearing open his veins with his teeth drinking his own blood.”[4] The man continued to act strangely, and the community was worried that the man had turned into a “Windigo” (a very harmful or dangerous person). Because of their community’s fear that this man may pose a threat to the children in the community, a very difficult decision was made by the community to “incapacitate Mayamaking through death”.[5] The act was completed by Mayamaking’s closest friend, who also pledged to take care of Mayamaking’s father.[6]

Elders: To make some decisions in response to harms, especially when the harms involve children, elders may be the sole decision makers. One story that represents this is that of The Magic Pots. In this story, three young girls play with magic pots they have been forbidden from touching. They subsequently break the pots, and this break destroys the Anishinabek’s knowledge of how to make pottery. As a result, an elder changes the girls into crows (which is why crows make such a “mournful cawing sound”). [7]

Chiefs: There was only one story that exemplified the chief making an individual decision: The Legend of the Birch Trees [8] When interviewed, community elders confirmed the traditional autonomy that members of the community typically enjoyed. [9] In interviews, Wilmer Nadjiwon emphasized “that the power of the chief depended on the amount of trust put in him by the people and could be withdrawn at any time”.[10] Similarly, Elder Basil Johnston expressed that in both the past currently “I don’t think that there is anyone that has a final say on things . . . the power of the wolf is in the pack.”[11]

Individuals: Many elders expressed the sentiment that, “if you teach them the principles they will govern themselves.” [12] In the Anishinibek community, there were no judges, jails, or police. Individuals conducted themselves according to the stories and teachings they had learned. This allowed the communities to live harmoniously, without institutions such as the police or jails. Elder Basil Johnston also noted to the researchers that, “historical context is important because in the past people were very busy surviving and completing all the tasks that they needed to survive the winter so there was not a lot of time left for feuding between community members.” [13]

Animal communities: One piece of research that indicates this tradition is the story of Redfeather. [14] In the story, a council of birds work together to decide what decision to make regarding a young boy. This boy has been harming their young by unnecessarily killing frogs and crayfish, the birds’ source of food, and ignored a warning from the birds. The council works together to decide that this behaviour must be stopped -- as such, an owl “picks up the boy in his talons and places him at the top of a tall tree so that he can do no more harm.” [15] To have the boy returned, his grandfather must prepare a feast and guarantee the boy will stop his behaviour. [16]

For more information about the Accessing Justice and Reconciliation Project, and to read the full summary or full report, please go to: www.indigenousbar.ca/indigenouslaw/. In the meantime, keep reading our blog this week for samples of the research that the Project has completed on Cree and Inuit laws.

 

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] Hannah Askew and Lindsay Borrows, “Anishinabek Legal Summary” at page 4, Anishinabek Legal Traditions Report, Accessing Justice and Reconciliation Project, online: <indigenousbar.ca/indigenouslaw/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/anishinabek_summary.pdf>

[2] Ibid at 5.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid at 7

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid at 8.

[9] Ibid at 9.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid at 11.

[12] Ibid at 9.

[13] Ibid at 10.

[14] Ibid at 6.

[15] Ibid at 10.

[16] Ibid.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.

‘Standing Up’ Indigenous Laws

Artwork by Dr. Val Napoleon of the Indigenous Laws Research Unit. Image retrieved from https://www.uvic.ca/law/about/indigenous/indigenouslawresearchunit/index.php

Tansi Nîtôtemtik,

        Canada is a legally pluralistic state but up until recently Indigenous laws have been relegated to the margins. It is imperative that those whose lives are touched by the law (ie. everyone in some way) learn to see through the false colonial narrative that “the common law and the civil law are the only two legal traditions operative throughout the land.”[1] We are living in a time where Indigenous communities have options for standing up their legal systems and where we all have a role to play in bringing Indigenous laws to their proper place as a vital part of Canadian law.[2] Although Indigenous laws are not perfect[3] (no law is!), this can no longer serve as a justification for the (sometimes) well-intentioned paralysis that has characterized academia’s engagement with Indigenous laws to date. The practice of Indigenous laws will continue to strengthen the cultures from which they are drawn and to those they are applied.

        Nevertheless, this undertaking is more easily said than done. John Borrows identifies five main challenges in recognizing and engaging with Indigenous legal traditions related to intelligibility, accessibility, equality, applicability, and legitimacy.[4] For law to be intelligible, those who abide by it must be able to foresee the consequences of certain behaviour; the fact that Indigenous law can be contained in unconventional forms (from a western perspective) has led to the argument that it is “too broad or vague to be useful”[5] and is thus unintelligible. This argument ignores the fact that all law requires interpretation, and that interpretation is always “an embedded and embodied practice by which interpreters also discover and project their own identity.”[6] It is crucial that interpreters acknowledge the cultured lens with which they approach all interpretation, and do not hold Indigenous legal traditions to “a higher standard of intelligibility than non-Indigenous law.”[7]

        In terms of accessibility, it is true that Indigenous laws are not yet readily available to the same degree as other legal orders. However, Indigenous law exists in a multitude of sources. Some resources require deep knowledge and full cultural immersion and others require some community connection, but there are also resources such as stories that are publically available.[8] The University of Victoria’s Indigenous Law Research Unit (ILRU) offers one method of accessing the Indigenous legal principles contained within stories.[9] This method is a “simple, teachable, and transparent way of engaging with Indigenous laws within and across communities, and within and across legal orders.”[10] The rest of this week's posts will demonstrate what the ILRU method made possible for three different communities.

        Returning to the challenges outlined by Borrows, concerns about equality constitute a further challenge. Racist stereotypes and primitivistic discourses have inaccurately shaped mainstream conceptions of Indigenous people, and even more harmfully, distorted the ways that Indigenous peoples conceive of themselves and their laws. A profound shift in assumptions is needed.[11] Because “differential treatment can sometimes be necessary to produce equality,”[12] it cannot be considered discriminatory to make space for Indigenous laws. Rather, the failure to recognize Indigenous legal traditions is in itself discriminatory.[13]

        In terms of applicability, Indigenous laws should generally be applied on a territorial basis.[14] Still, some laws will be personal and “follow an Indigenous person wherever they go.”[15] None should be applied on the basis of race.[16] Law schools successfully teach law from other jurisdictions; Indigenous laws should be no different. What matters most in considering applicability is whether Indigenous laws are relevant and useable[17] in current contexts.

        A final hurdle in engaging with Indigenous laws is the issue of legitimacy. Frankly, all Canadians have some unlearning to do when it comes to colonial understandings of what counts as legitimate. Settler students may be resentful or apprehensive about engaging with Indigenous law but all education, and legal education in particular, must be used to “destabilize settled structures of meaning,”[18] to reveal “how and why certain interests are privileged,”[19] and to show that there are multiple ways of doing and knowing law.[20] Indigenous students, too, may be resentful or apprehensive, albeit for different reasons; “deep and bitter feelings of anger, distrust, and betrayal reside in some Indigenous communities because of the centuries-long denial of their rights and traditions.” [21] This skepticism, however, is warranted.

        In spite of these intellectual, institutional, practical, and theoretical challenges, there is hope.[22] While Indigenous legal traditions have “ancient roots, they can also speak to the present and future needs of all Canadians.”[23] When we accept that “Indigenous people’s laws hold modern relevance for themselves and for others,”[24] and that these laws “can be developed through contemporary practices,”[25] it makes sense that these legal traditions be treated with the respect they deserve. TRC Calls to Action #27, 28, and 50 focus on the need for this country to recognize Canada’s multijurality through a commitment to pluralizing the legal epistemologies and traditions accepted as legitimate in this country:

27.    We call upon the Federation of Law Societies of Canada to ensure that lawyers receive appropriate cultural competency training, which includes the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, Indigenous law, and Aboriginal–Crown relations. This will require skills-based training in intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights, and anti-racism.

28.    We call upon law schools in Canada to require all law students to take a course in Aboriginal people and the law, which includes the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, Indigenous law, and Aboriginal–Crown relations. This will require skills-based training in intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights, and antiracism.

50. In keeping with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, we call upon the federal government, in collaboration with Aboriginal organizations, to fund the establishment of Indigenous law institutes for the development, use, and understanding of Indigenous laws and access to justice in accordance with the unique cultures of Aboriginal peoples in Canada.[26]

        The University of Victoria’s Faculty of Law has taken these calls to heart and as of this September, “its law students will be the first in the world to intensively study both Indigenous and non-Indigenous law and graduate with two professional degrees: one in Canadian Common Law (Juris Doctor or "JD") and one in Indigenous Legal Orders (Juris Indigenarum Doctor or "JID").”[27] There is nothing stopping all other Canadian law schools from doing the same. Clearly, the time for “dialogue across traditions and jurisdictions”[28] is now. Join us as we explore Indigenous laws for the next two weeks!

Until next time,

Team ReconciliAction YEG

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] John Borrows, “Heroes, Tricksters, Monsters, and Caregivers: Indigenous Laws and Legal Education” (2016) 61 McGill Law Journal at 9.

[2] See John Borrows, “Outsider Education: Indigenous Law and Land-Based Learning” (unpublished) at 9.

[3] See John Borrows, Canada’s Indigenous Constitution (Toronto, U of Toronto P: 2010) at 10 [Canada’s Indigenous Constitution]

[4] Ibid at 138. This list is not exhaustive.

[5] See Hadley Friedland, “Reflective Framework: Methods for Accessing, Understanding and Applying Indigenous Laws” (2012) 11:1 Indigenous Law Journal 1 at 16 [“Reflective Framework”].

[6] Roderick A. McDonald and Jason MacLean, “Navigating the Transsystemic: No toilets in the Park” (2005). 50 McGill L J 721 at 726 [“Navigating the Transsystemic”].

[7] Canada’s Indigenous Constitution, supra note 3 at 142.

[8] See Matthew Fletcher, “Rethinking Customary Law in Tribal Court Jurisprudence” (2006) Michigan State University College of Law, Indigenous Law and Policy Centre Occasional Paper Series at 17.

[9] Hadley Friedland and Val Napoleon, “Gathering the Threads: Developing a Methodology for Researching and Rebuilding Indigenous Legal Traditions” (2015) 1:1 Lakehead Law Journal 33 at 18 [“Gathering the Threads”].

[10] Val Napoleon and Hadley Friedland, “An Inside Job: Engaging with Indigenous Legal Traditions Through Stories” (2016) 61 McGill Law Journal at 4 [“An Inside Job”].

[11] Val Napoleon and Hadley Friedland, “Indigenous Legal Traditions Core Workshop Materials” prepared for the Indigenous Law Research Unit at the University of Victoria (2015) at 2.

[12] Canada’s Indigenous Constitution, supra note 3 at 151.

[13] Ibid, at 152.

[14] Ibid, at 162.

[15] Ibid, at 164.

[16] Ibid, at 158.

[17] See “Reflective Framework” supra note 5 at 17.

[18] “Navigating the Transsystemic” supra note 6 at 770.

[19] Ibid, at 767.

[20] See Rosalie Jukier, “Where Law and Pedagogy Meet in the Transystemic Contracts Classroom” (2005) McGill Law Journal 789 at 792 [“Where Law and Pedagogy Meet”].

[21] Canada’s Indigenous Constitution, supra note 3 at 169.

[22] See “Gathering the Threads” supra note 9 at 44 and Canada’s Indigenous Constitution, supra note 3 at 175.

[23] Ibid, at 10.

[24] Canada’s Indigenous Constitution, supra note 3 at 10.

[25] Ibid, at 10.

[26] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Calls to Action (Winnipeg, 2015), online: http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Findings/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf

[27] Liam Britten, “UVic Law Students to Study Canadian and Indigenous Legal Systems in New Propgram” CBC News (Feb 22, 2018), online: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/indigenous-law-uvic-school-1.4546110.

[28] “Where Law and Pedagogy Meet” supra note 20 at 797.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Join the conversation by following us on Twitter: @ReconciliYEG; Facebook: www.facebook.com/reconciliActionYEG/; and Instagram:@reconciliactionyeg.

To receive daily alerts to our blog, email the words "add me" to reconciliactionyeg@gmail.com.