Indigenous Law

"Otter’s Journey employs the Anishinaabe tradition of storytelling to explore how Indigenous language revitalization can inform the emerging field of Indigenous legal revitalization. Indigenous languages and laws need bodies to live in. Learning an endangered language and a suppressed legal system are similar experiences. When we bring language back to life, it becomes a medium for developing human relationships. Likewise, when laws are written on people’s hearts, true revitalization has occurred.

This is one of a series of Background Papers that the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia has commissioned for the purposes of the reference on Aboriginal customary law (Project No 94).

"The adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations General Assembly on 13 September 2007 was acclaimed as a major success for the United Nations system given the extent to which it consolidates and develops the international corpus of indigenous rights. This is the first in-depth academic analysis of this far-reaching instrument.

"The Navajo Nation court system is the largest tribal legal system in the world. Justice Raymond D. Austin considers the history and implications of how the Navajo Nation courts apply foundational Navajo doctrines to modern legal issues. In addition to detailed case studies, Justice Austin provides a broad view of tribal law, outlining how other indigenous peoples can draw on traditional precepts to control their own futures." -- Provided by publisher

"Canada's Indigenous Constitution reflects on the nature and sources of law in Canada, beginning with the conviction that the Canadian legal system has helped to engender the high level of wealth and security enjoyed by people across the country. However, longstanding disputes about the origins, legitimacy, and applicability of certain aspects of the legal system have led John Borrows to argue that Canada's constitution is incomplete without a broader acceptance of Indigenous legal traditions.

"This book contains an in-depth discussion of the aboriginal and treaty rights recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, the provisions of the Indian Act regarding reserves and band councils, recent self-government regimes, the recognition of indigenous legal traditions, division of powers, taxation as well as the application of the child welfare and criminal justice systems.

"Some assume that Canada earned a place among postcolonial states in 1982 when it took charge of its Constitution. Yet despite the formal recognition accorded to Aboriginal and treaty rights at that time, Indigenous peoples continue to argue that they are still being colonized. Grace Woo assesses this allegation using a binary model that distinguishes colonial from postcolonial legality. She argues that two legal paradigms governed the expansion of the British Empire, one based on popular consent, the other on conquest and the power to command.

"This groundbreaking collection of essays shows that, from the moment European expansion commenced through to the twentieth century, indigenous peoples from America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand drafted legal strategies to contest dispossession. The story of indigenous resistance to European colonization is well known. But legal resistance has been wrongly understood to be a relatively recent phenomenon. These essays demonstrate how indigenous peoples throughout the world opposed colonization not only with force, but also with ideas.

"Within the Latin American context, legal pluralism is often depicted as a dichotomy between customary law and national law. In addition, the use of customary law alongside national law is frequently portrayed as a vehicle of resistance.

"Freedom and indigenous constitutionalism celebrates the emancipatory potential of indigenous traditions, considers their value as the basis for good laws and good lives, and critiques the failure of Canadian constitutional traditions to recognize their significance. Demonstrating how Canada's constitutional structures marginalize indigenous peoples' ability to exercise power in the real world, John Borrows uses Ojibwe law, stories, and principles to suggest alternative ways in which indigenous peoples can work to enhance freedom.