Elder brother and the law of the people :

"In the pre-reserve era, Aboriginal bands in the northern plains were relatively small multicultural communities that actively maintained fluid and inclusive membership through traditional kinship practices. These practices were governed by the Law of the People as described in the traditional stories of Wisashkechak, or Elder Brother, that outlined social interaction, marriage adoption, and kinship roles and responsibilities. In Elder Brother and the Law of the People, Robert Innes offers a detailed analysis of the role of Elder Brother stories in historical and contemporary kinship practices in Cowessess First Nation, located in southeastern Saskatchewan. He reveals how these tradition-inspired practices act to undermine legal and scholarly definitions of "Indian" and counter the perception that First Nations people have internalized such classifications. He presents Cowessess's successful negotiation of the 1996 Treaty Land Entitlement agreement and their high inclusion rate of new "Bill-C31s" as evidence of the persistence of historical kinship values and their continuing role as the central unifying factor for band membership" - Provided by Publisher