Otter S Journey Through Indigenous Language And Law

Storytelling has the capacity to address feelings and demonstrate themes – to illuminate beyond argument and theoretical exposition. In Otter’s Journey, Borrows makes use of the Anishinaabe tradition of storytelling to explore how the work in Indigenous language revitalization can inform the emerging field of Indigenous legal revitalization. She follows Otter, a dodem (clan) relation from the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation, on a journey across Anishinaabe, Inuit, Māori, Coast Salish, and Abenaki territories, through a narrative of Indigenous resurgence. In doing so, she reveals that the processes, philosophies, and practices flowing from Indigenous languages and laws can emerge from under the layers of colonial laws, policies, and languages to become guiding principles in people’s contemporary lives.

Storytelling has the capacity to address feelings and demonstrate themes – to illuminate beyond argument and theoretical exposition. In Otter’s Journey, Borrows makes use of the Anishinaabe tradition of storytelling to explore how the work in Indigenous language revitalization can inform the emerging field of Indigenous legal revitalization. She follows Otter, a dodem (clan) relation from the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation, on a journey across Anishinaabe, Inuit, Māori, Coast Salish, and Abenaki territories, through a narrative of Indigenous resurgence. In doing so, she reveals that the processes, philosophies, and practices flowing from Indigenous languages and laws can emerge from under the layers of colonial laws, policies, and languages to become guiding principles in people’s contemporary lives.

The essays in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision spring from an International Summer Institute held in 1996 on the cultural restoration of oppressed Indigenous peoples. The contributors, primarily Indigenous, unravel the processes of colonization that enfolded modern society and resulted in the oppression of Indigenous peoples.

Traditionally, nêhiyaw (Cree) laws are shared and passed down through oral customs — stories, songs, ceremonies — using lands, waters, animals, land markings and other sacred rites. However, the loss of the languages, customs, and traditions of Indigenous peoples as a direct result of colonization has necessitated this departure from the oral tradition to record the physical laws of the nêhiyaw. McAdam, a co-founder of the international movement Idle No More, shares nêhiyaw laws so that future generations, both nêhiyaw and non-Indigenous people, may understand and live by them to revitalize Indigenous nationhood.

Explore the past 150 years through the eyes of Indigenous creators in this groundbreaking graphic novel anthology. Beautifully illustrated, these stories are an emotional and enlightening journey through Indigenous wonderworks, psychic battles, and time travel. See how Indigenous peoples have survived a post-apocalyptic world since Contact. This is one of the 200 exceptional projects funded through the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter initiative. With this $35M initiative, the Council supports the creation and sharing of the arts in communities across Canada.

Access and Control in Digital Humanities explores a range of important questions about who controls data, who is permitted to reproduce or manipulate data, and what sorts of challenges digital humanists face in making their work accessible and useful. Contributors to this volume present case studies and theoretical approaches from their experience with applications for digital technology in classrooms, museums, archives, in the field and with the general public. Offering potential answers to the issues of access and control from a variety of perspectives, the volume acknowledges that access is subject to competing interests of a variety of stakeholders. Museums, universities, archives, and some communities all place claims on how data can or cannot be shared through digital initiatives and, given the collaborative nature of most digital humanities projects, those in the field need to be cognizant of the various and often competing interests and rights that shape the nature of access and how it is controlled. Access and Control in Digital Humanities will be of interest to researchers, academics and graduate students working in a variety of fields, including digital humanities, library and information science, history, museum and heritage studies, conservation, English literature, geography and legal studies.

In Algonquian folklore, the wetiko is a cannibal monster or spirit that possesses a person, rendering them monstrous. In The Wetiko Legal Principles, Hadley Friedland explores how the concept of a wetiko can be used to address the unspeakable happenings that endanger the lives of many Indigenous children. Friedland critically analyses Cree and Anishinabek stories and oral histories alongside current academic and legal literature to find solutions to the frightening rates of intimate violence and child victimization in Indigenous communities. She applies common-law legal analysis to these Indigenous stories and creates a framework for analysing stories in terms of the legal principles that they contain. The author reveals similarities in thinking and theorizing around the dynamics of wetikos and offenders in cases of child sexual victimization. Friedland’s respectful, strength-based, trauma-informed approach builds on the work of John Borrows and is the first to argue for a legal category derived from Indigenous legal traditions. The Wetiko Legal Principles provides much needed direction for effectively applying Indigenous legal principles to contemporary social issues.

Canada is covered by a system of law and governance that largely obscures and ignores the presence of pre-existing Indigenous regimes. Indigenous law, however, has continuing relevance for both Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian state. In his in-depth examination of the continued existence and application of Indigenous legal values, John Borrows suggests how First Nations laws could be applied by Canadian courts, and tempers this by pointing out the many difficulties that would occur if the courts attempted to follow such an approach. By contrasting and comparing Aboriginal stories and Canadian case law, and interweaving political commentary, Borrows argues that there is a better way to constitute Aboriginal / Crown relations in Canada. He suggests that the application of Indigenous legal perspectives to a broad spectrum of issues that confront us as humans will help Canada recover from its colonial past, and help Indigenous people recover their country. Borrows concludes by demonstrating how Indigenous peoples' law could be more fully and consciously integrated with Canadian law to produce a society where two world views can co-exist and a different vision of the Canadian constitution and citizenship can be created.