 So, I'm really happy that so many people come out today when it's been kind of rainy and the weather's not too great. So the topic for today's lecture is Aboriginal and Indigenous law, is there a difference? And I have made myself put an introductory slide into this because I find that I often introduce myself with respect to Indigenous protocols and then forget to actually say that I'm a faculty member from Dalhousie here at Schuyler Law School. So as I said in my greetings to Mi'kmaq, my name is Cheryl Simon and Ebegwet Nwaj and Bimgannamasi, I'm going to put that out there if anybody understands, but my family, we are of PEI, so Ebegwet is the Mi'kmaq word for the island which is now known as Prince Edward Island and Ebegwet Nwaj is a way of saying that we are of the island we're from there. So my grandfather was actually from Nova Scotia, he was born in the Annapolis Valley down by the Kentville area and then due to centralization he was moved up with his family to Svegedagini and so he was a band member from Shubi. He was the last male with his last name, Jadis, and then when he moved to PEI he met my grandmother and she was so Ebegwet Nwaj that there was no way that she was leaving that island. So the name, my family name actually went from being a Nova Scotia name to an island name where they promptly had five sons, most of whom married New Brunswick women, so the name now has moved over a lot to New Brunswick as well. So that's just a little bit in terms of who I am. I am relatively new to the Tashulik School of Law. I've been working for the best 20 years in our indigenous communities and specifically the last 15 working with different groups across the country to develop culturally relevant governance systems. So as we enter into this process of decolonization, you know, looking at the modern context of how we want to govern ourselves as indigenous peoples, so I've been working in that area and like I said this is my start of my second year here at Tshulik. So that's the reason why I had a minute with that. If you have any questions throughout please feel to ask and even with the pictures that I've chosen to use as well because they have been curated. This is one of my favorite photos of myself with my son. We were out at Indian Point down by Peggy's Cove harvesting sweet grass and so he was just a few months old and he was getting used to that feeling of having me bend over to pick and harvest and then back up again and it walked into sleep. So he's upstairs tonight much older but I love this picture because it really, you know, I'm going to be talking about our connection as indigenous peoples to our land and even with my children it starts really, really young. So just a brief overview of what I'm going to talk about today. I thought it might be prudent to start with some terminology and I think that a lot of the misconceptions regarding the distinctions between Aboriginal and indigenous law come from the words that we're using and how people use them. So I'm going to start there just to kind of ground the language that I will be using. And then I'm going on to talk about indigenous law and in meanwhile it's on the way to Blue Dawn. So we'll be talking about that and I'm going to give some really concrete examples of indigenous law because I find that a lot of times it gets talked about but not really delved into and so I'm going to, you know, contextualize things, give examples and again if you have any questions because for a lot of people it's a very new area of law. They're not as accustomed to it. And then we'll talk about Aboriginal law and you'll, by that point, you will very much see the distinction between the two but why bother talking about those differences at all, right? And I was thinking about this. So at the end we're going to talk about how to move forward with the distinctions of the law and what truth and reconciliation, you know, needs to be able to consider and deal with in this country. So I wanted it to have a point and to end on, you know, some message that we can all work towards. So that is the overview and let's get started. So I was trying to figure out how to do this in a way that really made sense. And in me and mom, when we talk about who we are as people, in our language we're old nuke, right? Old nuke with a K is when we're plural. So roughly translated to English that means the people. And a lot of Indigenous nations across the country, across, you know, the entire continent. If you look at the definition that they have of the words that they use for themselves, it usually does have a similar translation. You know, we are the people. And it's interesting because in the Mi'kma'a context, Old Nuke actually is not just humanoids. It includes, you know, the critters, the bugs, the birds, the fish, you know, anything that has life on our territory. So we are not apart from nature. We recognize the fact that we're all connected and there's respect and autonomy for all the other beings as well. So that definition, people tend to associate it with humanoids, but it really does encompass all of those other beings. Commonly we are referred to as Mi'kma'a. And this was, you know, people talk about how that transition happened. And again in our language, when we're talking about our broader families, the words we use are I'm Nogma, right? All my relations, everybody that I'm connected to. So if people come and if you were to, you know, look at a community and say, what words would you have for all these people? Because of our interconnectedness and our family relationships, the answer is I'm Nogma, these are all my relations. So they think that that Nogma is where the Mi'kma'a came from. And then that work in first contact with the French, when you, if you speak it with the English pronunciation, that's where the Mi'kma'a would have come from because the K and the Q would have been pronounced differently in the different writing systems. So those are the words that, again, we have very common usage for Mi'kma'a. Our land, because where we have Ounu, we have our language was Ounuizin, the language of the people. So Ounuagati is the land of the people, right? So again, people often use Mi'kma'agi, you know, just the land of Mi'kma'a people, but just recognizing what the, you know, my grandmother, for instance, always spoke about Ounuizin, Ounuagati. And then our nation as Mi'kma'a people. And it's important to know that this S is critical, when you're talking about indigenous peoples. Because after being on our land for tens of thousands, or 10,000 years, 12,000 years, 15,000 years, that deep rooted connection gave rise to our culture, who we are, our governance systems, our legal systems, our language, our spiritual beliefs, everything that's incorporated with it. So indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that have that deep rooted connection that is where our nationhood is grounded in. And that is what separates us as Ounu from other ethnic groups that are now living within Canada. So if you ever think about people that are from Scotland, people that are from Ukraine, all these different ethnic groups, that's the distinction. And the S, indigenous peoples, those are self-garbant nations with sovereignty claims to the territory they're on. It's generally associated with international law is where that comes from. So sometimes you'll hear people say, well, indigenous, that's more of an international thing, but that's why. And that's the importance of that phrase, indigenous peoples with an S. Individually I'm an indigenous person, but it's my connection with my nation that grounds and is the source of my rights as an indigenous peoples. Our legal system, again you see the Ounu. So Ounu-e-Devludaan translates of the way that we govern ourselves as the people, right? So when we talk about our laws, Devludaan is what we usually, that's what we, the language that we would use. So our legal system is based on, is on that. And again, the source of it we'll talk about. But that's generally from, from Amygma, from an indigenous person, from the Ounu perspective, those are the words that we use. Then we take a look at settler society and settler law. And you'll see people, of course, with the Indian act using Indian. People tend not to like the word because they find it, I think, a little bit more derogatory these days. But First Nation is commonly being used, but there's no legal definition for that. Basically what happened is people took Indian, crossed it out and then put First Nation in. And so there's no legal definition, it's just common acceptance for people. And it really was during the rise when we said, we are our nations. We are the first nations of this country. And they said, okay, but then they started using it to refer to the bands and the Indian act system. So it kind of co-opted that nationhood language. But you'll see that, like, this is the Scotch Fort First Nation, or the Advocate First Nation is where I'm from. But we're not, because we're Amygma. And it's the broader nation that we all belong to. We're a community within it. But the nation itself is the big five, like, Carbous five provincial territories. Aboriginal, again, we'll talk about the source of that. That's another legal term. And that's where Indian Inuit MAT gets encompassed with that. You'll hear people talking about how, like, you see this on Facebook. It's offensive, you know, abnormal, this type of stuff. But it actually legally means the people that were here at the time of contact. So who was on the territory, time of contacts, Aboriginal people, that's where that comes from, and then the definitions. So, of course, Nova Scotia and Canada, and then the legal systems, the British common law and the French civil law are what we have. But Canada is a multi-juritical country, so we have multiple legal systems. So within the Canadian system, on the way to Luton and all of the other legal systems for the nations across the country are included in the legal systems of Canada. And so this is what we're going to be talking about tonight, about how this works and trying to familiarize yourself with some of these ideas because it needs to be elevated and to really implement and operationalize these rights and sovereignty and nationhood. So is that clear for everybody? Again, if you have any questions, feel free to... Okay, so now let's delve into Indigenous law. There's been a lot of thinking, especially over probably the last 20 years or so, about, in the only way to Luton, right, the way that we govern ourselves and where do the sources of these laws come from for Indigenous peoples? John Burroughs is a leading academic in this country. He's an Ishnabe, and he has suggested these five different areas with respect to sources of Indigenous law. So there's sacred law, you know, creation stories, treaty relationships. We'll talk more about that. Natural law, our interactions with our territory and all of the critters and the only better on it. Deliberative law is laws that people decide to create as a government, right? People get around, let's come up with laws to govern our behavior and people accept it and follow it and adhere to it. And then we have, this is a little bit more tricky for me to pronounce, positivistic law, so proclamations, wampum, this type of thing, and customary law. People are very familiar with marriages, family relationships, adoptions, this type of things that people do because it's been ingrained in them as children all the way through their lives. And on things that you follow, not necessarily written down. John will be the first one to tell you that this list has never been meant to be exhaustive. And of course, given all the different legal traditions, how could it be, you know, because we're trying to come up with different ideas. So I'm going to now walk through some of the Mi'gma examples and I have another addition to this list as well that I put forward. So natural law, our relationship with our territory. I do porcupine quilt work. It's a traditional art form that Mi'gma people have been doing for centuries. And we need birch bark. Birch bark was used for many things, the silver birch. It was our shelters, our wigwam, our canoes, our bowls, our cups, our utensils, clothing. Like there's so many things that birch bark has been used for. And so we actually have a relationship with the trees that is extremely de-brooded. This is an area that Western science is finally starting to catch up to in terms of how the trees operate. A lot of, I remember when I was in school hearing about how different trees and different plants within a forest would compete with each other for resources. But that's not actually what's happening in a forest. I've never yet had a knowledge keeper or an elder talk about trees without doing this. Because you see the interconnectedness under the ground. And you see that they actually are capable of communicating. In my serial network with the fungi, they said resources, minerals, different things across the forest to each other. So it's not actually competition. It's a collaborative relationship that trees have that we are a part of as migma people. And so learning how to harvest, you have to start to understand what that tree is going through, what the woods are going through. And you have to follow what have become our legal protocols regarding harvesting that are based on the science after thousands of years of operation and understanding of how these trees live within the woods. So for instance, birch, they put nitrogen into the ground, right? So when you see where they're growing and how they're growing, they have a very important function to play in the woods. So when we're harvesting, we have to make sure that we're not going to kill the trees. And what you're seeing here, this is my friend Kay. She's one of my practices for Quillwork and her son. And he's harvesting his first tree in this picture. And this is the trees heal themselves. So you can see how it's kind of formed a scab there. It takes probably about five years in the time that it's harvested before it goes through the healing process. And once we've harvested it, we have an obligation to check on the tree to make sure that we haven't damaged it, to make sure that it's healing properly. So my grandfather always used to talk about after every time a season would change, you have to go out to the woods and check and see what's happened, what's going on. And it reinforces all those lessons. So this is how the trees looked once the healing process has been completed. The scab will fall off and then you have a layer of white bark that grows again on it. And so the cycle of the tree, we like to harvest it's around 45 or 60 years old. That will get you a really nice piece of bark if the conditions have been good. And then five years to heal and then about another 20 to 25 years before you can harvest it again. And it's a really incredible feeling to be in the woods and stand in front of a tree and recognize and know for a fact that my ancestors have been there and have harvested a tree as well. Because if you know what you're looking for, you can see it. Unfortunately, not everybody knows what to look for. So because it looks white, some people will think, oh, look at that, that must be a really great piece of bark. But we can tell on the outside whether or not the thickness of it, if it's ready to be harvested, you can tell whether or not it's been harvested before and it's in the process of adding more layers of bark underneath it, ready to harvest again. So those protocols that we have, like the legal system that dictates our behavior and our interaction with the trees are really based on all of that observational knowledge, the science, understanding the relationship with the tree. It's a very sensual experience. There's a smell, like it almost smells like watermelon. You know that very planty, watery kind of smell. The sound when you're harvesting will echo through the woods and the feel of the bark, like it's for anybody that works with it, it's kind of like our new year when we're harvesting. And we have to wait for the cycle of the tree. And in order to know when to harvest, we are also looking at other indicators, such as when the fireflies come out, right? You see the fireflies out, then you know that, oh, time to go check on the trees because they'll be ready for harvest time. It usually happens in late summer, usually when I harvest, because what's happening is that the birch trees have a lot of layers of bark and when the trees are preparing to go dormant for the winter around July, they pull all the moisture into the core of the tree and send it down to the roots for the sugar water and that's what will sustain it over the winter. So when that happens, that's when the bark's ready to harvest and you can cut into it and you're not cutting into, like, kind of like they're the arteries or anything like that, right? Because it's preparing to go dormant. Kind of interesting to think that people like when the sun, like it's affected by both the heat and the sunlight. So already in July after, you know, the solstice, the woods start shifting in terms of that. So that kind of knowledge, that is what also, like I said, divides our protocols. So when we're teaching our children, they have to know what they're doing. They have to know not to cut too deep into the cambium so that they don't kill the tree. They have to know the cycles of it to know when it's ready, when it's not, because you don't want to be wasting it. And then do go and you only take what you need, right? So all of those principles, that's the foundation of it. And so that's our relationship with the tree. We have to be grateful and humble and not wasteful with it. We have to make offerings. And that relationship is why we make those offerings because we're promising the tree that we are going to adhere to those principles, right? Because they're all new. So what happens when the protocols aren't followed? Sacred Law, John Burroughs also talks about the first treaties and it's something that our elders here in Big Moggy will always start with. If you ever talk about treaties with our elders, they go back to pre-contact. And they talk about our treaties that we have with the animals, the fish, like I said, with the birch trees. The story of these ones here is a little bit different than kind of the ongoing harmonious relationship with the trees. We have Madhuas, the top left, really cute face of my favorite, again doing porcupine clover. Madhuas is a very gentle animal. And again, viewing Madhuas as Ulnuk as one of the people, they have autonomy at a level that Southern society doesn't recognize. And we as Mi'Mah people, Ulnuk people, have entered into treaties with Madhuas for the harvesting and cohabitation with them on the territory. But they're very gentle and their quills are purely for defense purposes. And we have stories that people decided to use the quills as a weapon. Like put your taking quills onto a club and using it and to hurt people. And Madhuas was really upset with this because that was not the intent. That's not what the agreement was in terms of our harvesting of Madhuas for quills, for meat, this type of stuff. And because it went against the treaty that we entered into because they, Madhuas are autonomous beings, they decided to go away from Unamagi, from Cape Breton. So even to this day, there's no porcupines on Cape Breton. And that's the reason why, because the treaty got broken. And you would think because this happened, back in the times of the ancient ones and the ones that came before, that, well, hasn't enough time gone by to atone for that breach of treaty. And people have tried to introduce porcupines, Madhuas, to Unamagi again, and they won't take, right? So that is still something that we are living with today. Blumu here on the bottom left. Again, like understanding the legal jurisdiction that we have over our territories because it's not just land. And when you talk with our elders about the harvesting treaty that we have with Blumu, we know that the knowledge goes far beyond our terrestrial territories we want people because the elders talk about the breeding grounds off the coast of Newfoundland. That's where they go to breed. And then to quote the elders, they go up and have a Mauiomi, a Mauiodgic with their cousin salmon off the coast of Greenland. And then they come back. So a lot of our Blumu, especially up in Northeastern, New Brunswick, they come up through the Marama Sheep. With terms of our laws and our concern and our responsibility and our stewardship, it actually goes far beyond, for instance, the Marama Sheep River. We're talking about concern and interest all the way up through that territory up through Greenland, Newfoundland. Not that we're claiming sovereignty, but we are conscious of the overlap in the territories and concern about the environmental impact and the health and the safety of Blumu. And again, that's part of our stewardship that we have because of the treaties that we've entered into. Mouin here in this bigger picture, I had a bit of a baby because we're obviously so cute. We have stories about Mouinesque, a female Mouin. And there was a Miigama child who had gotten separated from their kin, from his kin, from his family and was adopted by Mouinesque. And she raised the Miigama boy alongside of her own offspring. And so, thinking about adoption, and again, it speaks to the autonomy and reinforcement of that understanding of only as all things. So if you think about an adoption across species and what it speaks to in terms of knowledge transfer and sharing and cohabiting in a way that was very beneficial to all involved, that was the nature of the relationships where even a bear would be caring for Miigama children. So these are examples of sacred law, right, of our first treaties. And again, this is usually what people, the elders talk about. And these are really ancient and that is the foundation for a lot of our protocols. And it also leads into our perspective of how we view our modern treaties because some of these agreements because they're still in place, that is what makes our worldview and our perspective of the treaties that became later and why some things aren't negotiable because we have obligations that have been sacred and that have been around for thousands of years that we are trying to uphold because we've made that commitment. The positivistic example, Wampum. Wampum is a way that there is a recording of indigenous law. These are cohog shells that are used and we ever know cohog trying to find ones of this color. They're very quite rare. And then to actually go through the process of hand drilling the beads and then weaving them into a belt to record the loss. It's a very extensive process and it would have involved a lot of the community when it came to recording the Wampum. We have some of them have just like basically been lost through time and a one was went down in the shipwreck at different points, but there are still Wampum belts. And so that is an example of the positivistic, coming together, creating laws and codifying it just not, but the written world, we did it through cohogs. And then again, knowing that our relationship with the cohogs to use the shells would have been traced back to those original treaties that we would have had with the five owls. This is an area that I put forward that differs a little bit from the five categories that John Burroughs has put forward. And that is the material culture as a source of indigenous law. A lot of our belief perspective is based on animacy. And when you create something, it actually becomes its own autonomous thing. So even with our art with quill work, when I make something, it's a conduit from the ancestors and then it has its own life. And it has a life that starts and ends as well. And so it's not just the creation of the thing, but there's often also a spiritual component with it that gives rise to different areas of the law. Have you guys ever heard of Waltis before? It's a gambling game. There's tournaments going on in our communities today, you have to hit the bowl and those little discs turn and then the sticks and you're competing against people. And you're invoking the ancestors to help you win, right? But there's also, the reason why I use this is not necessarily for the gambling component of it and the game portion of it, is that there was divination that was possible through the use of these bowls of water. And Waltis bowls here in Meemawgi were actually very targeted by colonial authorities. You will see some of the older bowls. A friend of mine actually just found one that I think it was her grandmother or great grandmother had had and there was a whole drill to them because they were concerned about the spiritual component and the role that it had to play. So they would go around and drill holes into the wooden bowl so that water couldn't be contained with them and it wouldn't be able to serve that function. And a lot of the, they're being made a lot more now. So this is an area that we don't talk a lot about in terms of how material culture is another source because there's protocols that arise around all of this based on our perception of what these things are, right? Because they're not just a thing. So that was some examples of indigenous law. Does anybody have any questions about those? I should actually state here that one of the things, so I have a feather here with me today and this was something that was only just, we had an official ceremony for this feather yesterday and we are talking about the multi-juridical systems within Canada, these different sources of law and there were alumni, indigenous, meanwhile alumni from the school had wanted to gift an eagle feather to Shulik. And so when we were talking about getting the feather, we're like, if we really wanna do it as a teaching tool to start educating about our legal systems, we have to go right from the beginning of it. So we actually had a group that went out on National Indigenous Day this past summer and made our offerings and we went out to Gipu and asked for whether or not we were worthy to have a gift. And we actually saw the Gipu. He, we were walking out into a field and we saw a tree and it was a really good vantage point and all of a sudden the eagle took off in front of us. There was a mature bald eagle right across and we found multiple feathers from that bird and round that tree. And so that's how we know that this feather was definitely meant to help us with this journey to start sharing and getting people to understand the role of indigenous protocols in our legal system and how they function. So I thought that I would bring it here today not only to demonstrate, you know, on the way to Lunaan but also to use it to help me with my presentation tonight. So if there's no questions, I'll move on then to the Aboriginal law. So Aboriginal law, contrary to on the way to Lunaan is the interaction between indigenous peoples, again with an S nations and the crown, right? This is something that came about after contact. It was initially driven in our territory based on international law and military objectives. This is why they're called the peace and friendships. They were never about land on our territory. It wasn't a succession of sovereignty. It was about keeping peace. And meanwhile people of course had very strong interests in peace in our territory because we had settlers that were coming in. But also from a British perspective, war is expensive. It disrupts trade, right? There's a lot of objectives people don't like war. And so that was one of the reasons why the treaties were entered into. And I don't know if you know, but you can actually still see copies of the treaties. The ones that were signed here in Halifax are at the archives, right? Like they're still here on the territory. There's a series of them, like all across from Boston, you know, some in Brunswick, just different locations. But they were documented the relationships and the legal systems that were going to be at play with our relationship with the British Crown. So that's a copy of the 1725 treaty that I have there. And the Aboriginal law is different from Indigenous law because it's done through a more formalized process. So if you think about treaty making, if you think about statute like the Indian Act, if you think about court interpretation like the Marshall decision, negotiated agreements like we have the education agreement for instance where the Mi'kmaq have jurisdiction over, you know, Miwa education on the reserves. So Aboriginal law is very different in the source of it and the scope of it. And of course, a lot of it is documented in European languages as well. So it's really, this is why the courts are saying that if you're going to be talking about, especially treaties, you have to be aware of the Indigenous perspective and Indigenous lens around the language, you know, what was said, what was promised, what was intended because the law is not just based on what was written in the document. It's much, much broader than that. I have a quote here from William Wiccan, he's one of the academic that wrote about our treaties. And so I'll just read this out. The 18th century government correspondence clearly demonstrates that officials were only rarely in contact with Mi'kmaq. This was particularly true of English officialdom. Unlike the French regime in Mi'kmaq, the English government in Nova Scotia did not develop economic and social relationships with the Mi'kmaq. Very, very centered on, like I said, military purposes. There was a very clear distinction between interactions with the people. And if you see the concern, a lot of it had to do with like, well, how many warriors were in the village? They weren't interested necessarily in having an effective relationship. They were more concerned about the threat. And this really differs because I know even with the French, they were much more open to the reciprocity nature of our legal protocols because of our relationships that we have with everything. It's all about back and forth, reciprocity, relationship building. And the British in particular really begrudged the expense of the gifting and the indigenous protocols. And you see that not only in Mi'kmaq, but even clear across the prairies in dealing with the number of treaties, right? In terms of like the documentation of it. But make no mistake, during the creation of the treaties, it was indigenous protocols that were in full effect. And the treaties don't have things like who are Mi'kmaq people defined in it because that was very clearly still within the jurisdiction of indigenous people. You know, only were the ones that decide there was never any attempt to go down that road. So it's important to know the context, the limitations of them and understand the full scope of what it is that they were actually talking about. And then as I said, also the connections with the only way to balloon it on in terms of the first treaties and what it is that indigenous people would have been concerned about and thinking about when they were entering into negotiations. So how do we get then from a treaty relationship, right? As nations, because treaties are only signed by nations. What then is the source of other Aboriginal law? And a lot of it comes down to the Canadian constitution. So if you look at section 91, that's the federal jurisdiction, section 92 is provincial. And there's a lot of people that sincerely believe that the division between federal and provincial law, that's it, that's it, it covers everything. There's no gaps, there is no room for anything else. Anything that deals with only way to balloon it on would come in under section 91 under the federal authority. The reason why they have responsibility and jurisdiction for indigenous peoples at the time was because of the fact of those international obligations. And the federal powers were basically based on things that were of a national interest. So given what was at stake with things like war, the military component with it, it was thought that to have it at a provincial or a decentralized level of government, it would fall prey to local pressure when that wouldn't be in the national interest of Canada. So that's actually the reason is our sovereignty in the existence of only way to balloon it on is one of the reasons why it's under federal jurisdiction. So at the time, there was no involvement with indigenous peoples anywhere in terms of that dipping up of jurisdiction between the federal and provincial governments. And it's something that has been sought to be rectified. In 1982, steps were made to bring about and to acknowledge the fact that there is other legal orders that needed to be included. So section 35 is from the 1982 constitution. And that is where the existing Aboriginal treaty rights of Aboriginal people are hereby recognized and affirmed. And then Aboriginal peoples are defined as Inuit, Inuit and Métis. So legally, according to the government, I'm an Indian. There's no room under the 91, 92 for me to be because they don't know you're defined under the Indian Act as an Indian person. And so you see a lot of shift from indigenous law into Aboriginal law because the British Crown in Canada was claiming there's a jurisdiction means control of. So rather than saying, okay, we've got responsibility for indigenous people, that's the role of the federal government. They started saying, okay, and because we have that, we're gonna start defining it. We're gonna start controlling it. And that's where the shift took place between moving from the treaty and then into the later development of Aboriginal law. The interpretation of this, the conflict that's resulted in court cases, the negotiations that have, you know, tried to bring about self-government, that falls under this regime as well in terms of sources of Aboriginal law. So for instance, the Indian Act, clearly Aboriginal law, right? It's that interaction between the Crown and indigenous peoples. So that's Canadian constitutionalism in a nutshell. I did that about in two minutes. But does it have any questions with respect to that? It's also interesting that because the federal government defines who Indians are under the Indian Act, and they've made a big mess about this over 14, it depends on whether, like, if your parents are married, if they weren't married, when you're born, when were they married, what's your gender, are you illegitimate, are you not? They have a lot of, like, it's a big mess. So there's over 14 definitions just of recognized Indians, status Indians under section six of the Indian Act. That doesn't deal with Inuit, does deal with Metis, you know, so it's a really very, very codified system that has nothing to do with concepts of O'Nuwe, and O'Nuwe, the Blue Dawn. Section 35, where it's talked about Aboriginal and treaty rights, right? A lot of people, so we're Indians here, and we're Indians there. So even if the Indian Act was to go away tomorrow, I would still legally be considered by Canada to be an Indian because section 35 is there as well. So section 35 is supposed to be about self-government. That was always the intention of it, to go through a process of negotiating and scoping out what section 35 meant, but that broke down. So basically, this is where Indigenous laws are recognized, right, because we're talking about Aboriginal and treaty rights, and that's where things come in, more the jurisdiction of Indigenous people over themselves. So that, it gets really complicated in terms of what they've done with their assumed jurisdiction. So areas of law, and this is what the problem that we have today is because of that constitutional break, like the way that it's set up, and the way that the government assumes that it covers everything, all legal orders, all the, you know, everything, that they assume sovereignty and jurisdiction over areas that were always been clearly Indigenous law. So, for instance, identity, right, with all due respect to Ottawa, what do they know about what it means to be older, right? Leadership, they forced the Indian Act governance system on us, elected Western Democratic principles. Land regulation, a lot of the changes in Mi'kmaq family life occurred in the 1920s and 30s when they started regulating, harvesting of natural resources, animals, access to woods, made the forest, harvesting. The idea that, you know, how and when you cut down trees, very, very much in conflict with terms with Indigenous legal systems education, I think the existence of the new residential schools and it is prepositive of what they've done with that jurisdiction, same thing with health. There was a lot of science experience done with children's health in the residential schools. So, these are areas that should be Indigenous law, but the government has assumed control over and it's extremely problematic, right, that control and how it's been exercised. Oh, I think I'm speaking quite fast. So, does anybody have any questions about that, about the Aboriginal law and how it's come about? So, moving forward then, how can we even start to address these distinctions between Aboriginal law and Indigenous law, right? And it really does matter. And people are very quick to jump forward to the reconciliation, right? Let's negotiate, let's settle these things, but we're not dealing with the truths of this. And so, Canadians, Canada's assumed jurisdiction is really firmly based on legal fiction. If you think about the doctrine of discovery, right? The Taranullis, that there was no people here. The doctrine of reception, there was no legal systems so they could bring over the British common law. I teach property and I talk all the time about William the Conqueror from 1066 because that's the property, like that's the foundation of Canada's property law, right? From something that took place in England in 1066. This is today. Also, this fiction that there was a transfer of sovereignty via the French. So, if you know about the Treaty of Utrecht, right? The battle between control, Europeans already, which didn't mean ownership, didn't mean title and didn't mean on the ground control. So, a lot of the fiction is that the British got it from the French. When they defeated the French, the Treaty of Utrecht signed over the colonies. There's actually nothing in the French civil law that allows for extinguishment of indigenous title. So, if that is the case, that there was no way for the French to have done it. If they did do it, it wouldn't have been legal. There was no legal process for it. How then is the Treaty of Utrecht and that conquering of the French in any way justification for the British having a soon sovereignty over indigenous title or land, right? So, we have to confront these legal fictions if we want to move forward. And that is just like the general starting point. You saw this a lot when the Pope came to visit and people were saying, are you going to retract the doctrine of discovery? You know, like, are you going to deal with this? The courts have been challenged. Are you going to officially move away from Terenolius and these doctrines and really embrace and start to implement indigenous legal systems? Because we're talking about self-governance. We cannot, these legal fictions, have to go by the wayside, right? They were used to justify assumed jurisdiction. We now know better in terms of what they did because indigenous law and our legal systems exist today. They survived the creation of Canada. They survived the creation of the Constitution. They survived the settlement. They've just survived seven generations of ignoring treaty rights and Aboriginal rights. So this exists. But we have to confront these truths. How shaky is the assumed jurisdiction of Canada in this country? Because the onus has always been put on indigenous people. You have to prove who you are. You have to prove your title. You have to prove that this is part of your culture in order for us to recognize it. But how come Canada's not doing that, right? So what is your foundation of this? Why does the law from 1066 in England have any relevance in terms of being moggy? So faith in these truths and assumed jurisdiction of what that means is extremely important because the end result is genocide. And we know that. There has been two findings of genocide in this country. And it has to do with this clash between the legal systems. And so if you think about reconciliation, right? If we identify the truths in terms of these legal systems, what do we need to move forward? So Canada needs to implement, fully implement, constitutionally protected Aboriginal and treaty rights. Even Canada's own law says that these are facts. These are rights. They've been proven in the British common law system, which Canada inherited. And then enshrined in the Constitution. They have to implement human rights for indigenous people. Human rights. We have to think about that, right? This is how bad it is that we have to have a whole, like international declaration to explain to people how human rights that are supposed to be universal apply to First Nations because people haven't been recognizing those basic human rights. We have to vacate. Canada has to vacate its assumed jurisdiction. So this, if you think about 91 and 92, if Canada has jurisdiction or indigenous peoples, reimagining that role, support indigenous systems rather than defining for indigenous people who they are, what they do, what they can do. So it's gonna take a mind shift. And they're gonna have to give up jurisdiction over areas. And so far there's been a great reluctance to do so. A lot of things are co-management. A lot of things still retain their, like ultimate discretion, authority. We don't even have land back when it comes to the reserves, right? So those reserve communities are a colonial construct. And for the large part there's not, not in very many indigenous people that live there. So how come that land isn't being given back to indigenous people just as a starting point? But it's not. We have to support and recognize indigenous legal systems, right? So the role for the federal government then would be to recognize and support on the way to blue dawn within our territory and territory. Right now we have no mechanism for recognition of our nation as Mi'kmaq people. So there's bans or quasi legal entities. And we have individuals, but we have no legal mechanism to recognize the Mi'kmaq as a nation. So that's why you see negotiations in that original law being done on a provincial basis. The PEI has their table. Nova Scotia has theirs. The Gaspe has theirs. Nova Scotia, you know, this couple. That's why, because there's no mechanism for nationhood. So they've already started the process of implementing self-government without creating a vehicle for the nation to implement it, let alone then interpret the laws. Because you run the risk if you develop like laws under like de blue dawn, right? If it needs, it gets challenged. Where does it go? It goes right up over to the settler court system. And then you run the risk of it becoming aboriginal law, of course, assuming jurisdiction and authority and to interpret laws that with all due respect, they have absolutely no familiarity with, right? And I know that the Chief Justice of Supreme Court has said that he didn't think that there was a need necessarily for an indigenous representation of Supreme Court because they've done a good job of interpreting and dealing with these issues. I beg to differ. Support self-governance, truly supported. We have instances, for instance, up in the Yukon where there's a self-governance agreement that got negotiated where they had the right, a constitutionally protected right to define their own citizenship. And yet when it came time to fund and to implement the law, Ottawa was only willing to send money based on their calculations of who within that group would have qualified for status. So you can't have it both ways, right? You negotiate an agreement, you implement it, we're gonna recognize your law, but we're still gonna use the Indian Act as the foundation as to how we're gonna interpret and help like and implement it. That's extremely problematic. And then the last point, we need to end genocide, right? I've noticed in Canadian society generally that using the phrase of genocide is more offensive than act. And the murder, demissing indigenous women and girls had a supplementary guide, it's a legal opinion about the modern definition of genocide because I think a lot of people have in their minds an idea of what it is, but not understanding the global development and international law and how it views genocide. So I do encourage people to read that document because that's what's at stake. And it's also important to know that not reconciling these different legal systems is the status quo favors the crown, right? Because all the system and all the soon jurisdiction, the legal fictions keep chugging along and behind it. So this is what we have at stake in terms of coming to terms with these systems and making sure that the genocide doesn't continue. And people get really uncomfortable. People don't even like it when I talk about Indians. They're like, oh, you mean like First Nation? Oh, I'm saying Indian. Because if we have a problem with the word then we need to change the statutes, right? We need to change the law. Same thing with First Nation and all these terms. If they become offensive, not using them doesn't change the legal reality within which we work and live. So that is my notion in terms of reconciliation, in terms of what needs to go forward. We need to reimagine Canada's role as one of support and recognition and we need to recognize their systems there that are chugging along. So what do we have to do as old noob, right? I wanna to my mind to this. First and foremost, we need to heal. And trauma is not our culture, right? Indian residential schools is not our culture. The status system is not our culture. All of these, like the advent of Aboriginal law, a lot of this has been focused as well on conflict with resource harvesting, extraction. So you see a lot of the laws like hunting, fishing rights, but it's what has come up against commercial interests. We don't have a lot of female activity being reflected in the development of Aboriginal law because of the way that it's played out. So we need to heal from colonization. And I think that there's a large expectation on people that, okay, so we've spent seven generations, we've two findings, the genocide, we've been attacking everything about the way that you live. Now we're gonna start implementing self-government. Go. And there's not a lot of patience for taking the time to work out how the blue dawn works in a modern context, right? Think about the Canadian system. We love our growing tree metaphors, right? The constitutions of the living tree, but we don't apply that same kind of perspective and patience when it comes to indigenizing and decolonizing our laws. So there's a lot of expectation, you're done, that's it. But it's gonna grow. We're governments, we have the ability to adapt. So we really have to be careful not to fall prey to the frozen in time notions that something before contact is gonna be exactly applicable that it is today. And you hear people say that, oh, well, you've got the right to fish as long as you use a canoe and a spear. I was like, well, okay, well, how about you then have the right to fish as long as you're doing it the way your ancestors did, right? So that kind of thinking gets applied to us all the time, all the time. And we also have to be careful not to romanticize indigenous law because there is divergence when it comes to values and perspective and worldview from Canadian society. And so people have to start getting used to the idea that it's gonna challenge the way that they think. And I always tell people if you're working in the area and working with indigenous people and you're not being challenged to rethink what you're doing and how you live, then there's something wrong. There's something like maybe people are masking or something is not quite right or it's a bit problematic. So we need to heal and we need to think and explore and to create our own laws in a modern context based on our traditions and what we see from moving forward. We need to continue to exercise our rights. The very first case in Canada said that there was no title, right? You say Catherine Spelling. Nope, it didn't exist. There's no Aboriginal rights, no Aboriginal title. If we had listened to that authority, we wouldn't be here today and where we are today. We need to continue to understand how our laws work, where they come from, how we exercise our rights and know what it is that we, like what the distinctions are between us. We need to understand the only way to lead on. We need to learn about the first treaties. We need to talk to our children about it. We can't have the colonized version of history govern how we view ourselves when we're thinking about modern sense of governance because you see people are very comfortable with Western democratic systems and that is what they tend to drift over to when they're talking about governance for indigenous peoples, right? So, like, why do we need, as indigenous people, to have a constitution? But that's one of the requirements for modern treaty making, you have to have a constitution. That concept evolved out of the need to constrain the British monarchs so that they wouldn't run over their subjects. So why is the constitutional requirement being imposed on Canadians today, indigenous peoples today, if we're talking about implementing self-governance, right? So it's quick, people will drift over to that. We need to assert our sovereignty. We have to know the full territory. This is where a lot of the work with respect to, like, even just learning place names, there's a project that was being undertaken in terms of even the stars. Colonization has changed the way we think about so many things, but because we've been focused on things like hunting and fishing, we tend to forget all these other areas that had an impact. The gender binary is a colonial imposition that flies in the face of who we are as people, right? Even naming the stars, what they have in teaching our children about the Big Dipper, is that our teaching or is that a colonial teaching? And we need to challenge, like how deep our governance system runs in terms of all these different things. And then we need to assert jurisdiction. And this is something we talk about all the time, right? The government has never recognized indigenous law because they woke up one day and they're like, wow, we really need to do this, right? It's always been kind of forced on them, and we have to work with indigenous people. I have noticed, and I take great comfort in the fact that especially after the TRC, you see this upsurge in interest in terms of settlers, right? People are starting to lose patience with what's been happening in the country. And given the fact that the findings are genocide, we can all do better, right? We all should be uncomfortable with that fact. So asserting jurisdiction and knowing what that means, because it's not just about rights, it's also about responsibilities, especially from a minimum perspective, we're always about balance when it comes to our worldview. So these are some of my thoughts regarding reconciliation and what it's gonna take. And it's gonna be a big upheaval if we really wanna dig down into it, right? So, oh, and I should tell you too that this, this is a piece of my call work. This was actually, it was a wedding gift, but I thought it was very apropos for today's talk because what it is, there was a couple that were getting married. And if you notice the bark on this side goes up and the bark on that side goes sideways and each of the components of it are different, but when you put them together, there was something that was created that's a reflection of both. So that's why I put this picture here to talk about reconciliation and what's gonna be required. We don't have to have the same systems. We don't have to have the same color. We don't have to be going the same direction, but we have to understand that together within this country, there's a role for both of us and it can coexist. So, lolio. And now we've got plenty of time for questions. That's the bottom of the porcupine in case you're wondering in terms of the end. Yes? I have a question on premise and correct my ignorance before I ask the question. It's my understanding that, for example, particularly in British Columbia, either the provincial or federal government or perhaps both are entering into agreements with, I think, banned councils regarding oil pipelines specifically. Banned councils being creations of the Indian Act. Right, so these are elected, but not traditional or original or indigenous. But they're doing. And sometimes after the agreement is signed between the ban council and the government, provincial or federal, whichever, or maybe both, traditional leaders may object and say, no, either no or you've got to consult with us, maybe, if I can put it that way. So do you have any comment on all of that? What should governments be doing in this situation? Because these are big, multi-billion-dollar issues and time is maybe of the essence. It's always of the essence. It's been of the essence since the cabinet's willing. I think we have, and this is what I'm saying, like in terms of taking time to work things out. So the lack of a legal entity to act as the nation is one of the biggest barriers, I think, of resolving these issues. So we have many nations where the imposition of that elected system, the democratic system, was at odds with the traditional culture, the traditional governance system. Some nations respond by saying, okay, the Indian Act, Chief and Council, you have jurisdiction over the reserve, and then the hereditary system have jurisdiction over the territory. Some of them have worked it out that way. Other nations, if you call that working out, I think some people would disagree with that, but other nations would say, okay, you guys have tried going there, but we're going to ignore that whole thing and we're just going to operate within our traditional system and whatever. That's something that Indian Affairs is concerned about, not us. Some cultures also have, we're in alliance a little bit more in terms of their process and their governance systems. So I recognize the fact that there's been crises that have developed regarding the land and regarding that authority and that conflict between the imposition of the Indian Act system and traditional and the systems of governance. But again, we haven't seen an actual sincere effort to reconcile it legally, right? So it creates chaos, and out of chaos often comes opportunities for different people. So I think that when it comes to looking at that type of work, it's not just indigenous people that want that sorted out. I'm sure a lot of people in industry would really be happy if they had that sorted out. And so sometimes the opposition is not necessarily industry. It may actually just be the fact that the crowns not willing to give up jurisdiction over defining things and recognizing. During the Whistleton, for instance, people were always drawing the path that we've already had that hereditary system be legally recognized at the Supreme Court, right? With the Delcombeau decision, that was a hereditary group that brought that case forward. That wasn't a band council that did that. So we've seen some recognition, but we haven't seen Canada actually take steps to work it out. And for me, that is what has to happen. And the communities and the nation themselves, as groups need to do it, much, much easier said than done. It's gonna take time, but I think we're gonna continue to have those types of conflict until that happens. And you see some nations coming together and working out ways of doing it, like these corporate trusts and different kinds of entities that they can create to kind of, as a coping mechanism, to work together after they've been separated by the Indian Act. And I know we're gonna work together because we know that we're also connected and this is what our traditional government is, but they are hindered by the Corporations Act. They're hindered, like it just never really quite fits because something hasn't been developed that really truly reflects our nationhood. So does that answer that question? Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Hi, thank you so much for your talk. This was really, really informative. My question is about, so I mean, I'm kind of, I'm trying to understand what indigenous law looks like in an urban center where you have conflicting national identities. So I mean, in a mix in Halifax, I would assume that you'd have, you'd still have a kind of over-arching, McMocky identity and law that would permeate urban culture that could mean something, I don't know what it looks like jurisdictionally, but I imagine that there's a way of thinking through that. What about in an urban center like Toronto where you have how does indigenous law work in that context where you have conflicting national identity? Or maybe you just have different national identities that might be pulling in different directions in terms of what the kind of overarching philosophy would be. First of all, it's important to remember that that's not a new issue. Yeah. Right? Like it's timeless story because people have always moved around. And one of the issues with that is like recognizing what indigenous jurisdiction means, what our sovereignty means. So just like when you go to Toronto, you have municipal law that applies, right? You have provincial law of Ontario that applies. You may have different like spiritual laws that apply. Like think about the Vatican and the law for the churches for instance, right? So there's a many different layers of law that exists all the time, all across this country. And so if you think about what that means in terms of McMocky, we have our national territory and we've always been very welcoming to people. The key is to consider how does our legal system treat people that are visiting our territory, right? And are people taught that when they're in this region that they are on McMocky? I see a lot of people, especially with the school where they come, they say, I'm very aware that I'm on McMall land. How can I like have my scholarship for instance, be a benefit to the McMock people that are here? We're starting to see an awareness of that. So I think that the answer lies in diplomacy. It lies in letting indigenous people work out because overlap is often viewed as a detriment to sovereignty, right? Because according to Western principles, the right to exclude is how you have your interest, your property interests are being recognized, right? To keep people out. From an indigenous perspective, consider the fact that working out how you can be harmonious is actually in my mind a really effective way of considering the power of jurisdiction. You have multiple nations coming together to discuss and work out their working relationship. And in a modern context, because this issue exists, you see indigenous people working with their, sometimes their allies, their neighbors, whomever, to really work hard to work out those jurisdictional issues without having it go into the courts. Because the last thing you want are really hard and fast lines being drawn, where they've never been there. So, I was talking with somebody, not at this university, at another university, and they were talking about starting an indigenous advisory council. And they're like, but the university has students from all around the world, all around the globe. So yes, we'll have MiGVON people, but we also have to make sure that other groups are represented, and it's like, yeah, that makes sense. But let me ask you this, are you doing that, recognizing that MiGVON jurisdiction and the legal system applies? And our legal system says that this is how you welcome and respect guests, or are you doing it by saying, yes, we know that this is MiGVON, but you guys are going to have to deal with the fact that we're all here. And our laws are going to then kind of, you're going to have to have some compromise. Because that has tended to be how the issue has been addressed, as opposed to saying, okay, how did your diplomacy work? We had the Treaty of Niagara, where it was a classic example of the power and the effectiveness of international diplomacy from indigenous nations. They had 2,000 delegates partake in the negotiations regarding the Treaty of Niagara, and it was in 1763, and basically there was 2,000 delegates from MiG-Magi all the way up to the Rockies. 2,000 politicians and national delegates got together to work out what the relationship with the British crown was going to look like after the French fell. So people need to take the time to do it. They need to be seared about it, and they have to understand that there's other protocols that they're going to have to consider when working it out. The fact that we have overlying jurisdictions and multiple people, that's a timeless situation. And we've already have ways of figuring out. We just need to get people to respect it. That's really, sorry, just to respond quickly. The way that he clarified, even just the conceptualizing sovereignty as a seal or coherently enclosed entity is something that is so Western, and it's hard to get away from that. It's very, very helpful to have your response. Thank you. Yeah, because like I said, we tend to drift with what's familiar, right? And sometimes we're not aware of it. Yeah. Do you have a question? Well, I was just having a first question having to do with what happened in British Columbia, and the focus seems to be on the federal government has to figure out what to do and some responsibility of federal government to come up with a solution. But I wondered, in that instance, you had conflicts within the community. You had the traditional community and the band council, the band council that may be a settler form, but it's one nonetheless that the indigenous people there have voted and they're supportive. So isn't there some obligation on the community as a whole to figure out who's going to speak for us or who is going to negotiate for us? So that you can have an agreement because if you have many different voices all saying, I have sovereignty, I have the right to speak, and you have to consult with me and get me to agree, then I'm not sure that anything's ever going to be done because you have too many voices and too many assertions of rights. And so it just seems to me that there's some responsibility on the community as a whole to come up with something that sticks. And I want to draw back to the fact that we have, think about the Canadian system of government. It is based on having official opposition, literally, right? I don't understand why opposition is seen as being detrimental to the validity of our governments and our laws. No, I know, I'm just prefacing my response with that, just to kind of challenge some of the thinking that we have with respect to how governments work. So when it comes to understanding indigenous laws, and again, I can't speak for the besotan because I'm not of that nation in terms of, it's a very complex issue within their communities. But we have to, again, vacate space and let the nations work it out, right? This is something that's been going on for seven generations. And so I know from industry and from the government they have their timelines, but they're constantly imposing those on us. And so the classic divide and conquer, and we see it all the time, whether it's negotiations, the spin and the press. And one of the reasons, I don't know people, I didn't talk about the Royal Proclamation, but in terms of one of the reasons why the federal government, they're the only ones that can deal with land with indigenous peoples because too many settlers were dealing one-on-one with indigenous people, right? You always, there was a, there was a couple of different examples even within our nation of whether it was the French government, the British government or the Vatican, right? Looking to set up the equivalent of an indigenous king because they wanted one person that they would only have to deal with. It would be easy. They would have certainty. And then that person has to deal with internal stuff but the business would get done. There is a time, like I can't even just express to you how long that expectation has existed in dealing with indigenous people because of the fact that dealing with indigenous protocols and dealing with the reality of indigenous nationhood and indigenous diplomacy and what the system takes that's about a time, about an effort, people are not willing to put that in anymore, right? And so when you think about what causes the conflict, yes, there's obligations on the part of indigenous people to act like nations and press and continually to do that and to work out their business and figure out how they're gonna reconcile the fact that we've had this imposition on us. Are we gonna keep it or are we gonna let it go? But we have to have the government be willing to accept the results because they haven't been. Again, coming back to that situation in the Yukon, they had a negotiated agreement that has constitutional protection that was ratified by the federal government. So then why were they still injecting their beliefs in worldview and system into that process, right? So that is always gonna be my answer to most of those questions is that time, right? People are not willing to have time in diplomacy. You think about how much effort the government puts into foreign affairs, right? They have people have to learn the language of the country they're supposed to go to. They spend years studying and preparing before they get their postings to go overseas. They have people that are experts in those areas. They learn the language, they learn, so that way they're not offending. Think about how long the diplomatic relationships take to establish and what happens when they start breaking down and who is responsible. The government does not take the same approach with indigenous peoples, right? They just don't. There's no effort there to learn it. So it's easier to have that kind of approach, put these timelines on, and again, then blame indigenous people when they haven't healed enough from colonization to produce the results that other people want from us. I got a little passionate with that response right now. You did. You know, historically there was no recognize by the consult to negotiate the laws changed, the government changed, and so again in BC, in the instance, there were a lot of, there was a lot of time spent on the group to negotiate, and so I think you're sort of presenting it as kind of a black and white situation where there's been no recognition as a part of the government that it does have to consult. They do have to negotiate. The reason why we've had the body of law develop around the honor of the crown of the duty to consult is because the government's been ignoring it for over 150 years, right? And so when you look at the fact that they have made it a leak, like there's changes from 1920s to 1952 where it was illegal for indigenous people to hire lawyers and to hire lawyers to negotiate anything to do with land. So we're talking with a level of attacking and a complete, like when we say that they're unwilling to deal with this, we are talking entrenchment in terms of that approach. So it's not like the reason why the government has not been successful is because they continually turn their backs on their legal obligations that have existed before Canada was created, right? Like you look at, for instance, the Nishka. The Nishka start from day one trying to get the government to the table, from day one, and it took them over 100 years to get the government to get to the table and to negotiate, and that was actually Nishka that caused the prohibition about hiring lawyers because the government absolutely refused to do it. If they put that much time, effort and resources into supporting the nation as opposed to fighting against it, we might have a different result. And that was when I'm talking about the truth part of it. We have to understand the amount of effort that government's doing to ignore this. Look at the child and family. Look at tens of millions of dollars spent fighting against that jurisdiction for the human rights with respect to children and not even talking about healthcare and services like the Jordan's principle for people over 18. They're still having all these resources for people that are just children. Those needs don't end, right? So I don't think it's enough to say, well, what are the First Nations gonna do? The government has to start being sincere about their efforts, their resources, and they have to start being truthful with Canadians as to how much effort they're putting into not letting it happen because it's been immense, right? Like every time people are like, are they gonna appeal? Of course they're gonna appeal, right? They always do. And even when we win, then it goes back to negotiations. So yes, there's a role for indigenous people, like I said, and that's why I had that, what do we have to do? And what does Canada have to do, right? But we have to support the results especially if we're not necessarily comfortable with them because every time we come up with something it gets eroded before it can get implemented. And I'm not trying to be like, for me I guess it's not necessarily just black and white but it's also recognition of the effort that's gone into like crushing this stuff, right? Because it's been like so much money wasted. So much money wasted. And I don't know why more Canadians aren't mad about it to tell you the truth. Because the amount of money that indigenous people have received from service and benefits is like a drop in the bucket compared to how much money has gone against recognition. Yeah. Just quickly, one more. Land tenure. The British, I think we're fair to say, brought to what's now Canada concept of private property. Fee simple, absolute, I think is the legal term. And you know, people who do title searches in Halifax, you can go back 1800 easily, just. So that's interesting. But meanwhile back at the ranch, the titles of the indigenous people were not, I don't think legally extinguished. They were just ignored, I guess you might call it. So what happens, and I think I believe you said, even on reserves, the federal government has never transferred formal, real title. Recognized by Canadian law title or provincial. Did, and I guess my treaty of UTEC, 1763, that was after the Seven Years War. So that's kind of the big marker point, maybe. Was land tenure, finally get to the point. Was land tenure among the big models, a generally communal as opposed to individual at that time? And how are we gonna sort out this big mess? Resurrects have shown that there wasn't a distinction between an individual sense of self and the collective sense of being. That there wasn't that distinction. It's really ironic in Canada, in order to have collective rights, you have to have an amalgamation of individual rights to make the collective. As opposed to an indigenous law where you have collective rights and then you have individuals with world's responsibilities underneath that collective. Like it literally flipped on its back. So, when you look at the way that we interact with our land, those principles and those things are still being taught today, like that picture of Kay out with her son. That understanding of ownership. Some people more so than others. Again, we've had over 150 years of colonization. But the systems of land, we have to recognize how detrimental the imposition of all of the systems were. And then we have to think about, what does indigenous sovereignty mean in the modern context? One of the classic examples they always give is every single telephone pole in this region is on indigenous land. Every single one, right? Even on reserves, they're making money off their clients and those reserves, those poles are on indigenous land. So, when you start thinking about what sovereignty means, would Canadians be comfortable with the idea that instead of a portion of their taxes going to the federal government, it goes to a different government, right? Like all these people that are making resources like, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're gonna kick off settlers and take our land back. That's not why people are proposing. It's dealing with some of those underlying issues in sovereignty, right? Because right now the crown owns all the way down all the way up, so they claim. But how can that, we need to reconcile those two things and the fact that that wasn't never legally justified. So when you think about indigenous territory and the interworking side of it, this is why the duty consultant, they're talking about control over decision making, right? And being able to be out there when decisions are being made for our territory, not at the end when the results are, which usually is what causes the conflict. So thinking about sovereignty, thinking about how governments interact with each other, and again, putting it into that nationhood context, you'll see how the different governments interact with each other. But again, that's never really been attempted on the broader scale because we're always looking to restrict with it. So it's one of those things that don't think that people really understand the nature of crown sovereignty in Canada and what it means. Like people tend to think about the crown as the granted that was in Windsor Castle who recently passed away, who won't courtes, as opposed to the effect of it on our land, on our territory, what it means in Canadian society today because it's top to bottom. So we have to start reimagining what the system looks like that deals with land. Like there's a reason why the Indian Act, 80% of it dealt with land, right? That's what the concern was, that idea of property ownership. And even though they set up, it's somewhat like equivalent to fee simple on reserves, it hasn't really taken root in a lot of communities because it just doesn't mesh with people's concepts, right? So that idea about what sovereignty means, you have underlying crown sovereignty or your house right now and it doesn't intrude on your daily life. Is it really gonna be that impactful if it was to switch to indigenous peoples instead? Or if there was a portion of the revenue from each telephone pole that was going back to the communities to support their government, those types of agreements, right? And so again, just taking a step back and looking at how embedded that sovereignty and the jurisdiction and what it means in the control. And that's what I meant by vacating space. We saw this a little bit with Nishka when they created their fee simple within their territory. So they actually have a free market when it comes to housing residential properties. You can buy and sell and mortgage just the way that they have outside of their traditional territories. But you're doing it under the jurisdiction and their laws and non-indigenous people can own those houses, right? So it's possible. We just have to start looking at solutions rather than like arguing about the concept. Interesting. Any other? Yeah. I have two small questions. One is just kind of going back to an earlier question about this idea of extinguishment clauses. So what does it mean? Like what do you do when you have a leader who agrees to a modern treaty to extinguish land rights? Or how does the nation then they claim to who has the right to speak to it when it kind of goes back and revises those modern treaties that extinguish the right to lay claim to land. It's kind of interesting with the early jurisprudence when I was talking about the concept of Aboriginal title, okay, this exists in Canada. But it's almost as if they didn't trust Indigenous people to control their own land, right? So Aboriginal title exists and you potentially own it, but you can't do X, Y, Z, and then a whole list of things that you can't do with it. So are they really talking about recognition of title or are they talking about further colonization with it, right? I'm sorry, I forgot where I was going to go with that point. So it's just more like what so if you're bound by a modern treaty and the treaty binds you to a principle that the community doesn't accept, but leadership, like the community's leadership at a specific moment in time has entered into a legal binding treaty with the Canadian government. What does that mean? What does it mean to kind of take that apart later? Or what does it mean for Indigenous law to then go back and say, we don't recognize that as valid. And what does that then mean for Aboriginal law? Like what does Indigenous law then try and kind of undo those mistakes in Aboriginal law or how does that dynamic work its way out? Yeah, because we keep talking about self-government. We talk about community and none of those things have actually been worked out to be functional, right? You look at the issue about identity these days and the fraud that's taking place with people. Indigenous control over identity is not even being contemplated by the federal government. They're proposing more amendments to the Indian Act definition of status this fall. So they're still not vacating that space. So we're in a position where they're saying, okay, you need to negotiate self-governance, but we're not going to define self according to your protocols. And we're going to define government according to ours. And this is what's off the table with respect to your land use. I would argue I'm not talking about self-governance. We're talking about continual colonization, right? So right now that's a problem. And again, keep going back to this. We need to start at the beginning in terms of identity laws. We need to start, stop thinking about Aboriginal rights and treaty rights as only dealing with harvesting activity and really start exploring what we mean about jurisdiction over all these other issues like identity. Like why is it that we're not the ones that control who we are? Why is it that once we get a sense of who we are and we want to decide who our leaders are, we're hampered by that too, right? So we see a lot of people, like even though they develop like election codes, right, and the government will say, okay, well you've got the ability to take over control of your membership or your leadership selection, but the courts still interpret it as coming down through federal authority, not through indigenous law. So when it's getting interpreted, it goes under that guise with that perspective being applied to those attempts to get an indigenous influx in that area because the space isn't getting vacated. So we're literally putting the car before the horse, I think, when it comes to even talking about self-government, because we're truly not talking about self-government. If we can't define who nations are and the people that live within it, what are we actually negotiating? And why are we surprised when there's conflict between the reserve communities and the people and other like components within our nation and within our community because we don't have that ability to define our own community, yeah. Sorry, it's stuck. I was really fascinated when you're talking about the settler culture who posed a competitive way of determining leadership by elections, whatever. What would a more traditional method look like before that? Well, it's interesting when you look at some of the different governance models because again, cautioning people not to romanticize and have the frozen in time thing, right? So some communities are making the decision, like you know what, we've had this imposition of democracy, we're gonna keep it for now until we start like we're gonna settle in, we're gonna have control over this area and then as we start kind of like working towards what we're gonna be in a modern context then we'll make changes to it, right? So a lot of the work is being done on neutralizing the negative effects and giving people the time like I said to heal, to explore jurisdiction, to work in like some of the easier, softer areas of jurisdiction and sovereignty first and then start working out on the larger issues. So we do see that happening quite a lot across the country where people are looking at governance and looking at all of this work on a spectrum. Let's start with stuff that are softer that can kind of come together and then we'll start ramping up and dealing with the harder issues. So that's basically how people are viewing, moving out of the colonial force but again, it still requires that vacating a space, right? So some communities are like, yeah, we're gonna keep it because it suits us but again, it has to be their own volition. Other communities like, nope, we've never liked it, it doesn't, we're not gonna keep it, we have no intention of doing that and they cast it off as soon as they can. Some of the coping mechanisms have been really quite humorous. Like I remember that there was one nation that Indian affairs was insisting upon the election. You have to have your nominees, the time frames or the Indian act, everything like this. The community would get together within the clan system within their nation, work out who, based on their systems and then those would be the only nominees they'd put forward for the election that the government would then sanction and then they'd be like, oh, look at the results, keep it up, everybody already knew what was gonna happen. So one of the things that you need to be cognizant of is what you see from the outside is not always what's operating on the ground, right? And you can see that with the codification of some of these modern treaties. On the surface of them they look very Western in terms of scope and then you get into the communities in a way that they're operating them is completely, completely cultural, culturally distinct from it. So I guess the answer to that is like, it really depends based on how far removed people are from the world view and the, I guess, whether or not it coincides with their needs as a nation right now and or whether or not it did before. So because some of the nations were very aristocrats, like they had aristocrats, they had slaves, they had, you know, very hierarchical systems of governance, others were much more balanced, everybody has voiceless in a circle. So it really varies and how they respond to that intrusion also depends on how much it's been put in. As I still think that like based on how far north you get, the more remote, the less there was of that intrusion because the geography just prevented Indian affairs from really being in the community's business. And there was a Senate report talking about leadership selection and it said, well, you know, there is the Indian Act system, there's the custom system, which doesn't mean traditional or indigenous law, it just means not Indian Act. And then there are the ones that have always existed. Right? It's like, yeah, because they were too far remote for you guys to get to, you don't get credit for letting those systems, you would have, if you could have, but you did it, right? So we have that mix there and the responses to colonization and the proposed solutions really varies depending upon what the community is working towards. You have another question? I have two small questions. One is just, I wonder what you think provincial education might look like going forward? Like, do we have a tri-lingual system? What does it look like within the public system that we really want to take seriously here nation to nation relationship? We have French schools, obviously, but we have exposure to French and the public school system. So what does that look like for reconciliation and for going forward is one question. And then the other question is just, I wonder if you have any comment or on the clear water deal and what that means for them. With respect to education, I think that it kind of is similar to what the distinctions are between the roles that different governments have to play. So if you think about the federal government in terms and the provincial government in terms of determining the curriculum, right? Take a look at the materials that indigenous nations are sharing that are making public that are available for use and then, but put the resources in for the training because we see a lot where like there's aspirate, like, I would just say aspiration, there's objectives where there has to be indigenous content at every grade in every school. That's wonderful. But you also have settlers predominantly being the teachers, panicking. I don't have training in this. I don't know how to answer questions, right? Like some of the stuff my kids bring home, I'm like, wow, that just came from Google, right? And it's kind of frustrating. But we've been working hard as indigenous peoples to make some of the materials that we want people to know available. And so we always encourage people, like rather than doing like a random Google search, actually look at some of these organizations and see what they're putting out there for public consumption. Because that is something that we've already decided and made the decision can be shared with settlers, right? So you have to be cognizant of that. And so the government also has to start educating on that truth, right? Because I keep coming back to this. We've skipped the truth and gone straight to reconciliation. We need to be upfront with that. And that is not our story to rewrite. That is the Canadian government's story to rewrite with this, right? Because they're not, again, being honest with our citizens in terms of what's happened. The amount of effort, the amount of resources, like I was saying, that goes into challenging these things. People need to know that, right? They really do. And so there's a role to play in terms of like what the actual colonial history of this country has been and still is. Then there's the role to play for, you know, being open to getting the materials that Indigenous people are putting out there. But it comes to our quill work. We always joke that we do a lot of public workshops, but we always treat settlers at the kindergarten level. And I don't mean to be patronizing with that, but it's just like that's the introductory stuff. Because we have earned knowledge. We don't have entitlement to knowledge. So you get teachings and then people will watch, how are you dealing with it? Are you being respectful? Are you following the protocols? If you're not, okay, well, we need to perhaps give you some more guidance, teach you some more. And then if you know better and are still not doing it, that's when you might find that you might not move forward when it comes to your knowledge. I remember when my aunt asked my grandmother to start teaching her the medicines, right? Because my grandparents had a lot of knowledge. It was her own daughter in her 40s. My grandmother wasn't yet ready to trust her with some of the knowledge, right? So this idea, especially in educational institutions, where I pay my tuition, I have the right to knowledge. Well, we have to be respectful that some of it will be available for public consumption and we have a role to play in making sure that we're doing our protocols to make sure that what's available is appropriate. We need respect from settlers to understand that there's just some things that they're not gonna have access to. I'm sorry, like you're just not part of our system, right? And then there's, like I said, the truth in terms of the Canadian governments, both federally and provincially, to be upfront in providing information as to what has really happened, opening archives and all this other type of stuff. So I see that everybody definitely has a role to play with that. I should tell you, my youngest had a homework assignment for Miigwa History Month and it said, look online for examples of Miigwa beadwork. And so I saw this, it was the Beagle Card, right? And I had to sign off as the parent that they've done different things. So I told my youngest, I said, well, if you want to see Miigwa beadwork, go look at that basket over there. And so they went over and like, you know, we talked about, was it like, oh, beadwork, I mean, we talked about it. And then we pulled close the basket up. And so we'll do, I'm gonna sign off on your square. And they said, well, I can't because I didn't Google anything. So they're making the assumption that you don't have a Miigwa parent, right? That kind of stuff. So it's interesting, like I said, as a parent, like watching my children with that objective, every grade, there's something that's there. And also like, I've gone to some of the schools to talk with people, like especially with my kids, because I'm like, I'm really concerned that they get resources. And sometimes when we write resources, we think we're being clear, but we're not aware of how much our perspective shapes the interpretation. So then when we see like somebody picking up the toolkit or the manual, and then they start implementing, it's like, whoa, oh, there's a few things that we still need to work out in terms of making it effective, right? But again, lack of resources. I don't think I need to stress how, I mean, our public education systems, you know, the funding and the resources and the professional development, all that type of stuff is definitely just more neat. Any other questions? Well, thank you for coming. Thank you.