 So I think we'll get started. So Nin Delevisie, Cheryl Simon, Gipu Begumjeej, Abigwetnawaj. I just want to welcome everybody. My name is Cheryl Simon. I am from PEI. The word that I actually use, Abigwetnawaj, it actually means like it's the people like of the island. So it's a little bit of a distinction with respect to that. But I'm excited to see somebody face this. It's just the ones I remember from just a class that I gave a while ago. So tonight we're going to be talking about Aboriginal and Indigenous law. Is there a difference? Because the answer is absolutely there is. And we're going to walk through what those differences are. I've brought some birch bark to highlight and demonstrate some of the components about Indigenous law that sometimes is difficult to take out of the abstract. So as I said, my name is Cheryl Simon. I'm an only Abit, which means that I'm a Mi'kmaq woman. The picture that I have here is what I usually use for my introduction. It's my favorite picture and it's my son when he was a few months old outpicking sweetgrass. Not too far from Peggy's Cove. And whenever we're talking about Indigenous law, Indigenous and everything, everybody in my family, the elders, community members, the knowledge keepers always say, you have to take your kids. You have to take your kids with everything that you do. So this was Declan getting used to being on my back in the rocking motion, bending down, picking up, the smell of the sweetgrass patch, because every time the wind blows and the grass moves, you can smell it. You know, the heat, the bugs, everything that goes along with it. And this was literally the start of the knowledge transfer, you know, when it comes to my children. So my background is actually, I'm new to academia. I have spent pretty much my entire adult life working with Indigenous communities across the country. I worked very briefly in a law firm, but realized that it wasn't what I wanted to do. It wasn't why I went to law school. The clients I had was a corporate lawyer. They weren't who I wanted to work with. And so I left that very quickly and started working with a national organization developing culturally relevant and appropriate governance structures. And so I've been in flying communities. Some communities we have to go through a ceremony to even get into the talk with the leadership in the communities. And it was a really dynamic job. But then having children, I came back and it's been a really fantastic working just in my own territory. So even though my district is Everguit, it's nice to be in Mi'kmaq territory. I remember when I moved home, I stopped in at the gas station in Churro and I walked in and the guy behind the desk says, Oh, what's your bad number? Because it's like, Oh, my Lord, he recognizes me as Mi'kmaq. It was just so refreshing to be back home again. So I'm going to start out with this presentation just talking about some terminology. Because I think a lot of it gets complicated. People get nervous and scared to use words because they're not sure if they're going to offend, what's appropriate. So I thought that that would be a good starting point. And then I'm going to walk through some sources of Indigenous law, what people are writing about it. But then also, like I said with the birch bark, some really practical examples of what we mean by it. It's something that I was just speaking with my mother. She's an elder in PEI. And she and Albert Marshall and some other people were talking about, it's now safer for Indigenous people to start sharing. Because for a long time, it had to be hidden. We were worried about it being misappropriated, used in the wrong way. But now it's safer. We have to, now as Indigenous people, go out and start actively sharing more about what we know and how we think and what our worldview is. So I'm going to start giving those examples based on my experiences. Then we're going to move on to Aboriginal law to demonstrate that distinction between the two concepts. And then also talk about moving forward. Because throughout the course of this, you're going to see the vast differences between Aboriginal and Indigenous law. But what do we do with that as Canadians? What does reconciliation even mean? Is it just a buzzword? If we don't put meaning into this, and if we don't have action items with it, then it's only ever going to be a word. And when it comes to migamal language, we're verb-based. Most 80% of our words are based on verbs, right? Action items. So I would say we have to breathe the life into this to make it sure that these are verbs that we're talking about and not just nouns. So let's get started. So first of all, who are we? We're on migamal territory. But the word migamal is not actually from... It's a post-contact word. I remember when I moved in with my grandmother, she would always talk about ulnu. And so ulnu is the word that we have for ourselves. It's what we use in our language. And it basically translates to one of the people. And a lot of Indigenous nations across this country, their words for themselves usually have a similar translation. One of the people. And the cool thing about this is that it's not based necessarily on a particular ethnicity. So if I was a migamal person, I'm talking about another migamal person, I would call them an ulnu. But I'm also talking about people that are Cree, or Blackfoot, or Haudenosaunee, or Gitsat, because they're one of the people, too. They're Indigenous. I would use the same word for them. It's kind of like a really nice relational type of word to use that connects people to it. So migamal is the post-contact word. It's not offensive. I'm thinking that's right. But it comes from... There's a couple of different theories as to where it comes from. But really, it's kind of a derivative of words for our larger extended kinship systems. So you can kind of picture one of those TV commercials, like, what word would you have for this village? It's like, oh, Canada. So it's kind of the same thing. When people came in, they're like, you know, what word would you have for everybody? Because we have really expansive kinship system. It makes sense that that's the type of word that we would use to describe everybody. So that's where the word migma comes from. But the people that started developing the written language, we had a symbol, like a... They call it a sacrafish writing system. In English, it's like a hieroglyph. And so we had a writing system. But the orthography was developed by linguists. And so the pronunciation of our vowels is similar to French. And the K's are like a G and the Q is on the silent. The T's like a B, this type of thing. So in that orthography, that writing system, migma would be spelled like that. But if you're British and coming to this territory and have no interest in actually learning the language, you would look at it and say it and write it in English. And that's where mikmak comes from. So that's why we've moved away from mikmak and either olnug or migma are the words that we use for ourselves. So people you'll commonly hear. And some of the old folks admittedly will use mikmak because it's kind of what they grew up with when they're speaking in English. But in our language, it's definitely olnug is what you hear people using more often. So another important phrase is indigenous nations. And these are the traditional governance systems. Unfortunately in Canada, there's no legal mechanism to recognize an indigenous nation. And what I mean by that is like think about mikmak, right? Like we cover five different provinces, but if we wanted to come together and work as a nation and pass laws, have gatherings, this type of stuff, people tend to deal with us based on the provincial boundaries. And if we want to hold property, you know, if we want to be like an education authority, for instance, there's no legal mechanism for the mikmak nation to exist. And so that is a bit of a problem when you're talking about nationhood and self-governance and reconciliation if we're literally unable to function within the current Canadian society without having that recognition. That is different than bands. And even though the tone of my voice, bands, the way that I said that, right, bands, that is something that was created under the Indian Act. And when indigenous people started saying like we are self-governing, we are nations, we're the first nations of this country, the government in very typical fashion said, oh, okay, well, we'll scratch out the word band and use first nation and just keep functioning along. But this is actually just the smaller communities. It's not actually the nation. So my band, my Indian Act band is Abigailit in PEI, which is an anglicized version of Abigailit with the name of the district. But it's just a community. People call us the Abigailit First Nation. That kind of waters down the claim to nationhood, right? So it's important to know that distinction in terms of what we're actually talking about. That being said, there is some overlap. Picture a bit of a VIN diagram, right? Because those communities, even though most of them are constructs of the Indian Act, they are still groups of Mi'kmaq and indigenous people living together with government instructors that are still expressing themselves culturally, legally, all this type of stuff. So there is overlap there, but sometimes they'll see people wearing on as two hats, right? Like, am I acting as an Indian Act chief right now? Or am I acting as the leader of a Mi'kmaq community? And some bands like Madanagya in New Brunswick, their Indian Act band is actually the same village site that people have been living on for over 4,000 years. So when you go up there, it's a really great energy. It wasn't forced. It was just people never left that site. So sometimes there's overlap, but there is a distinction between bands and nations, and it's important to remember that just calling something a First Nation doesn't make it so. Oh, I forgot to say, if anybody has any questions, feel free to ask as I go along, right? Like, hopefully I'll get some really good dialogue going with this. Okay. Only way to blue down. I was going to put the translation, but then I was like, no, because I've been told by people like Duma Young that if you put the English words, people will use the English and not learn the Mi'gma. So only way to blue down roughly is like this, our legal ways, the ways that we govern ourselves, our legal system, right? And you hear it a lot more. People are not calling it our laws. Only way to blue down or Mi'gma to blue down or Mi'gma will to blue down, right? So from derivatives of it, but it's very expansive and it's not like the Canadian system, but it's definitely something that we're going to be talking about again with the Birch Bar because we've gone through. So I as an Ulnuk person on Ulnuk territory dealing with Ulnuk to blue down, it automatically shifts it kind of more into that nationhood concept as opposed to using English words and thinking about laws the way that people are used to looking at, you know, piece of legislation, you know, a court decision, that type of thing. That is different from Aboriginal law. Aboriginal law is where there is intersection between Indigenous peoples and the Crown, right? So treaties, impact benefits, agreements, things where we're dealing with entities that are outside, external to our nations. That's Aboriginal law. And it's really distressing when people who are practicing Aboriginal law think that they're practicing Indigenous law because the tendency is for people to interchange the words when we're describing people, right? Am I an Aboriginal person? You know, well then I must be practicing Aboriginal law. What's the difference if I use Indigenous? There was actually a lawyer that I know in Southern Alberta working for an oil and gas company. And because when people start saying Indigenous as opposed to Aboriginal, he's like, oh, I practice Indigenous law. Like, I can guarantee you do not, right? I can guarantee that you representing oil and gas do not. So it's really important to know that just because people in kind of common language are using those words interchangeably, they do have meaning and it's important to know. Which brings me to Indigenous Peoples. The S, as I'll say in my class of that, is really important because that is the recognition of the self-governance rights of a group, of an ethnic group, right? So if we're talking about Indigenous Peoples, that includes like the Miigba Nation, the Blackfoot Nation, the Cree, you know, this type of stuff. And it's not race-based. This is something that the government has really done a good job of teaching people in Canada that Indigenous Peoples are a race. And the concept of race comes about from 17th century Europe in order to justify slavery. You had to dehumanize people. You had to create an other to justify the slave trade. And what at the time was the, you know, the foundation of the global economy. So this idea that Indigenous Peoples, as a nation, are a race is something that is just not a fact. It's a fiction. And so when you hear people talking about, oh, like I'm a full Indian, I'm a half Indian or something like this, they're talking about, like, they've internalized a system of supremacy. They've internalized a system of, like, breeding something out and not having a thriving, like, nation based on, like, a civic model, like Canada, right? It's a country. There's a lot of different people that make up Canada. But for some reason, when we talk about Indigenous Peoples, people think race. And they start thinking about things like skin tone, you know, color, this type of stuff. And that's not what our nationhood is about. So any questions about this terminology that I've kind of, that was a lot to dump on you right at the beginning. But is that, okay, I'll move forward then. Okay, because I have some more. So the only reason is, like, let's talk about MIGMA, right? So again, just a little bit of a recap, we've got the Ulnup, MIGMA, and with the Q, and MIGMA with the W, that's just grammar, right? One's a noun, one is an adjective. The W is an adjective. So that's what that is. Or a land, if you're talking about MIGMA people, then MIGMAGI is the land of the MIGMA. Our nation, again, MIGMA or an Ulnup nation, indigenous peoples, and our legal system, Ulnui de Bloudon. So I swear that there won't be a test, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of a recap without the definition that's there. Okay, so now that we've got that down, we know who I am, let's start talking about Ulnui de Bloudon. See, I shouldn't have put it down with the English. So this is my great, great, great, one of my answers is one of my grandmothers. She's actually technically a great, great, great aunt, but we don't refer to them that way. It's a grandmother of mine. My grandfather was from the Schubedagdi, but his family was actually from the valley, and then the government forced everybody up to Schubedagdi band, again, that tome, to try to centralize people. So this is one of my grandmothers in my family. So when we're talking about Ulnui de Bloudon, the great John Burroughs, and he would probably laugh at me for calling him that, has spent a lot of time thinking about the different commonalities that indigenous nations have when it comes to de Bloudon, right? What are some things that are kind of similar? And he has five, and he will be the first to say that this list is not exclusive. There's definitely overlap, and it's just some of the systems. So I, with the humility that I have, would like to add a sixth with material culture, and I'll explain to you why I think that that's important. But, so this area of sacred law, natural law, deliberative law, positivistic law, and then customary. Some of these are easier to understand as mainstream Canadians than others, but I'm going to walk through and give examples of these under the guidance of my grandmother. So let's start talking about sacred law. Examples of sacred law include things that, like our creation stories, for instance. And if you go online, you can Google Mi'kmaq creation story, and there's a wonderful YouTube videos that will come up, that will walk you through. Steve and Augustine is the cousin of mine, and a few people, they've developed these productions. So I encourage you to take a look at them, right? Because we're on Mi'kmaq territory. But I want to talk a little bit about another area of sacred law, and that's with what the first treaties are. Whenever I first started learning about the treaties, the eldest group in New Brunswick always said, you have to start with the first treaties, right? You can't just start talking about the treaties with the British. You have to talk about the first treaties. And I've really come to understand that that is really critical because these sacred treaties are ancient. They were way before we had contact, and they govern, like with the de Bloudon, they govern the way that we interact with the beings that we share our territory with. So these first treaties are with things like Maudwes, Lamu, and Mu'un, right? So again, try not to use the English words, but I thought I'd give you a visual aid as to which animals we're talking about. So there's a story, for instance, about Maudwes, up there on the top left. Maudwes and the Ulnuk had an agreement. They had a sacred treaty, and it had to govern the obligations and the conditions of interacting with the Maudwes people. And we always talk about the people that we entered to choose as people, right? So the Blamu people, the Maudwes people, the Mu'un people, because there's no distinction in our language in Ulnuk between hominoids and non-humanoids. We're all beings. We all share our territories. We all have autonomy. And so the treaties were entered into with these beings. So Maudwes, for those that don't know, is a rodent. Extremely peaceful animal, right? Very peaceful. They're really cute, too. I encourage you to ever see one. They are adorable. They've got these little paws. The babies are just really... I want one, but my husband says no. So I do a lot of porcupine quill work. So this is why Maudwes is really near and dear to my heart, right? So Maudwes is a really peaceful animal. Doesn't do harm. The quills are purely for defense. Really, really kind creature. And back in the ancient times, so the treaty was that we would be able to use quills. We were able to use the animal, but we had to be respectful of the values that Maudwes brought to this relationship. And so this is why we use the quills in our art form. We do sometimes eat the meat. It's the last step in my relationship with Maudwes. I haven't quite gotten there yet, but I hear it's tasty. But this coexistence that was based on responsibilities and obligations. But there was a warrior in Onamagi who took the quills and thought, that would make a really good addition to a war club. And so attached the quills and used it deliberately to inflict pain. When Maudwes found out about it, Livid, this was a violation of our agreement with respect to how we were going to interact with each other and make more people broke it. Onamagi has never had porcupine scents. They've even tried introducing them. And if you think about how prolific breeders, rodents can be, it's pretty astounding that it hasn't worked. So this violation is really in the old times and we still haven't atoned for it. They're still not back on that territory. So these are the type of stories that when I was starting to do my art with porcupine quills, I was taught because you have to understand the conditions of your interaction. If you're going to harvest the quills and you're going to use them, you have to make sure that you're upholding the obligations and the peaceful nature and what the conditions were that Maudwes put on that relationship. So this is an example of some of the sacred law, the first treaties that we have. I have a lot of stories about Blamoo and Moonesview. Moonesview is actually, there's a story about Moonesview as the female and she adopted a big boy into the family. And so this idea that that is the degree of relationship and we have a lot of teachings from Moone. They are actually self-medicating animals. So if they get hurt, they will seek out the plants that will give them pain, relief, help them heal. And that's where a lot of the teachings that Miigwan people have with medicines on the land come from. So there's a lot at stake when it comes to upholding your responsibilities with these areas of the law. But they're also the foundation of what went into the later treaties with the British, right? They're the reason why some of our conditions and some of our practices and our de-bluedon are not, we can't compromise on them because where we're coming from with our worldview goes back to the ancient times and we are still upholding, this is why if I harvest, I have to make offerings. This is why if I'm taking bark, I have to go to the tree and tell them who I am and what I'm going to do with the bark that I take from it, right? So they're very strict teachings that are still being taught to people. And I think people think that because it's a modern era, you know, it's 2024, that this stuff doesn't still apply. But this is what we're actively teaching. For instance, when I have my child on my back and I'm out harvesting, he has to know the responsibilities that he has with it and that all comes back to the sacred law. And again, it's not for like, I do not want to be the one that drives some of these animals off our territory. So another component, there's two words here. One of them are probably familiar to people. Nedugolim is the harvesting, like only take what is needed, right? So I've already talked about the fact that olnug doesn't mean just humanoids. So what is needed is not just what humans need. It's also what Madhuas needs, what Blumu, all of the beings on our territory, right? And so Nedugolim has been used a lot to explain to people, fisheries, you know, with the fishing activity, post-martial, this type of stuff, why there's concern about the way that the fisheries being regulated and the principles that make want people have. But some of the elders that I work with in New Brunswick, it's a bit, they're getting on easy with so much focus on Nedugolim because it's a harvesting activity. And that seems to align with Western ideals regarding individual rights to harvest. And that's not the foundation of what our laws are. You have to couple that with ideas like anguodum, which is the caring for something. And when you do that, it de-centers human activity and makes the resource, the center and the focus. Because you can't, if you're not caring for what it is that you want to harvest, you won't be able to have that function, right? So it's more about balance and making sure that the harvesting is only a subset of what we do when we're out in the woods or on the waters or things like that and you have to understand it. I put this picture here of a basket to illustrate this point. So this basket is made out of black ash, whiskle, and it is under threat by a beetle called an emerald ash borer beetle. There's no stopping this beetle on this territory. It will kill off every ash tree. We haven't figured out a way to say it. It's an invasive species and I cannot even begin to explain to you what it feels like and what if we get emotional to know that activity that my answers have done will end in my lifetime. It will end. And so if we take these principles of unquotum, of caring for something and neticulin, what it does is that it makes my needs as a basket maker not the focus of this. We've been spending a lot of time with my uncle. I made this basket for him as a reflection to the teachings that he gave me as he was teaching me how to do baskets. It was my gift to him to demonstrate how well he taught me. And part of those lessons have to deal with unquotum and neticulin because with the beetle coming you go out to the woods and there's a temptation and say, well we should just like cut down the trees that are still healthy that we can have a stockpile and we can keep teaching the kids and we can do it, right? But that's also a very commodification kind of approach, individualistic approach to it. That would completely disregard the make my teachings of things like unquotum and neticulin. And my uncle was like, no, because if we do that then the beetle's not the problem. Then we're the problem, right? So his focus, what we've been really working on is documenting the process, the step-by-step process of how to do split basketry that way and collecting seeds and the trees only give seeds every once every seven years and you have to have the mature trees that give up those seeds and there was a couple when we were out in the woods and someone was like, no we can't go get that because I got them just two years ago. We're going to have to wait another five years before the seeds come and I'm like, let's hope that that tree lives five years before the beetle kills that otherwise we won't be able to get more seeds. So we've been focusing on getting seeds, documenting the process in the hope, in the real hope that when the beetle has finished ravaging the species that we will have enough seeds and hopefully the woods will be in a condition that it's good enough to be able to replant and that we'll have stored away our knowledge with the seeds and that future generations can bring it back. What I'm worried about though is that part of the reason why so many of the trees are under threat is because climate change is making them sick, right? You go through the woods, you see leaves on trees, you think that they're healthy but they are not and so I don't know if the beetle would have been able to get as bad as it was if the woods were healthier, right? So this is again the practical application this summer of these principles that we're using. Any questions about that? All right. Oh, yep. Right now let's just hope they don't mutate. Let's hope they don't. And also it's like it takes seven years for the tree to get the seeds and then it takes three years for the seeds to actually germinate to even get to the sapling, right? So we're talking about timeframes that are just not capable of dealing with that kind of threat so it's just fingers crossed. Okay. So let's talk about natural. This is why I bought the bark. Natural law, when you read John Burroughs' description of that I think that that's an area that people have a lot of difficulty trying to visualize, right? It's very abstract. Like this idea that you can know the land in a way that you are actually getting legal principles from the land itself and the land is speaking to you. And I always kind of laugh when I say that because when we used to talk about the land speaking to us, like look what Disney did, right? With the talking trees and Pocahontas and stuff like that, that's not what we're talking about, right? So when I talk about talking to the trees it means that you have to, when you start working with them you have to learn the tree, right? Like I said, you literally have to go out and introduce yourself to the trees. So this is my friend Kay. She was one of my apprentices dealing with the porcupines. She is teaching her son Riley. This is the picture of his first harvesting of a birch tree. And if you see, she's got her hand on his hand to literally show him the amount of pressure that's used you know, like every step of the way. So the trees, when we harvest the bark it's a very, it's a sustainable practice. What happens is that this sounds weird as humanoids but like after the solstice the tree starts actually already preparing for winter it will pull all of the sugar water out of the leaves and the branches into the core of the tree, run it down to the roots in preparation of going dormant. So because of that all of the layers of bark fuse together and it comes, like it feels almost leathery, right? And this is when we harvest it to make wigwams, to make canoes, and it's strong. Like you could go, like they used to go with a version going canoes in Birch Park, in Birch Park. And so this is what happens after you've harvested a scab will form around the tree that will stay on for about five years or so and then when the scab falls off this is what the tree looks like. And the cool thing is is that if you really know your trees you can actually tell from the outside how thick they are, right? You can also tell where they are in the healing process and it's really refreshing when people will like oh let's just go harvest like look at that tree but they don't know that it's already been harvested. So you can tell the difference like the kind of like the strip hopefully on that last picture as to where it was cut like versus with the older bark. So you have to really, really get to know the species and the reason why I'm telling you all of this is because I'm kind of setting the stage for talking about the natural what are the trees saying to us, right? So I being from PEI I usually go home to harvest in my own district and Kay and I and a couple of other ones we're the only ones really in our communities that are actively harvesting bark. So we know that the trees are ready. They used to be ready when the fireflies first come out. That's when the trees are ready but with climate change and pesticides we don't see a lot of fireflies anymore so now we kind of have to look for other markers but that used to be when we knew that they were ready. So when you go and harvest a birch tree this is what healthy bark looks like, right? You see like really great color like it's just it's beautiful, right? Well I find it beautiful you might not find it but it's beautiful you just look at it, right? Bark that from a tree that is not healthy will look like this. Can you see the bubbles and everything? And it does this even in the time of harvesting and what happened was last year it was post Fiona at the hurricane and so when you're out in the woods it's a real disservice to forests that we have been taught in Western science that trees compete against each other like I know when I was in biology that was like a race to the top, right? Like they're trying to get the sun they're trying to get out there first like it's survival of the fittest all this kind of social Darwinism like being applied to trees no elder that I've ever talked or a knowledge keeper that I've ever worked with that knows trees ever talks like that what they do is they do this and Western science is starting to catch up and they say they know like trees will pass nutrients to each other when we cut down an ash tree to make our baskets the root system will actually be sustained by other trees with leaves until it can actually send up sprouts that will then get enough leaves that can produce its own chlorophyll and feed it, right? So they feed each other there's a lot of back and forth they're capable of tracing something like the proteins like the berry eats a blumu on the side of a stream and it breaks down the nutrients from that fish they can trace throughout the woods like it's a very cold like the coexistence this is really really strong in the woods, right? and again on Gwodum we're not the only ones that care for the trees other trees do too so K and I and my other friend my cousin Melissa we were out harvesting our bark last year and it was post Fiona and 40% of the woods and PEI were destroyed by that hurricane they're in horrible shape but there are pockets where the woods look okay so we went out last year thinking okay well we were very deliberate with where we go we always check up on the trees that we've harvested before because we have that stewardship responsibilities they get to be kind of friends so we were out and even the trees that looked good and were in little areas where there had been no hurricane damage looked like that and the moment we were like oh my so then we checked like what is happening was those healthy trees were sending their nutrients and compromising their own health to try to help the trees that were around them and so once we realized that that's what was happening we voluntarily agreed as a group that we were not going to harvest on PEI and so that rule that prohibition of human activity didn't come from the government didn't come from the government didn't come from the elders didn't come from our leaders so we got that message allowed and clear from the land from the trees and so we'll go and check and see how they're doing this year hopefully a little bit better but this is an example of natural law and because it kind of requires it requires a degree of knowledge about the territory that is not easily accessible to people that are outside of our culture it has the most difficulty if you tell somebody well you'll learn the law from the land so this is why I bring the bark to show you what the difference is so when the trees are giving us a message you can see this is understandable you don't have to go out to the woods to know how to read them from the outside so that's why I wanted to give you that example of it because like I said it's kind of a harder knowledge to access any questions about that so if you don't sound like Pocahontas yeah yeah and you definitely see that a lot with the differences with the black ash for instance because they depend on the water levels and things and it's also interesting what happens with birch bark because the salinity in the soil once that changes the quality of the bark changes as well so you can really tell with anything that's going on around in the woods because it has this ripple effect right so for me? yeah any other questions? alright so deliberative law is easier this is when people get around, they sit together and they decide we're going to write a law about something we're going to take action on something this is very much similar to what our law makers in mainstream do so usually this area of deliberative law, deliberately making a rule that people are going to have to follow that's easier to understand than the trees talk to us right so I put this up this is actually a picture of the Mi'kmaq from New Brunswick and the leadership getting together to work together on some legal principles right on so I wouldn't say it's de blu de an but in all the way de blu de an because they're allies of us like they're separate nations but this was the working together with the New Brunswick setting out rules and things like that that would need to be adhered to so again, it's not difficult to understand that so I'm just going to move along quicker from that one than I did with the trees the positivistic law it's a little bit interesting how this plays out between different nations like I know as a Mi'kmaq person we don't have we're very much consensus based where our decisions are made traditionally with the entire community if something is being decided the communities have the ability to ratify even if the leaders have agreed on something so we have this like communal expectation that if our leaders are making decisions that they will come back and ratify with the community so as a result the positivistic kind of approach to lawmaking I think aligns a little bit more with some other the way that other nations function where it's a little bit more top down but with Mi'kmaq we tend to be a little bit less hierarchical not less very like unhierarchical even the word that we have for our chief Sautmaq means somebody who cares for people so it's not about authority and opposing on people but an example of this is actually the reading of wampum belts and so these are the terms and conditions of agreements that were made that were documented and codified using co-hog beads in a woven pattern that reflects the terms of the agreement so reading that this is what was agreed to we have to follow it but again some other nations that are a little bit more hierarchical they have definitely a lot more positivistic law than I think we have in Mi'kmaq but I put this up here just to kind of show people I probably should have put a picture back more about what the design looks like on wampum belts if anybody's in Montreal and the McCord Museum has an exhibit right now on wampum belts how did they react to that did it have a reaction from someone? yeah the McCord Museum is really interesting in terms of what they have so that's there but yeah so these are the wampum belts and it's really interesting because I always find that in Mi'kmaq culture the cultural value is all about balance keeping things in balance and I always find it interesting that the spokespeople of our nation were men but as an elder member too says don't confuse the the mouthpiece with the brains behind the operation because it was the whole community that were coming together and so I find that with wampum the role of women is really not focused on a lot but they were the ones that were actually making the beats that would get woven into the wampum with the leadership agreements and stuff and if anybody is aware of co-hawks or a type of clam and it's really hard to get this color of shell and then to actually hand-drill the holes in it and make the beats it takes a lot of skill and a lot of time and a lot of effort and so I always kind of raise my eyebrow when they only talk about wampum in terms of who gets to interpret them because it tends to be more of the people that identify with the male role and the other roles within our community women and other genders they tend not to get focused on as much yeah well but a lot of our agreements don't expire that way they get built upon and things and so there's been a lot of work actually within the past I'd say five years where people are getting back to weaving wampum and some people that are in active negotiations with for instance crown entities or one is okay well let's record it and wampum and that will freak beer crots out right like this idea but this is how we always did it and it's really amusing from the indigenous perspective to watch the reaction of a group of people like how are we going to know what it says how are we going to know the terms and it's like oh my yes isn't that difficult when you're not the one that's holding the pan or the kohok shell right but yeah so definitely there's a move to create new ones but the old ones haven't expired and they're meant to kind of continue on and they reflect agreements that were meant to be kind of almost in perpetuity right and it's it also has to do with the fact like whether or not you're a linear thinker or not that plays into it all as well but this really like reading wampum and the idea of wampum and the idea of like like I said not controlling the pen really disconcerting for a lot of people yeah yeah it's not completely universal but there's definitely like clusters of like nations around different like language groupings the stuff like that where it was used as well as the interactions and the international diplomacy between nations where wampum would have been reflected so it's definitely not universal but it is it's more than just a couple of nations so customary law this is actually the picture on the bottom is a group of the women in my family this is again something that is more I think accessible to people in terms of customary adoption, customary marriages a lot of people don't know that one of the first recognitions of Indigenous law by the common law in Canada was actually the recognition of Indigenous marriage law and what it was is that men of European descent had taken had wives that and they married based on the Indigenous law of the nation and wanted to marry European women and have heirs to inherit their property and wanted those marriages set aside but the courts actually recognized the Indigenous law so it's something that is not foreign to Canada and even the Indian Act will recognize custom adoption so as long as you're upholding the Indigenous law of the nation they will recognize that adoption without having to go to court and go to family law and that type of stuff so I put up this customary adoption and the foster care just because there's been a lot of codification around education and children and if you just think about the history of the residential schools and children apprehensions and stuff like that so it's not surprising that there's a lot of work regarding codification of this to make sure that it's really understood but there's a lot of customary law beyond that like that's just a real small drop in the bucket but again you kind of have to really get integrated to kind of understand this so material culture is the one that I've added and like I said again with me trying to be a little humble it's like hey John what about Waltis and material cultures and stuff and this again has to do with the differing world views so Waltis Bowles and other items in our culture will have an animacy because we divide the world up between animate and inanimate and so something that to mainstream Canadians would just be like property buy, sell, trade all this type of stuff that's not actually appropriate for some of our items because they actually have animacy they are being an entity in their own right and when you think there's a lot of protocols that come up around items excuse me where it's also inappropriate for instance for museums to put some of our things behind glass because they're meant to die a death right like this idea that you would keep something in perpetuity keep it pristine not use it, not touch it and like I remember my grandmother was always just really flummoxed by this because she was the master basket weaver and people would always come and say like Mary Jane like can you fix this what? we love it and stuff like that and she's like well like they can't let it go like they can't let it die so she fixed it and my uncle always jokes that our family baskets have lifetime guarantee but they are meant to return to the earth and so this idea that there's laws around what you should do with them how they should be treated how you get laws from the sacred items this is something that again is at odds with the quantification of things right so waltz bowls are a really interesting story in magma culture because they are a gambling game and what's fun about them is that you draw on your connection with your ancestors to help you in so I always joke that I went against my husband like I'm closer to my ancestors because it's my territory and he's got Irish descent right but there's also ceremonial component to these bowls so it is a fun game people play that connection but they were also used in ceremony and how they were used is that they would fill them with water and there was divination that would occur and that did not sit well with missionaries and like the Indian agents and stuff like that so a lot of the old bowls you'll see will actually have a hole drilled into them to prevent the actual full use and compromise that intimacy of the object so we weren't able to do it so there are a lot of teachings around items and it's really frustrating when people are like they won't let them die and I always tell people like if you want you know magma quill work, if you want magma basketry, if you like it if you want more, don't hang on to the old ones, support our rights in the harvesting and protect the environment to allow us to keep making like that's the actual living, breathing component of it, not hanging on to something that's considered to be an artifact and then trying to keep it pristine preventing it from dying the death that it's supposed to once it's been, life has been breathed into it so again it's kind of like this real clash in terms of worldview with respect to things alright so that's the end of the probably the cool indigenous stuff that you may or may not have been familiar with so before I move on does anybody else have any questions with respect to that this part I won't lie it's not as fun but alright so aboriginal as I mentioned this is the interaction between indigenous peoples now you know how important that S is and the crown and we were here today about what is the crown right but this is actually like so treaties are an example of this and in Mi'kmaqi initially our relationships with the crown were driven through military objectives right because contrary to the myth of Canadian creation there was no conquering this land was settled and this is actually a copy of one of the Mi'kmaqi treaties that was signed here in Halifax which actually is just over at the archives if anybody ever wants to go see it it's there right it's kiddie quarter to the building this is my point in that direction because it's just across the street so yes this is an example of the treaties and they were in this part of the territory actually signed on behalf of King George III so if anybody watches Bridgeton that was the king that our treaties were signed with and they were the Mi'kmaqi component that got included with them had that foundation of the sacred treaties all that world view about the law like Ongodom Nendigalim all these other principles and so when I look at our treaties I've never yet as a harvester been out on the land and think oh well like what I'm doing is not covered because it's all there but unfortunately the understanding of it is not so Aboriginal law is made also made through things like legislation court decisions negotiated agreements for land use all this type of stuff so it's a very expansive thing but this is why that guy out in Calgary was not practicing indigenous law like he wasn't talking about this stuff he was talking about this stuff so this is what Aboriginal law has its foundation in so this is a quote by it's not indigenous researcher William Wiccan and he wrote a lot about Mi'kmaq treaties and things like that and this idea that the treaty relationship in this part of the world in Mi'kmaqi there was no effort on the part of the British the way that there had been with the French in order to understand our culture understand our language know our governance systems to blue dawn all this type of stuff so when you really look at the relationship there's a real disconnect between the Mi'kmaq perspective of it and the Crown perspective of it that still exists today so this is the quote with him with respect to what the focus was and so when you're talking about military threats it wasn't this the initial treaty in 1725 in Mi'kmaqi it was meant to say all of the settlements that exist on this territory can stay but it's like there's a hedge that's put around them and if there's any expansion beyond that hedge the full consent of the Mi'kmaq is required so people have this misconception that because they weren't like the number treaties were the land sessions that our treaties don't deal with land they do but in a very declarative way in terms of the territory right but again there was a bit of a disconnect with respect to what was understood by that so this is a picture of a treaty medal it is actually at the Museum of Natural History here in Halifax I don't think this one is actually currently on exhibit but if you ever go down to the bowels in the theater collection they have so much stuff that is there and so these treaty medals were given to people at the signing of them and what's interesting about again our peace and friendship treaties here is that if you ever heard that phrase like bearing the hatchet did you know that it's actually bearing the hatchet and the musket and down by spring garden where the courthouse is down there that was the governor's farm it was on the outskirts of Halifax at the time and there was a ceremony where a hatchet and a musket were buried so I always joke we should get out the metal detectors and go down and find out where that happened but it's interesting how the shift has been made from bearing the hatchet and the musket because when you say just bearing the hatchet it makes it sound like the indigenous people were capitulating that they were compromising something and that the British kind of had a little bit of a dominance with it but that's not actually what happened and so when you look at how quickly that disconnect between the actual relationship happened it didn't take very long and so from a Mi'kmaq perspective our treaties were like entering into a marriage and I always tell people if you look at your wedding our wedding ring this is evidence of a relationship and the relationship that I was in when I got married 20 years later is not the same relationship then we've been through a lot, things have changed we've changed, got a little bit bigger but there's been a lot of ups and downs with it but the relationship and the marriage is what has held steady the treaty relationship from a Mi'kmaq perspective is similar it was entering into a long term relationship and we agreed that we would get together and work out things to prevent war and there was a lot of ups and downs with it but it was really, it meant to be keep going it was never going to end and so when you look at that type of understanding and then look at what the Canadian Constitution has to say it divides this up between we get section 91 of the Canadian Constitution deals with the federal government and because initially it was felt that if treaties and the Indigenous relationship was left in the hands of local politicians they would too likely be swayed by the people that vote for them and it would cause instability right, so that was one of the reasons why like responsibility for Indigenous people was put at the federal level because it was more in the national interest than leaving it in the provincial according to Peter Hawk so the Indian Act section 91-24 has as a federal responsibility in lands, Indians and lands reserved for Indians that's where the reserves come from reservations are in the states but we also have this section 35 that existing Aboriginal and treaty rights of Aboriginal peoples are here by recognized in firms there's some wiggle words in there with respect to like existing like they have to extinguish them this whole idea like from an Indigenous perspective that means everything from a government perspective it often means nothing until we agree to what it's going to mean and again huge disconnect between those two things so this whole relationship set up a dominance a perceived dominance by the Canadian government as asserted jurisdiction over Indigenous people that is not actually reflective of what the treaty relationships were about and so there's been a shift in Canada with respect to that so when I talk about assumed jurisdiction there's things that the Canadian government was never ever in charge of because again we're a nation we're a nation so the thing with things like defining who is our identity who are Mi'kmaq people there was never any mention that that would be something that we wouldn't be deciding like it was ludicrous to think at the time of the treaty making that our crown would be determining who's Mi'kmaq it just wasn't going to happen our leadership, the Indian Act defines leader who our leaders are going to be people were joking because the Indian Act actually doesn't require chiefs of an Indian Act ban to be Indians and so somebody was like because you know with the primaries going on with the states they're like oh somebody should nominate Trump for a Milbrook chief coming up in the upcoming election things like again like land regulation harvesting, education, health and so what happened is that instead of being partners with nation to nation relationships like the treaties the government decided to start controlling these areas right and so the Aboriginal law a lot of it has to do with indigenous people fighting against that assumed jurisdiction of the crown over those areas of our lives and under the Indian Act they call it cradle degree of legislation from the time that you're born until you die it even determines where you can be buried I know when like my mother when she the whole identity I was giving lecture on this week some of you were there it was always focused on men right not women so the original definition of who an Indian was was an Indian man a child of an Indian man and a woman married to an Indian man right so this idea that like giving birth as an indigenous woman wouldn't make your child indigenous is a really foreign concept but the government controls it and they still control it today and for some reason Canadians don't have a problem with that degree of intrusion on indigenous peoples lives right so a lot of the issues they also made it illegal to fight these systems to raise money to hire lawyers and things like this so I don't like to hear a lot of people well if you guys have had these rights how come it's taken so long to get them and that was really really stacked against us so a lot of the issue and a lot of the work is trying to get our nations back to having jurisdiction over this and just kind of taking back control which is a really good segue anybody have an issue like that was kind of a weird you can tell which area of the law I had more fun with right? not enough because part of the problem and I've talked with some lawyers that work for instance at the privy council and things like that they truly think that everything that could possibly happen in Canada is accounted for under these two sections right so if it's a section 35 right with Aboriginal people oh well that's the federal government and so there's like the way that the law has been taught is that there's no room and so anything that indigenous people want to do has to kind of be fitted in under the Canadian system and so it's taken a lot to get people to the point when they're like okay we have multiple legal systems in this country and we need to start working with them in conjunction with the common law system and not have it always be assuming that that is the default right so it's taken a lot to get to this point but yes like and we've been saying it since day one right I remember when I was in my early like 20s when I first started going to these meetings with chiefs and stuff I used to get so bored I was like oh the rhetoric right like they're just saying the same thing over and over and I go to these meetings like oh there's this chief again he's you know I know exactly what he's going to say this time and it took a long time to get older to understand oh no they're not a broken record it's a consistency in the message and the teachings and the world history of what our laws are about right so now I have a better understanding of why it seemed that way but yeah it's taken a lot to get to that point just the fact like that we have laws you know and there's been a lot of horrific quotes from the bench saying that you know sabbages didn't have the capacity for it and stuff and and sometimes I won't lie it's almost easier to deal with the overt racist writings from the court as opposed to the like recognition that doesn't mean anything because it essentially has the same effect and that's really like what difference does it make and it's really unfortunate when you're talking about rights recognition any other yep well for one thing like like so it does have because legally that's what it means right the interaction with the crown and Aboriginal people being the like it's like the Indigenous people that were there at the time that European contact was made so it's kind of like as a Mi'kmaq person I have Aboriginal rights because we are the ones when the Europeans showed you know we are here at this type of stuff that it's a little bit different than people that were kind of new to the territory but it happened to be there when Europeans arrived but they were new to the area and stuff it's really so yeah so they've got legal definitions to them but in general conversation people don't understand the differences and you see like I see this around Facebook all the time Abnormal Aboriginal that's why it's offensive but there's actually a legal definition to it right so it's important to kind of know it to be able to use it appropriately like I love just constantly using the word Indian act under here disappears we're still here in the Constitution as Indians right so even if the Indian act disappeared tomorrow legally might like I'm still in Indian and so what are you going to do with that when there it is in the Constitution it doesn't say Mi'kmaq and so then the idea is like okay well does Indian did they mean Mi'kmaq did they mean Blackfoot did they mean Cree you know that type of stuff but yeah but that's why so even with their own communities there's not a lot of like thorough understanding of why Aboriginal is used but it's got a very specific context any other questions yeah so even if the Indian Act goes away and the question is is that I know again talking about some of the lawyers at DOJ they think well that because the Indian Act defined the Indian clearly that means the same definition applies here but these are two separate sections so do they have two separate meanings right and this idea that yeah like maybe one because this is section 35 Aboriginal and treaty rights maybe this section means Indian according to and not the federal government under the Indian Act that takes a lot of persuasion but that's how we interpret it and when we tell DOJ we're going to do so I'm currently working I have a mandate from the Chiefs in New Brunswick to displace the federal jurisdiction over identity or so we're done we're done with it it's been seven generations of loss and mess get out and they're like what do you mean so that'll be fun uh yeah so all of this okay so let's talk a bit more forward okay so one of the things that we have to understand in this country one is to even understand those terms the difference between Aboriginal law and Indigenous law but also the fact of how much I always say like creation mythology that exists around Canada right there's so quick to dismiss our creation story that's mythological it has no founding effect like it's absurd like how could we put that possibly true like Gluccap brought the island of PEI but the creation story surrounding the Canada is just as fictionalized right well not that ours is fiction but theirs definitely is so there's a lot of legal fictions that have the foundation of Canada but we're not taught that it is so right so the doctrine of discovery you know this idea that when Christian people arrive then they can as long as people are not Christian they can take things right Terinolius no people are here right look at Australia Terinolius there was no it's like no there was Indigenous people that were there um doctrine of reception this idea that when Europeans showed up that the Indigenous like the only way to blue down didn't exist and therefore all of the British law came to Canada and filled like there was this there was room for it the idea that there was actually laws here that were valid that were related to the territory and also the idea that colonial authorities at the time didn't know that right because our treaties were most of them were actually negotiated under protocols and custom like and the Indigenous legal systems of the nation um you look like the British hated having to spend so much money on feasting and gifting when they came to the blogging the French were definitely used to it you know but the British hated the expense of it but they had to do it because that they had to follow on the way to blue dawn when it came to working with people you know in this territory um you know so this idea that there was no laws in Canada and all the British law just transferred over you know like I always talk a lot about how willing the conqueror conquered England and set up absolute ownership of all the land on that island and that of course is relevant to Canada in 2024 right tell me that that's not mythology right but but it's a legal fiction that's the foundation of the system um so yeah the transfer of sovereignty by a French kept me um I think it's Kent McNeil writes about this um about the fact that the people will say well when the British conquered the French they got ownership of Canada from the French right so we beat the French we get the spoils of war therefore we that's how we own the land but what he says is that under French law there was actually no mechanism at the time to actually acquire indigenous land so the question is how did Canada get the land and that's why they didn't is actually the answer right so all like unpacking all of these legal fictions that were taught as fact and as the foundations law and then to start to understand and build up an understanding of indigenous law because learning only it's not just about like um learning the law like you have to learn the language you have to understand the land where the language came from the worldview that goes into it otherwise it's going to be really difficult to really unpack it and the tendency is to have the default be the common law right the British system that's what people are comfortable with and so that's why I think it's like people are starting to get a little nervous right it's talking about harvesting like that sounds a little bit too much like what we're talking about in terms of extraction and harvesting and in terms of how Canada does it we also need to deal so reconciliation what does that actually mean the government actually just had a report that none of the TRC calls to action were fulfilled last year in 2023 none of them when it came to MMIWG the COVID was used as a reason as to why the action plan hadn't been developed let alone implemented we have all of these like the UNDRIP United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples we have the findings of cultural genocide in the Truth and Reconciliation Report actual genocide found in the MMIWG which was accepted by the government they accepted the report so we have all of these things and recognition in our constitution of Aboriginal rights Canada does not have a recognition problem we have an implementation problem an implementation problem I recently was talking with a lawyer that was telling me that even like think about the fisheries here in the Maritime where the moderate livelihood that they found that the MMIWG might have a right to the moderate livelihood the case law actually comes from the United States where when they found that there was a right to the moderate livelihood that meant 50% of the fishery that's not how that got implemented in Canada so we have a lot of recognition of our rights we don't have implementation of them and a lot of times we see the political pressure as part of it I always find it really disturbing that there has been some as documents get declassified cabinet documents and stuff like that I was talking with this in class the other day about how they had focus groups where if Indigenous the situation for Indigenous people is contextualized in human rights violation of human rights if Canadians get outraged by it they want change, they want something done we see ourselves as Canadians as being proponents of human rights if the solution to those problems is self-government Canadians will pull back from the issue so oftentimes you'll see like the boil water orders, the housing situation the genocide MMIWG, the child apprehensions if we talk about human rights violations people don't like it and we'll let's give recognition to the nations give them self-governance give them autonomy over this that's when people are like no way I always tell them why why is that and again think about how we're taught to think about this I'll say it one more time we do not have a recognition problem we have an implementation problem and unfortunately that requires more Canadians to care so this was the list of what Canada needs to do everything that they say they're going to do that would be great these two points here if the federal government has responsibility for Indians and lands reserved for Indians instead of being controlled that could be support of the indigenous nations so it would be a shift still possible as a bit of a decolonization exercise but we haven't even gotten to the point where we can neutralize the effect of the colonial policies that have led to the findings of genocide we haven't even neutralized them we have more children that are currently in care than ever attended residential schools today and yet again we think about this issue with children and being ripped from families is something that's historical well the last school closed in 1996 like it's done not, it's not so so on the indigenous side things we need to heal I always tell people that what we need to do is we need to neutralize the effects of colonization allow for healing to take place allow for decolonization where the nations can actually get autonomy right but right now self-governance is defined by the government they'll say this is who you are and this is what your nationhood means that's not self-governance and also if you have inherent rights inherent rights mean that it means you have them regardless of what's going on external to you if we have inherent rights as indigenous people why do we have to negotiate what that means with the crown they're inherent but again we don't have that approach to this so we need to be able to neutralize the effects of the ongoing genocide we need to decolonize and get autonomy over these issues and then we might be in a position where we can start indigenizing and working as a nation but people kind of want us to go from recognition of the right straight to indigenization as if 150 years hasn't happened right and we just we don't have the capacity to do that and we see that happening a lot where the work tends to get offloaded onto the shoulders of indigenous people and it's like it's not our like anything that deals with like take for instance downhouse these recent verification of indigenous identity right and say well we're going to go to the nations the nations don't have an entity like the Mi'kma'a nation doesn't have consensus as to what the identity means so what are you going to do with that fact we're not at a position as a Mi'kma'a nation to serve the needs of the university so that's not our problem we need support in order to get there and the university has to work on decolonization right so but there's this expectation and a romanticization oh we'll leave it to the first nations people and they will tell us what to do we're not there yet on a lot of this stuff right but we have to have Canadians working on the problem and not just thinking that because oh well it's indigenous people it's an indigenous problem indigenous people have to solve it if it was our will that was the critical for this we never would have had this happen to begin with right so we need to have like again work on understanding on the way to blue to on people again romanticize how much colonialism has been internalized by a lot of people and that's not like our fault it's just a very like there was a lot of effort put into making sure that we internalize some of these components asserting sovereignty asserting jurisdiction and it's one of the things I always tell people like I probably should back away a little bit from the microphone like when I'm in the woods I don't care what the Supreme Court of Canada says and I recognize as a professor of law it's kind of like how could you say that because when I'm out there it's the natural law it's the teachings of my elders that's what's ruling the day right so we have to make sure that we like have that understanding and the strength to do it and asserting our sovereignty asserting jurisdiction over these areas because if we don't the status quo is just going to continue to trouble on and then that's the last point yet Lucy it's only needed I don't have any children and so I don't know what they learn in school but what do the history the history books teach it is changing like you take for instance Nova Scotia they have at all levels of from K to 12 or primary primary to 12 every year they get culture like MIGMA teaching stuff a curriculum's been developed and that's fantastic like I love the fact that when I go to my kids school everybody learns the honor song the problem is they haven't actually also taught the teachers how to do it or properly resource them and things like this right and it's like even take the language there's resources and there's immersion schools but they're on reserve and I always ask people like why do people think that only MIGMA people should be taught the MIGMA language right like if you're on our territory working like why is this not viewed as something that Canadians should understand right why do the crown officials that come to negotiate with us not have to go through MIGMA language training right like it's kind of astounding when you think about it so there is definitely a lot of headway that's been made in terms of the education but there's still like there's a lot of catch up to do and it tends to again like this idea that it's an indigenous thing for indigenous people only is a real barrier yeah exactly but if you change the education and then the other works like the nature both of the will reach the young yeah yeah and I mean like in some of the ways that indigenous people teach like going out on the land doing land based learning everybody learns better that way everybody does it doesn't matter what your ethnicity is it's more effective and so again like this idea like why do we do things the way that we do but the problem is it takes a lot of reflection on Canadians part and that being said like I'm middle aged right but even over the 20 some odd years that I've been working in this area I've seen a lot of growth and a lot of movement but a lot of it has come because more Canadians care and in some ways technology has really been helpful because you get a lot more access to resources and stories and things like this right especially during COVID like people like think about the response to TRC like when they found the masquerades like that was huge a lot of people got invested but we need more of that and so like again if it's supposed to be just us fixing it well we've been trying ever since it started right so that's my little Ted talk part of it right personal challenge to everybody here right especially like being a Migmagi we're verb based what's the action what's the action that goes along with all of this this actually is one of a piece of my quill work and this was a gift that I made for a couple who are getting married and it has the cultural value that Migma have it seems to be kept to be kept in balance like we don't believe that good always wins like sometimes bad does right negative energy does but everything has to be kept in balance and so I made this piece for them as a couple was European or European descent settler and the other the woman was Migma and if you notice even the grains of the bark go in different directions but when they come together they do make that whole right so I like to have that piece up there to kind of reflect of what's possible are we conceptualizing what's possible or do we see indigenous people as a liability a financial liability and not an asset right because the Indian act literally even the decisions for chief councils it's all about expenditure of funds and so people tend to think well how much is this going to cost why is it always about money why is it always about money right why is it not conceptualizing how much more vibrant we could be when we come together so that's why I put that picture up there I know it sounds corny but it's it's really true and then there's my modest but as an ending just because again they're really really cute highly recommend anybody to work with them but does anybody else have any questions no no the French had an active policy of integration in order to understand so basically like if you're coming for trade and things like that it was it's better not to reinvent the wheel so they didn't have as much restrictions officially with respect to learning the language and stuff and fun fact actually for a while there were because reciprocity was so strong with me my people and and our allies that there was actually directly given for a while that the missionaries were to stop baptizing me my people because it wasn't making us more Christian and French it was making the French more like me because there was corresponding obligations that went around with that type of relationship so no it was a different relationship it also has been romanticized there wasn't as much into marriage as people think right people think that there was a lot there wasn't because things and the Europeans have a very class-based right very hierarchical so this idea of marrying down and stuff like that but no there wasn't treaties with the French it was much more of I would say kind of more of a working partnership and it's also been romanticized well romanticized or twisted to think that we were kind of more puppets of the French but we weren't like we always maintained our autonomy right so the actual nature of our working relationship is not really well understood right it even happened with the British to degree there was a halloween was a colonial authority a bit of a trigger warning here there was one of his men had committed an assault on a Mi'kmaq woman and he stepped in and punished him as he would if it had been a European woman and so in the way that he comported himself the way that he treated people as equals and stuff he was actually officially adopted into the nation there was like this massive like three day ceremony about it like people came it was up on the Ristikwish river up in northern New Brunswick there was like a ton of people there are huge ceremonies and when he left this territory and went back to England he was still upholding his obligations having been a member of the nation and so there was a group of Mi'kmaq delegates that were heading over to go complain to Queen Victoria about the breaches of the treaty and he provided letters of introduction to court and upheld that relationship even when he was back home with his family so I would say colonization is individual choices right regardless of official policy and again another challenge right like what are individuals responsible for with all of this because we definitely have shining examples even in that era of people that were working towards respect and reciprocity and partnership and stuff Oh, Halloran? Oh, Halloran His coat is actually there was a replica recently made that they actually replicated his chief's coat that he was given because if a chief in our nation if they carried themselves well did well by their teachings and treated people well if they were in another village the people there would add beadwork that represented their characteristics that were admirable and so it was not only like a public like announcement of your good qualities it was also something you had to uphold because everybody knew that you had these good qualities right and his coat was actually gifted back by the family to Canada so it was at the what's the museum of civilization called now yeah so it's there but a replica was made up in Medabanaga right because that's that area so it's really cool yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I know it's like yeah it would be so cool to find it though right like it's just the idea yeah that there's like it's literally there somewhere the treaty is just over there like this is real living like you know history and evidence of this relationship and it's astounding how many people are like oh no the treaties don't exist you didn't have the capacity like literally we have them here right so one of these days if you see me out at dark mind your business any other questions yeah what business oh that's a very loaded thing basically you can learn everything everything you didn't know you can learn a lot of it is one of the things about indigenous self-governance is that it's every facet of life is reflected in this right so literally every kind of topic you could think of has an indigenous legal like component to it so it literally can be used a lot and like I said at the beginning it's nice to know that we're now hearing from our knowledge keepers and our elders that it's time to share more right so you think like some of the obvious things in terms of environmental stewardship sustainability all this type of stuff but also like consensus making you know like the idea that if somebody has done wrong to somebody that it's about bringing the person in the community back into balance as opposed to punishing them right so there's a lot a lot of lessons that can be learned and it's kind of like take your pick but then you also have to work up a working relationship with indigenous people to kind of start accessing it and you have to like you only it's earned knowledge it's not entitlement to knowledge so you start getting teachings kind of like at a kindergarten level and then you have to prove that you're going to do well by them in order to access more so there's a huge lesson in humility, patience and respect that's required before you can actually just get knowledge from it so yeah yeah my specific question is the financial resources and the use and do you have good concepts of sustainability and very specifically ecological sustainability which is a kind of recognition of what is good for nature and we recognize ourselves as part of nature that we serve and save for life so I was wondering what could be the sustainable use or use from natural resources that's a really he can almost like write a dissertation just on that that was why why I asking this question I'm working on my cases and part of that is on indigenous laws and how they're from those laws and how they're changing the current system rather than these laws I mean recognition of indigenous law in the current constitutional law act and constitutional law in addition to that how we can have a change in the current system based on indigenous the problem I think is that people want what has tended to happen when people talk about incorporating or considering indigenous law is that they will take a component of it and try to inject it into the existing system and in the process it is so completely removed from where it's come from that it's the meaning of it and the effect of it gets extremely compromised and so it's one of the things that people have to understand that if we're talking about indigenous law and legal system sustainability you have to consider the entire world from when it's come and not expect a small injection into our current system to have a huge effect because it's bigger than that and this is what we've seen in a lot of projects where people will like circles for instance where you tend to use them or even the two-eyed seeing concept people have taken that word at one thing and then used it in every possible application in academia and they're not taking the time to understand how does it fully function is it appropriate in this and does it need to be modified in order to have any kind of effect they tend to just be like okay I understand that I'm going to inject it and then that's going to work so it's this idea that you can't tinker right like if you're going to deal with it you have to deal with the whole system of it and that's where the conflict goes because most times people want solutions but they don't want change any other I was there for a note to end on then we've got five minutes but thank you for coming