Abstract

Throughout the annals of Canadian Euro-centric history there is little written about Indigenous Legal Traditions. There are no laws within our nation-to-nation relationship that speak to the tantamount sovereignty of Indigenous peoples, no policies that protect the autonomy of Indigenous nations. There is, however, ample evidence of one nation’s assumed sovereignty over another, perpetrated without accountability or honour. This colonial narrative has been so dominant that nearly every one of us has systematically adopted the idea that Indigenous people are subjects of the Canadian state. This paper begins a vitally necessary discussion that the subjugation, suppression, and oppression of Indigenous Legal Traditions is not only egregious but irrational. The argument—as if one is necessary considering the current status quo and overrepresentation issues of Indigenous peoples in the state’s judicial and correctional systems—is that Indigenous Legal Traditions continue to exist and deserve paramountcy of law in a true nation-to-nation sense. This paper is the beginning of a longstanding conversation that has been ignored by the state since the Days After Treaty.

Traditional Law stands as current law within the Red Earth Cree Nation (RECN). Traditional law is law. All laws operate on the same premise in any nation with the intention to regulate a people’s conduct and correct any behaviours that fall outside of a culture, community, nation, or peoples’ norms. Traditional Law is not a thing of the past and holds no significantly different values than what is scribed by the state pen as criminal or wrong. For instance, Traditional Law does not permit violence, theft, or harm of any kind. However, what is significantly different is the way in which the law is imparted to or by the people. Traditional Law is not dominated by penalty, and appreciates the need that people have for one another and their environment. The corrective conduct of RECN is not embodied by prison or punishment, it is embodied by the need to heal and help one another, the need to be with family and community, integrated with the hope for prosperity that only those who genuinely care for you can provide.

RECN Traditional Law is not governed by individuals but by every member of the Nation. Law is a shared responsibility we have with one another to prevent harms and wrongs of all kinds. The creation of laws is not developed by single acting entities or separate bodies; laws are constructed from the needs and desires of the people themselves. RECN laws are purposeful, collective, and based on lived experience and spirituality.

Colonial law is not RECN’s own; it is not written nor controlled by them, and is barely present in the Nation of RECN—there are no police, legal firms or courts situated in RECN. A law that is not properly governed has no tangible impact on the people, and is not inherently familiar to them—this can only be understood as the root cause of the problems that have persisted between our nations’ legal realities.

The power to create, implement and enforce RECN laws is an inherent right granted by God, our Creator. This is a right that cannot be delegated as a privilege by any foreign state. RECN laws apply to all RECN people, resources, and lands. The RECN government exercises separate and concurrent jurisdiction in relation to the federal and provincial governments with whom we hold a treaty. This is the inherent and treaty right of RECN that has yet to be honoured, recognized, affirmed, and fulfilled.