Aboriginal Law & Indigenous Laws

Canada's Indigenous Constitution reflects on the nature and sources of law in Canada, beginning with the conviction that the Canadian legal system has helped to engender the high level of wealth and security enjoyed by people across the country. However, longstanding disputes about the origins, legitimacy, and applicability of certain aspects of the legal system have led John Borrows to argue that Canada's constitution is incomplete without a broader acceptance of Indigenous legal traditions. John Borrows explores legal traditions, the role of governments and courts, and the prospect of a multi-juridical legal culture, all with a view to understanding and improving legal processes in Canada. He discusses the place of individuals, families, and communities in recovering and extending the role of Indigenous law within both Indigenous communities and Canadian society more broadly. Also available in print.

Creating Indigenous Property identifies how contemporary Indigenous conceptions of property are rooted in and informed by their societally specific norms, meanings, and ethics. Through detailed analysis, the authors illustrate that unexamined and unresolved contradictions between the historic and the present have created powerful competing versions of Indigenous law, legal authorities, and practices that reverberate through Indigenous communities, including relationships to land and non-human life forms, responsibilities to one another, environmental decisions, and wealth distribution. Creating Indigenous Property identifies the ways that Indigenous discourses, processes, and institutions can empower the use of Indigenous law and explores the conditions under which Canadian and Indigenous legal orders can productively co-exist.

Demonstrating how Canada’s constitutional structures marginalize Indigenous peoples’ ability to exercise power in the real world, John Borrows uses Ojibwe law, stories, and principles to suggest alternative ways in which Indigenous peoples can work to enhance freedom. Also available in print.

The essays in this book present important perspectives on the role of Indigenous legal traditions in reclaiming and preserving the autonomy of Aboriginal communities and in reconciling the relationship between these communities and Canadian governments.

The importance of Indigenous legal traditions is often minimized in narratives about the history of “law” in Canada. For much of the post-contact history of present-day Canada, the majority of the land’s inhabitants were subjects not of Canadian, British or “international” law, but of Indigenous law. This paper investigates the historical relationship between international law and the Canadian state by focusing on how distinct systems of international — or transnational — law worked alongside each other in the Maritime provinces in the eighteenth century.

As the settler state of Canada expanded into Indigenous lands, two traditions clashed in a bruising series of asymmetrical encounters over land use and ownership. This meticulously researched book is connected to larger issues of human relations with environments, communal and individual ways of relating to land, legal pluralism, historical racism and inequality, and Indigenous resurgence. Also available in print.

This book offers an Indigenous supplement to the rich and growing area of visual legal scholarship. Organized around three narratives, each with an associated politico-poetic reading, the book addresses three major global issues: climate change, the trade in human body parts and bio-policing.

Dr. Borrows makes use of the Anishinaabe tradition of storytelling to explore how the work in Indigenous language revitalization can inform the emerging field of Indigenous legal revitalization. Also available in print.

Canada is covered by a system of law and governance that largely obscures and ignores the presence of pre-existing Indigenous regimes. Indigenous law, however, has continuing relevance for both Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state. In his in-depth examination of the continued existence and application of Indigenous legal values, John Borrows suggests how First Nations laws could be applied by Canadian courts, and tempers this by pointing out the many difficulties that would occur if the courts attempted to follow such an approach.