Aboriginal Law & Indigenous Laws

The Arctic Promise looks at how much the Inuit vision of self-governance relates to the existing public governance systems of Greenland and Nunavut, and how much autonomy there can be for territories that remain subordinate units of larger states.

Through the voices of Inuit Elders, this book is a critical and cultural-historical engagement with the traditional concepts of tirigusuusiit, piqujait, and maligait.These three concepts refer to what had to be followed, done, or not done in Inuit culture. Although these terms are now often used as equivalents to modern Western notions of law, this work examines how Inuit and Western concepts of law derive from completely different cultural perspectives.

The book, Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit –What Inuit have always known to be true, documents the core beliefs, philosophies, values, language and social systems of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit based on the experiences of the last generation who lived according to these worldviews.

This rare book grew out of the Oral Traditions course, held at the Iqaluit campus of Nunavut Arctic College. The college invited Inuit Elders to be interviewed, in Inuktitut, by the students taking the course that year. The interviews began across a table, but just weeks into what became an ongoing project, the stories and songs you will find captured here were being told over a cup of tea to students and course facilitators sitting on the floor, as they might have been centuries ago.

Drummond explores a series of philosophic, ethnographic, and legal dilemmas produced by the interaction between legal cultures, setting up a dialogue between narrative and theory by interspersing accounts of her field experiences in Inuit communities with analytical chapters. Also in print: KEQ1060 .D78 1997 LAW.