Research Guides: Canadian Legal Research Manual: Indigenous Legal Research Guides

Indigenous Legal Research Guides

This portion of the Legal Research Manual features a non-comprehensive list of guides on Indigenous legal research.

Hadley Friedland, "Reflective Frameworks: Methods for Accessing, Understanding and Applying Indigenous Laws"
(2012) 11:1 Indigenous Law Journal 1.
This article takes up the practical question of method, examining the question: How might legal scholarship assist with the practical tasks of finding, understanding and applying Indigenous laws today?
Hadley Friedland and Val Napoleon, "Gathering the Threads: Developing a Methodology for Researching and Rebuilding Indigenous Legal Traditions"
(2015-2016) 1:1 Lakehead Law Journal 16.
State law is not the only source of relevant or effective legal order in Indigenous people’s lives. Law matters to all societies and Indigenous societies are no different in this regard—and so, it stands to reason that for Indigenous communities, Indigenous laws continue to matter today. The question that arises out of this logical starting point has become our primary research concern: “How do we begin to engage constructively with Indigenous legal traditions to substantively identify and articulate these Indigenous laws?”
Val Napoleon and Hadley Friedland, "An Inside Job: Engaging with Indigenous Legal Traditions Through Stories"
(2016) 61:4 McGill Law Journal 725
According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report, the revitalization and recognition of Indigenous laws are essential to reconciliation in Canada. How, then, do we go about doing this? In this article, Val Napoleon and Hadley Friedland introduce one method, which they believe has great potential for working respectfully and productively with Indigenous laws today. They engage with Indigenous legal traditions by carefully and consciously applying adapted common law tools, such as legal analysis and synthesis, to existing and often publicly available Indigenous resources: stories, narratives, and oral histories. By bringing common pedagogical approaches from many Indigenous legal traditions together with standard common law legal education, they hope to help people learn Indigenous laws from an internal point of view.

Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology by Jo-Ann Archibald Q'um Q'um Xiiem, Jenny Bol Jun Lee-Morgan and Jason De Santolo (Editors)
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2019
This book brings together Indigenous researchers and activists from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to assert the unique value of Indigenous storywork as a focus of research, and to develop methodologies that rectify the colonial attitudes inherent in much past and current scholarship. By bringing together their own Indigenous perspectives, and by treating Indigenous storywork on its own terms, the contributors illuminate valuable new avenues for research, and show how such reworked scholarship can contribute to the movement for indigenous rights and self-determination.
Indigenous Methodologies: characteristics, conversations, and contexts, 2nd edition by Margaret Elizabeth Kovach
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2021
Indigenous Research: Theories, Practices and Relationships by Deborah McGregor, Jean-Paul Restoule, and Rochelle Johnston
Call Number: E76.7 .I53 2018 LAW
Publication Date: 2018
Scholars understand what Indigenous research is, but how we practice Indigenous research ethically and respectfully in Canada is under exploration. This ground-breaking edited collection provides readers with concrete and in-depth examples of how to overcome the challenges of Indigenous research with respect to Indigenous worldviews, epistemologies, and ontology. In collaboration with their communities, and with guidance from Elders and other traditional knowledge keepers, each contributor links their personal narrative of Indigenous research to current discussions and debates.
Indigenous Research Design: Transnational Perspectives in Practice by Elizabeth Sumida Huaman and Nathan D. Martin (Editors)
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2023
This book presents practical formations and applications of Indigenous research for a variety of community, student, professional, and educational projects. With contributions from a broad selection of Indigenous scholars across disciplines and continents, this collection shares research stories and innovations directly linked to Indigenous Peoples' lived experiences.
Kaandossiwin: how we come to know: Indigenous re-search methodologies, 2nd ed. by Kathleen E. Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe)
Call Number: E76.7 .A26 2022 Stauffer
Publication Date: 2022
Indigenous methodologies have been silenced and obscured by the Western scientific means of knowledge production. In a challenge to this colonialist rejection of Indigenous knowledge, Anishinaabe re-searcher Kathleen Absolon describes how Indigenous re-searchers re-theorize and re-create methodologies. Indigenous knowledge resurgence is being informed by taking a second look at how re-search is grounded. Absolon consciously adds an emphasis on re with a hyphen as a process of recovery of Kaandossiwin and Indigenous re-search.
Native Women's History in Eastern North America Before 1900: a guide to research and writing by Rebecca Kugel (Editor); Lucy Eldersveld Murphy (Editor)
Call Number: E78.E2 N38 2007 Stauffer
Publication Date: 2007
The authors explain the use of letters and diaries, memoirs and autobiographies, newspaper accounts and ethnographies, census data and legal documents. This collection offers guidelines for extracting valuable information from such diverse sources and assessing the significance of such variables as religious affiliation, changes in women's power after colonization, connections between economics and gender, and representations (and misrepresentations) of Native women.
Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods by Shawn Wilson
Call Number: GN380 .W554 2008 Stauffer
Publication Date: 2009
Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies by Chris Andersen (Editor); Jean M. O'Brien (Editor)
Call Number: GN380 .S68 2017 Stauffer
Publication Date: 2017