![handle is hein.journals/windyrbaj33 and id is 1 raw text is:
FOREWORD: INDIGENOUS LAW, LANDS, AND LITERATURE
John Borrows*
Guest Editor
Law is not just an idea; it is a practice. Law helps us find ways of organizing decision making to
regulate our actions and resolve our disputes in an authoritative manner. However, what constitutes
authority, organization, regulation, and resolution are open questions. The practice of law varies with the
context in which decision making is situated. It is coloured by the cultures in which it occurs and is
influenced by the beliefs, languages, social structures, political organization, and economic
circumstances of the groups within which it takes place. Concepts of time, scale, space, causation,
responsibility, opportunity, and success are not the same in all places. The ten articles in this special
issue on Indigenous peoples' law, land, and literature examine the impact of these truths. Each author
explores how the contours of Indigenous laws can be explored through stories rooted within specific
territorial contexts.
The following articles reflect on the authors' experiences of working with Indigenous legal traditions
through stories. Indigenous legal orders encourage the use of stories to examine regulatory and dispute
resolution issues from a grounded perspective. While abstract theories and linear philosophical
arguments can be used to discuss Indigenous peoples' law, the articles in this volume reveal another set
of intellectual traditions at work.
Approximately one year ago, Laverne Jacobs, editor-in-chief of the Windsor Yearbook of Access to
Justice [WYAJ] asked if I would be willing to act as a guest editor to develop a special issue on
Indigenous legal issues. Having served on the WYAJ Advisory Board for some time and having
published a couple of articles in the WYAJ during my career, I was very happy to accept the invitation. I
immediately identified and invited nine emerging scholars who work at the edge of innovation in their
field to write for this volume. They are practitioners and law professors who work with Indigenous
peoples' own legal traditions from a community perspective, and, in the process, they are changing how
we think about law in Canada. Remarkably, the changes they identify are not always new. The insights
they activate are often rooted in centuries-old understandings of Indigenous peoples' relationship with
the land. Stories related to Indigenous peoples' land and the laws they implicate are a central theme of
this special issue.
The lead article in this volume, which is my contribution, describes work occurring in Canadian law
schools related to land-based education. Through my experiences on the Cape Croker Indian reserve and
my twenty-five-year career as a law professor, the article considers how Indigenous peoples have their
own ways of reasoning from the land that generates resources for legal decision making - through
stories and land-based learning. Along the way, this article describes how law schools are taking
students outside the classroom to learn about Indigenous peoples' legal processes and the substantive
obligations they generate.
* John Borrows, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria; Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law.
(2016) 33 Windsor Y B Access Just
v](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/windyrbaj33&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most