Law & Culture: Drawing Texts, Masks and Blankets into the Law School Classroom

One of the big questions for me over the past years (thinking about our Law School TRC obligations to learn and teach about Indigenous Law) has been the relationship between law and culture. Or maybe more specifically, how to talk about these relationships in the law school classroom.

In this post, I share some materials I tried out last year, materials that I think could be drawn on in a number of different classroom contexts. I pause for a moment to thank my colleague Professor Bob Howell, who (following a number of fun hallway conversations) invited me to explore some questions with the students in his Cultural Property class. Below are some notes on the three things we drew into the classroom:

1. Law vs. Culture (in Legislative Texts)
2. Legal Orders in Conflict: A BC case involving the sale of Hupacaseth Masks
3. Legal Orders in Collaboration: Some comments on the Stewardship Agreement related to the Witness Blanket.

1. Law vs. Culture (Legislative Texts)

We began with questions about ‘law’ and ‘culture’ as important key words. Because the students in Bob’s class were working closely with both UNDRIP and UNDRIPA (new legislation affirming UNDRIP, and setting out a framework for its implementation in Canada)), I looked at those two texts more closely than I would otherwise have done, and got stuck on drawing comparisons between the two sections below. The column on the left (from UNDRIPA) makes an assertion about UNDRIP (the column on the right), appearing to simply draw it into the newer text. But the two sections are not quite identicial, and the differences can open space for a discussion about the key concept of ‘the legal’ and ‘the cultural.’

First, the text highlighted in green directs our attention to the VERB: in 2007, the verb points us at RECOGNITION of inherent rights. in 2021, the verb gives us an emphasis on the importance of this recognition.

The black portion of the text is identical in each version: the need to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples, including rights to lands territories and resources.

The purple text, which is the same in each, tells us where those inherent indigenous rights come FROM: “political, economic, and social structures”. In short, “structures” of the kind that are often seen as distinct from law (here, you can imagine the plethora of courses titled “Law and Economy”, or “Law and Society” or “Law and Politics”. ) At this point, one could generate class conversation about the ways in which law is or is not assumed to be distinct from these ‘meta’ structures.

The text continues, with the section highlighted in blue; this adds adds additional sources from which the rights of indigenous peoples might derive. Here, we move to culture, spirituality, history and philosophy. There is again room for discussion about the ways these forces (or accretions?) are important places for conversation and engagement.

What is particularly interesting to me is the text in red, present in the 2021 version and absent in 2007: “and legal systems”. Here, there is room for significant discussion in the classroom about the ways that this absence/addition makes visible the ways in which the law/culture divide can be deployed. What seems to be at stake here is how we understand these two important key words, as well as the assumption (2007) that Indigenous peoples have culture and NOT law.

From the perspective of legislative drafting, it is also interesting to think about the ways that the words “and legal systems” are added into the 2021 version ‘as if’ they had been present in the 2007.

The comparison of these two sections in the classroom needn’t lead to any conclusions (ie. which is the right or wrong way to approach the questions). The goal might simply be to help visibilize the different ways law and culture are discussed in these texts, and to remind the class that the relationships of law and culture might take different form in different legal orders.

2. Legal Orders in Conflict: The Case of the Cedar Masks

The second thing we talked about in class was a 2013 case in which a pair of Hupacasath cedar masks were (wrongfully) sold in an on-line auction. The nugget of the story is this: one person in a family (“X”) sold these masks to an online auction house. The auction house relied on the existence of the grandmother’s Will to determine that X had good title. That is, they presumed that the masks fell into the category of ‘household possessions’ that had been left to X under their grandmother’s will. The extended family disputed X’s claim, asserting that X was only a steward for the masks that were collectively owned. The auction house continued to rely on the will, and finalized the sale of the masks to an anonymous buyer. Unable to retrieve the original masks, the family held a public ceremony in which X was stripped of their name and title. A new mask was carved, and at the ceremony, the songs and dances that travelled with the older masks were attached to the new mask.

In the classroom time, I talked to the class about having used this case in the criminal law classroom, to ask how you would address the question of the mask having been wrongfully sold according to both Canadian Law and Hupacaseth Law. First off, even within Canadian law, how would the problem to be dealt with if it was understood as a Criminal Law problem (theft, fraud, possession of stolen goods). How would it be dealt with if it were understood as a problem of Property Law or of Wills & Estates? Further, is a mask (which has songs and dances that go with it) to be best understood as “property”, or also to be understood as related to practices of “governance”? You can also take up the question of Conflicts of Law? Whose legal order is to apply when people from multiple legal orders are engaging with the same object?

There are a cluster of newspaper articles you can look at to get a sense of the story, as well as a sense of how it has been talked about in the media:

• https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-families-search-for-sacred-cedar-masks-sold-at-auction/article5789775/
• https://bc.ctvnews.ca/sale-of-sacred-masks-prompts-request-to-alter-law-1.1122073
• https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/sacred-first-nation-masks-sold-to-highest-bidder
• https://www.todayinbc.com/news/family-fights-sale-of-aboriginal-ceremonial-family-masks/

In her work on Indigenous Property Law, Val Napoleon has posed a number of really helpful questions we can start asking (particularly when it comes to working with societal and cultural production):

1. What kind of property is this?
2. Who is the owner?   
3. What is the underlying purpose of the property?  
4. What is the legal harm or injury? 
5. What are the range of historic and present day remedies?

These are great questions to give to the students as they engage with the case. It really helps make visible the power of focusing on QUESTIONS that students might start asking (rather than focusing only on answers to questions). It can provide a richer scaffold for discussion about the strategies for working forward. In the classroom context, we likely spent 20 or so minutes in a rich discussion of the challenges (and of the ways that the problems in this case could help the students think about the international law dimensions of challenges in our own backyard). NOTE: I am currently trying to write the story of these masks in a chapter for an upcoming book on Indigenous Intellectual Property. If you want to see a draft of that article, click here.

3. Legal Orders Working Together: The Witness Blanket Stewardship Agreement

The third thing we looked at in class was “The Witness Blanket, a monumental piece of work by Cary Newman. The Witness Blanket, which is comprised of more than 900 objects and stories, was produced in response to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement, and is currently lodged at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. There is a really great website, on which you can see images of, and take a tour of the The Witness Blanket. Also, here is a link to another post on this blog that provides a number of teaching resources for drawing the Witness Blanket into the law school curricula.

One of the advantages of talking about the Witness Blanket next was to make space for looking at more transformative and collaborative responses to the kinds of difficulties made visible in the masks case. This gave us a chance to focus not only on the punitively focused judgement of the past (ie. what went wrong, who was guilty, etc), but also on more positive forward loooking mechanisms to provide joint responses even in the face of different legal orders and different understandings of things.

One of the particularly astonishing things about the Stewardship Agreement is that, rather than having a “choice of law” clause, it makes explicit that it is to be governed by TWO legal orders!

This clause generated some interesting conversation, as we discussed the possibilities that emerge where the focus of the agreement is not on the rights of those signing, but on the responsibilities of those signing to the substance of the agreement, in this case, their joint agreement to care for something (the Blanket itself is the only entity with ‘rights’ under the agreement, the other clauses deal with obligations and responsibilities).

In class, we spent our time primarily with the written text of the Agreement. Depending on the time you have available in class, Here is a screen shot of (my annotated copy of) the first page of the agreement, which asserts that participation in ceremony (culture? law?) is necessary to the full realization of the agreement. That is, the divide between law and culture is made porous (or rather, the law IN culture is made visible).

The agreement makes BOTH 1. written agreements (the stuff of our contracts classes) and 2. cultural ceremony (generally not taken up in law school classrooms) central to the business of doing legal work together. It does NOT presume that written agreements belong only to settler citizens, and ceremony only to Indigenous citizens, but provides a scaffold through which people from different legal orders can draw the tools of their law into engagement with eachother.

We spent a bit of time talking about the oral/ceremonial part of the agreement. Having been present at the ceremony, I could tell them that the experience was affectively powerful. But, to make visible to them that ceremony can be powerfully experienced for people outside of our law community, I have also pointed people to a blog post by my mother, Arta, who also came along to the ceremony: in that post, they can get an ‘outsider’ report on the experience, as well as see someone outside of the law school doing the work of witnessing, and sharing with others both what they saw, and their experience of ceremony.

In our conversation about the oral ceremony, we also discussed the requirement of the written agreement that there be a renewal of the oral ceremony and feast every 4-5 years. This pattern of repetition can be a particularly helpful model in the context of agreements involving “INSTITUTIONS”. If one keeps in mind that the Directors of CMHR (or most other organization or governmental body) can completely change every 4-5 years, you can see that there is a problem of MEMORY. If all your directors change or move on to new jobs, then you are left with a group of folks who do not carry affect laden memories from the power of ceremony. By organizing for a regular return to ceremony, you can create the conditions for keeping the agreement alive with Institutions and Institutuional Actors in ways that are not possible where you rely completely on the (important by not affect laden) written text.

In the context of the classroom, this also opened space for a conversation about student engagement with a variety of ceremonial contexts (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous), and the ways that we can better engage with the ways that these cultural/legal practices generally incorporate a rich tapestry of sounds, visual fields, movements and practices of witnessing.

There you go. It would be great to hear about things others are trying in their classrooms, or about other resources you have drawn on to think through the productive relationships of law and culture.

LAST NOTE:

If you want to do more work with the students on how ‘law’ may be differently structured in legal systems and legal orders (while still being ‘law’), then take a look at Val Napoleon’s article, “Thinking About Indigenous Legal Orders.” In Dialogues on Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, edited by René Provost and Colleen Sheppard, 229-45. Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London: Springer, 2013.

Property, Dancing, Drumming and Regalia

(August 15, 2016)

On my mind are the TRC recommendations on Indigenous Laws, Art and Culture (check out #50, and #83-#85)

Songhees Wellness Centre – photo by Rebecca

I was reflecting on these recommendations this summer, while at the Songhees Wellness Centre. attending the 2016 CIRCLE Gathering  (CIRCLE is the Centre for Indigenous Research and Community-Led Engagement at UVic).

Culture was placed front and centre at the workshop.  We had the opportunity to tour the centre, to talk about the physical design of the space, the incorporation of art, and bilingual sinage in English and Lekwungun supporting programs of language revitalization.  We also had the opportunity to have the Songhees Dance Group come and share with us a number of songs and dances. It was such a pleasure to watch the group, which included men and women, and dancers of all ages (adult, youth and children).

The second day of the gathering was explicitly focused on Culture.

As part of the day, members from the group returned, to talk with us about the group, its history, dancing, drumming, and regalia.  They also invited us to ask them about any questions we had.

What was interesting was both the generosity of the Songhees dancers in opening up the space for questions, and also the difficulty of us as participants beginning to know which questions to ask.

The conversations were super helpful me, and to other participants, as we talked together about the challenges and fears people have around sharing culture.  What is the difference between cultural sharing, for example, or expecting to have cultured ‘staged’ for you? (for a great post on this question, see Jess Housty’s blogpost “I Am Not The Indian You Had in Mind”, or Georgia Lloyd-Smith’s blogpost on “Respectfully Working in Indigenous Communities”

As we focused in on the regalia that had been worn by the dancers, I could also begin to see that we as participants were working to articulate differences between questions that are about ‘law’ or about ‘culture’, and questions that dealt with questions of history, authenticity, legitimacy and change.  Certainly, these questions (and answers) helped me to see both ‘more’, and ‘less’ in the regalia.  That is, I could see it was important to avoid romanticizing particular choices in design, but also to see the range of differences in the ways that different people made choices in ways that made the regalia both meaningful, and connected to history, and ‘theirs’.

One of the questions was of course about photographing.  In response to a question as to whether or not it was possible to take photos of the regalia, we were told, “well, you should ask the person whose regalia it is”.  This answer really hit me.  It was odd (being struck by the answer) because  that answer was in some ways so obvious.  Yes.   Ask the person whose regalia it is.  In this case, the regalia belongs to Gary Sam, and Gary said yes!

Gary, it turns out, is really something of an excellent beader (and talked to us about learning from his granny).  Indeed, not everyone in the group did all the work on their own regalia, and several of the people noted that Gary had helped out with their own (thus some awesome jokes about a possible new twitter hashtag, #GaryMadeIt!)

There is both more and less to be said, and there is lots more to learn, but it was clear to me that stepping into this space of drumming, dance and regalia can open paths for the necessary rethinking of property, ceremony, art and law that is ahead of us!

Ceremony as Remedy? A Heiltsuk resource for doing TRC#28 work in the law school.

Bella Bella Big House – Photo credit Charity Gladstone/Canadian Press

In the fall of 2019, the news carried the story of an Indigenous man and his granddaughter who were detained and handcuffed in the context of trying to open a bank account at a branch of the Bank of Montreal in Vancouver.  In short, a bank teller had ‘become suspicious’ that fraud was involved, and the RCMP were called. The pair were detained and handcuffed in front of the bank. The RCMP determined within the hour that there was no criminal activity, and the bank later agreed that it had been a mistake to call the police. Here is a link to Angela Sterritt’s report on what happened to the grandfather and granddaughter, both Heiltsuk from the community of Bella Bella.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/indigenous-girl-grandfather-handcuffed-bank-1.5419519

There was significant national and international media swirl around the case.  Angela Sterritt played an important part in keeping the issue prominent, and with a lens that focused on the Indigenous experience of commercial racism.

What is exciting here is seeing what the Heiltsuk actually DID in response to the injury that had been caused to their members — they held a “Washing Ceremony”.  Here is  Rafferty Baker’s report for CBC.  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bmo-heiltsuk-bella-bella-ceremony-1.5483320

Maxwell Johnson said being in the community’s big house brings him a solace that the incident at BMO disrupted. (Angela Sterritt)

What the Heiltsuk have done in this case is to take action on the basis of Heiltsuk law. I do not know very much about the Heiltsuk washing ceremony, and I suspect that few of us teaching in law schools do, but the Heiltsuk conducted the ceremony in a way that can help non-Heiltsuk begin learning about their obligations and responsibilities under Heiltsuk law, as well as about Heiltsuk ways of addressing harms and injuries.

Angela Sterritt was invited to participate as a witness to the ceremony, and the community agreed that media could be part of this conversation.  Thus, these reports provides a lens for learning about (and teaching about) this work.  Here is her CBC report,”Indigenous Ceremony tries to right wrong caused by handcuffing of grandfather and granddaughter. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/reporter-s-notebook-grandfather-handcuffed-bank-1.5484448

There is also a twitter feed that fleshes out this experience. https://twitter.com/AngelaSterritt/status/1235040345722720257

HOW MIGHT THIS BE DRAWN INTO THE CLASSROOM?

For people thinking about how they might respond to the TRC Calls to Action in their own classrooms, this case provides many powerful lessons, and directions for engagement.  It could also be draw into a number of different classroom contexts.

• One might think of this case through a criminal law lens. The story offers space for looking at the law around detention, reasonable grounds/reasonable suspicion. It also asks about the place of private citizens (or corporations) in ‘policing’ the spaces of commerce and economy. There is lots here that raises questions about what racial profiling looks like when it is performed by private rather than public actors.
• One might also think of this case through a tort law lens. Again, what does ‘wrongful arrest’ look like in the tort context? What duty of care do banks owe to customers? And what precisely is the harm? What kind of damages would repair the injury done? And who precisely is responsible for the injury: the bank teller? the police officers? the bank manager? the board of directors?
• The question of WHO is responsible for the harm also raises the kinds of questions that come up in the context of not only corporate crime, but also corporate torts. That is, there are questions raised here about institutional actors (corporations). What theories of liability and responsibility are most appropriate when intention and action are differentially distributed through a corporate structure.  There is much in this case that can provide background for addressing Call to Action #92.
• And of course, WHOSE LAW applies to injuries such as these? This is a particularly live question in BC where questions about unceded territory, and the limits of state sovereignty continue to take centre ground.  [NOTE: a super helpful resource on Sovereignty in BC is Claxton, Nicholas XEMTOLTW, and John Price. “Whose Land Is It? Rethinking Sovereignty in British Columbia.” BC Studies 204 (2019-2020): 125-48.  I would HIGHLY recommend putting this on your summer reading list or in your curriculum for the students].

 

In both the Sterritt and Rafferty accounts of the ceremony, there are some spaces for opening the conversation. Things to note:

• The harm to Maxwell Johnson and his granddaughter is identified as having both individual and collective elements: There was an injury not only to the two of them, but to the community as a whole.
• The community as a whole stepped in to focus on repairing the harm to the grandfather and granddaughter. The ceremony enabled a public acknowledgement and witnessing of the harm, and an opportunity for him to speak about that harm to those representing the bank.
• 15 representatives from the bank were present. Their job was to hear the expression of hurt and anger.  They were not (like other witnesses) given a space to speak. There is something interesting and important here in thinking about the role of taking public responsibility (at least of thinking about the different ways that acknowledgement might work). Also something important about the place of listening without responding.
• Witnesses were called, so there is a public memory of the event, and of the removal of shame from the grandfather and granddaughter.  Witnesses play an important role in keeping the memory of the ceremony alive. The focus here, even if involving representatives of the Bank of Montreal, is on the Heiltsuk taking action to relieve the harm caused by others (my point is that the job of repairing and restoring is carried not only by the ‘person who did the harm’, but also of the full community in which the member is embedded).  The work of healing from the injury is not confined to the person who did the injury.
• The ceremony seemed designed not with the primary goal of ‘punishing’ the bank, but with the goal of healing and repair.   It presumes that a piece of this means attending to the work of ongoing relationships (ie. many people will still have their money in the bank…so what is needed to repair trust?).  This ceremony does not wash the stain off the bank members (as far as I can tell).  It is focused on repair.  But at the same time, it makes a space for the bank to participate in doing their own acts of restoration, rehabilitation, acknowledgement and repair.   Part of the remedy seems to involve drawing them closer into relationship rather than just pushing them away. The representatives of the Bank were gifted, blanketed, and given a role in the ceremony. The remedy, in effect, is one which helps those responsible for the injury to learn more about both the Heiltsuk, about the impact of the injury, and about what it might mean to repair an injury in ways that go beyond apology or monetary compensation (particularly if one asks also about the harm to the community)
• Note that, in attending the ceremony, the Bank of Montreal was in a sense acceding to Heiltsuk law.   Maybe ‘acceding’ is too strong a word, but at the very least, they came to the Ceremony without being ‘required to’ by a court action, or contract.  Rather, they took their lead from the Heiltsuk, and agreed to come and occupy a role in ceremony designed to heal the injury done.  One might imagine conflicts over what reconciliation is or isn’t, but one can see in this decision an action that affirms the legitimacy of a Heiltsuk response.
• the Washing Ceremony was conducted in the Big House. The Bella Bella Big house was newly reconstructed (after 120 years). The Big House is the venue for important public ceremonial and spiritual business. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/heiltsuk-big-house-ceremony-   It is significant and moving to see the new space (“a living space”) being put into action right away.

Representatives from the Bank of Montreal take part in a washing ceremony in Bella Bella. They were invited there by the Heiltsuk Nation in an effort to repair the damage done when two members of the Heiltsuk community were arrested at a Vancouver BMO branch in December. (Shawn Foss/CBC)

This is an important case to think with and through.  It is one for conversation in the law schools, both between us as colleagues and with our students.   There are undoubtedly a number of other resources that could help us begin to think about this case as a helpful resources for responding to the TRC calls in our classrooms.  If this is a case you have been thinking about too, please feel free to add more links into the comments.   This is a story worth learning from!

 

Implementing Indigenous Law in Agreements – Learning from “An Agreement Concerning the Stewardship of the Witness Blanket”

In October of 2019, through ceremony conducted in Kumugwe (the K’omoks First Nation Bighouse), the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) and Artist Carey Newman entered into “An Agreement Concerning the Stewardship of the Witness Blanket – A National Monument to Recognize the Atrocities of Indian Residential Schools” . Under this agreement, the Witness Blanket would find a permanent home in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.

https://humanrights.ca/exhibition/the-witness-blanket

A group of us from the Indigenous Law Research Unit at UVic had the privilege of being present at the Ceremony, watching as artist Carey Newman and the CMHR  (through its President and CEO John Young) entered into an agreement to be Joint Stewards to the Witness Blanket.  This agreement  is on the cutting edge of transsystemmic law.  It is governed, shaped, and enacted through a weaving together of Indigenous and Canadian legal understandings and protocols.  It contains both written and oral commitments.  More specifically, it draws both Kwakwaka’wakw traditional legal orders and Canadian Common Law into collaborative engagement.   Click on the link below to read more about the Ceremony.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/art-and-architecture/article-the-witness-blanket-an-installation-of-residential-school-artifacts/ 

The experience of reading the Written Agreement and of attending the Ceremony was powerful on so many levels.  In particular, it was an inspiration and education on what might be possible in the work of law, as we think about next steps forward in legal education and practice.

Drawing on this experience, we drew on the Witness Blanket during the January segment of our Legal Process class this year.   In this post, we share a number of resources that might be helpful for people in law wanting to think more about many of the things to learn from both the Witness Blanket, and the Stewardship Agreement.  At the end of the post are a few comments on our own first experiences of drawing the Witness Blanket into the law school classroom.

We note here that the Agreement is shared with the permission of both Carey Newman and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. Their willingness to have the agreement shared and made publicly visible is both a gift, and a teaching.  There is more to be said about this teaching, and about the powerful work of Ceremony, and the Oral component of this agreement.  I hope to return to those in a later post.

Here is a copy of the Agreement itself:

Witness Blanket Stewardship Agreement v04.4

This is an ‘annotated copy’ of the Agreement (Rebecca’s annotations) designed to organize some thoughts and make visible some aspects of the Agreement that can generate important conversations.

Annotated Witness Blanket Stewardship Agreement

BACKGROUND:   What IS the Witness Blanket?

Carey Newman and the Witness Blanket (photo credit: Doug Little/CMHR)

For those who have not yet encountered the Witness Blanket, it is described on its website as follows:

Inspired by a woven blanket, we have created a large scale art installation, made out of hundreds of items reclaimed from Residential Schools, churches, government buildings and traditional and cultural structures including Friendship Centres, band offices, treatment centres and universities, from across Canada. The Witness Blanket stands as a national monument to recognise the atrocities of the Indian Residential School era, honour the children, and symbolise ongoing reconciliation.

http://witnessblanket.ca/

THE DOCUMENTARY

There is a wonderful documentary on the Witness Blanket, produced by Carey Newman and Cody Graham of M1 Films https://m1films.ca/portfolio_page/witness-blanket/.  Below is a link to the Trailer for the movie.

 

There are two versions of the Documentary: one is 90 minutes, and the other is 55 minutes (edited down to make it easier for teachers to show it during a standard class time).  You can contact the CMHR to arrange to have it streamed (no cost involved).

The documentary is powerful in so many ways, and can open room for many conversations:

• It gets at the history and legacy of residential schools
• It provides an introduction to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement
• It enables one to listen to the voices of a number of survivors, and does this in ways that are contextualized and respectful, and which take up land, place, voice, memory, and more
• it gets at the intergenerational transfer of trauma, and at avenues for disrupting those injuries and patterns (for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike)
• it opens space for looking at the relationships between art and law (including questions about problem solving, process, creativity and collaboration)

THE BOOK

Another great resource for background is a book about Witness Blanket, called ‘Picking up the Pieces”.  The book contains a collection of  stories and reflections on segments of the larger blanket.  It has many colour photos, and lots of closeups, and is organized so that you can explore small pieces of the Blanket in more intimate detail (along with stories related to the objects)

 

MEDIA CONVERSATIONS

Another resource is a 24 minute interview with Carey Newman on the APTN Program “Face-to-Face.”  He was being interviewed at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, during the launch of the book and Documentary “Picking up the Pieces: The Making of the Witness Blanket”.  It is a lovely introduction to both the artist, and the work.  Carey Newman speaks about community based and collaborative art practice, and there are some very interesting parallels there to legal practice and processes.  Also some lovely thoughts on how to carry ‘the weight’ of difficult stories.  I very much appreciated his comments about challenges in the ways we (artists and lawyers) attempt to tell complex and multi-layered stories.

 

 

A SIDE NOTE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WITNESS BLANKET, THE TRC AND THE IRRSA

It can be worth making visible the relationships between the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Witness Blanket.  There were 5 main components to the IRSSA (which was the settlement of the largest class action in Canadian History.   The first three involved agreements about payments that would be made to the parties to the action (still living survivors from a list of 139 schools co-managed by the federal government and 4 church organizations).  But the last two components aimed at involving all Canadians in the discussion, and in the work ahead.  These were:

• The establishment of the TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION; and
• The establishment of a fund to produce works of COMMEMORATION.

Of some significance is the fact that both the TRC and the Commemoration projects serve to benefit all of Canada.  That is, you can see both these projects as funded not by the government or churches, but by the survivors themselves (as they chose to direct payments forward to the future, rather than directly to themselves).  A moving gift to all of us.

And so, The Witness Blanket is one of the projects that emerged from the Commemoration component of the IRSSA, and is thus designed to engage all Canadians in the work of Truth and Reconciliation.   For more on the Terms of Reference for both the TRC and the Commemoration fund, you can follow the link below (see Schedule J and Schedule N:

http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/settlement.html

The federal government also has a webpage that organizes some information around Indian Schools Settlement Agreement (including summaries and links to more information on both the TRC and the Commemoration Projects.

https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015576/1100100015577

SOME COMMENTS ON TEACHING WITH THE AGREEMENT

As mentioned at the beginning, we used the Agreement as part of our teaching during the during our Legal Process course in January.   Legal Process is a mandatory class for our first year students.  The majority of the class occurs in the first two weeks of September.  It is an intensive course where the students spend the two weeks in a combination of small and large group settings.  In the context of the small sections, they work in groups of 20 or so students and 3 teachers.  They return to those groups in January for 2 mornings which have been devoted in recent years to TRC work.

This year, the first morning focused primarily on the TRC, and the second morning on the Witness Blanket.   The second morning, there were three primary activities related to the Witness Blanket:

• The students watched the Witness Blanket documentary as a group (an hour)
• Students then met in their small groups to read the Stewardship Agreement.  They were given an “assignment” to help guide them in their reading.  Note, the premise of the assignment was that students could imagine themselves wanting to produce a postcast episode about the Witness Blanket.  There was no expectation that they would in fact complete such a task, but the hope was that this imagined activity might help guide their reading in ways that would direct their attention to the importance of sound, image, translation, collaboration and more.
  • • Witness Blanket Stewardship Agreement
    • Witness Blanket ‘Podcast’ Assignment
• Students returned with their questions to meet as a large group, where, through the magic of a Video linkup, they were able to listen to Heather Bidzinski (Head of Collections – Canadian Museum for Human Rights).  She spoke to them about her participation in the creation of the Stewardship Agreement, in the Oral Ceremony, and about challenges, lessons learned, and what is being carried forward through this form of legal work.

One of the powerful take away lessons for me came in Heather Bidzinski’s comments to the students that there were nearly a dozen prior versions of the Agreement, and that the work of arriving at the ‘final version’ involved more than two years of ‘building relations’. In short, she told them that the most powerful learnings came in the work PRIOR to the signing of the agreement.  The magic, she argued, is not so much IN the written text as it is in the RELATIONSHIP that was built between the Parties as they spent time and energy learning more about the ways they might work with each other.

This insight is helpful in thinking about how we do the work of teaching about the TRC in the classroom.   There is lots to be said about the concrete lessons plans and teaching materials, but also lots to be said about what we learn in the process of planning and trying to implement those plans.   Doing TRC related work is affectively challenging, and can require much from both faculty and from students.   One can anticipate that this work is more or less difficult for different students.  It is helpful to remain reflexive in the exercises, as there will be things to learn in each encounter about way to support learning, both by students and professors.  We acknowledge that we are baby-learners in this work, and that there are a number of bumps and bruises (both to ourselves and others) as we try to move ourselves along this path.

Some things we considered in setting up the exercise included:

• There is great power in film to help convey some of these histories.   The Witness Blanket documentary is particularly powerful in this regard.  Let the students know this in advance, so they can be prepared for the different learning that can be enabled where they can see/hear/feel an argument.
• Let the students know in advance that some of the students (and faculty and staff) have personal experience with residential school histories.  It is important to be alert to this in dealing with each other, and kindness and care are crucial.  The more advance notice, the better.  There is power in watching a film in a group, but it is also possible to leave space for students to do the watching in smaller or more intimate contexts.
• If the material is linked to a mandatory element (as ours is), then it can be helpful to create space for some students who have concerns to complete the requirement through an alternative exercise (that does not require them to be in the classroom with other students).
• We involved our Amicus team (counsellors and cultural support people), so that there were people and resources to support students for whom the affective load of the material felt too high.
• For at least part of the time, students worked in small groups.  Each group had two professors and a grad student assigned to it, so there would be a range of experiences to draw on and from.
• Advance workshops for faculty or students on Trauma-informed practice can be helpful.  It also can be useful to create space for Faculty to work with each other in advance, so that they feel comfortable both with the material, and in working with students.  It is helpful to remember that we, like the students, are often coming to the game with some gaps in prior knowledge about residential schools.  Some tenderness and care with each other (and not only with the students) can be very helpful in doing TRC work in the law school.

There is undoubtedly more to say, and there are many ways to learn with and from the Witness Blanket Agreement.    Certainly, for those of us in Law, the work of truth and reconciliation is the work of a lifetime.  It is hopeful having models to look at, models that can help us think through more useful questions about ways to do the work. The hope is that these resources/links can provide some context for others to also explore the power of this Agreement for the teaching and practice of law.

We would love to hear ideas and thoughts about things you have tried in your own classrooms and law schools, as well as comments about things that might be done differently!

Art as Intervention in a Time of Reconciliation [by Tasha Henry]

[Ed. note]  The following post is a report by educator Tasha Henry, discussing a recent partnership between the Art Gallery of Victoria, and students in three schools.   The work here, which was done with Grade 3 and 4 students, is a very interesting model of the kind of work one might consider when thinking about Art as intervention in the TRC Calls to Action (and indeed, art as intervention within a law school context).   We thought folks would find it thought-provoking (and a bit inspiring!) Here, then, is  the post by Tasha [and she has permission from the students and families to use the photos appearing in this post]

 

Taking a place at the table:

Art as Intervention in a Time of Reconciliation

By Tasha Henry

In collaboration with several artists of a recent exhibit at the Greater Victoria Art Gallery, entitled “It’s in the Making”, Selkirk Montessori students, were initiated into the world of art installation with contemporary artists who challenge the notion of art as product. The students met with Nicholas Galanin, Tlingit/Aleut artist and Cedric, Nate and Jim Bomford while they constructed their installations in the gallery. The grade 3-4 students interviewed the artists with questions such as:

• “Why is art installation important?
• When do you know when your art is finished?
• How is art an intervention?”

The students then attempted their own installation work in the gallery mansion as a response to their ongoing work with Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “Calls to Action”.

Art installation as social intervention felt like the appropriate vehicle to explore the children’s emerging awareness and questions around the devastating history of Residential Schooling in Canada. As teachers, we are in the unique position to respond to the TRC’s Calls to Action in ways that model sensitive and historically respectful approaches to Canada’s shameful investment in Residential Schooling. Rather than approach this work as a prescriptive curriculum, we approached the concept of reconciliation as a process of responding to the ongoing impacts of colonialism on Indigenous communities. It was important to us that the children’s work around redress be responsive, multi-voiced and open ended.

To prepare for the day of the installation, for months, the children studied and learned from the Lkwungen First Peoples’ history and the traditional territories on which our school stands, known today as the Esquimalt and Songees Nations. The children were honoured to receive teachings by such highly esteemed and beloved artists and elders such as Richard Hunt (Kwakwaka’wakw), Butch Dick (Songhees), Monique Gray Smith (Lakota/Cree), and Ron George, Heredity Chief Tsaskiy (Wet’suwet’en).

They studied the cultural traditions of the Coast Salish First Peoples by attempting artistic forms such as beading, sewing button “blankets” on felt, and by constructing their own cardboard “cedar bentwood boxes”. They expanded their learning to conceptual art by analyzing the work of two contemporary Tlingit artists, Nicholas Galanin and Blake Lepine. The students were also introduced to the history of Residential Schooling through Nicola Campbell and Kim La Fave’s acclaimed children’s books, Shi-Shi-etko and Shin-chi’s Canoe.

The students were then given a white ceramic plate (bought from The Salvation Army) where they created their own free hand drawings using only red and black Sharpie markers. On the day of the installation, the students brought their ceramic white plates with their drawings carefully illustrated through a mix of personal designs and traditionally influenced images.

With the guidance of elder and artist, Butch Dick, the children were taught the importance of ceremony and the symbolism of laying a table in the Songhees tradition. They were asked to place their plates in the dining room area in a spot that meant something to them in relation to their understanding of the history of Residential Schooling in Canada.

With reverent gestures and words, the students spoke to their installation choices. They had been particularly struck by the descriptions of malnourishment from the testimonies of Residential School Survivors. Many of the children hid their plates under the large oak table, or under the chairs to represent the starvation of Indigenous children while at school. As the installation took its living form, the children chose to turn the chairs on their side, and to cluster their plates in the corners of the room to represent the upheaval of home and culture due to mandated schooling for Indigenous children.

Shion: “We put our plate above the fireplace so that people could remember the children that didn’t get to have these plates in Residential School. The fireplace is a symbol of First Nations hope”

James: “I put my plate away from everyone else’s because people were trying to destroy their culture and keep it away from them. Our plate represents the culture that was taken away from the kids.”

Maciah: “We put our plate on a shelf on a smaller table because maybe not all kids got to sit at the table and maybe had to sit on the floor. It was meaningful because we are bringing back the memory of First Nations kids who were forced to go to Residential Schools.”

By inserting their voices through the act of installation the students experienced a powerful social intervention. They were called to speak to their intentions to disturb the establishment of the Greater Victoria Art Gallery, on their own terms, in their own words. As Layla, a grade 3 student said, “When I made the drawing I felt I was learning about the culture and also doing something kind for the children by drawing their designs”. The children realized quickly that their art work was not for them; it was not a product to take home or display on the wall. As Adison said, “I like that some people learned that not everything is for yourself you have to make things for others, as well and learn about other cultures”.

In the collective experience of installing their art work as a social intervention, witnessed by their teachers and Butch Dick, who himself is a Survivor of Residential Schooling, the children experienced the importance of standing up for those who have been silenced. Jamie, a new student from Japan, reflected on the experience with poignant simplicity, “the kids couldn’t see their parents for a long time. So, we honour them.”.

After the children installed their work and spoke to their choices, we circled the installation and read this quote out loud:

“We are thankful for these and all the good things of life. We recognize that they are part of our common heritage and come to us through the efforts of our brothers and sisters the world over. What we desire for ourselves, we wish for all. To this end, may we take our place in the world’s work and the world’s struggle.” (J.S. Woodsworth)

When teaching a response to the Calls to Action, we can only hope that we are able to model what social justice learning looks like within the various institutions that frame social thought. This is not work that can rely on detached lessons within the confines of a classroom. The work of reconciliation must be work with the First Peoples of the land from which we learn, through meaningful, conscious and open ended forms that refrain from a settler agenda, or desired outcome. By precisely not desiring an outcome or a finished product, the children’s temporary installation became a visual testament to the missing and unaccounted for children due to Residential Schooling. On that day, it wasn’t our words that filled the space, it was the sound of children moving with intention, fuelled by a quiet collective heat burning within each of them, to seek retribution for children they had never met. Their innate desire for reparation permeated the space, and moved them to set a place at the table for the Indigenous children who were not permitted their rightful place in Canadian society.

Photo credits:  Tasha Henry

[Ed. Note:] A truncated version of this discussion can be found on the Victoria Art Gallery’s website (http://emagazine.aggv.ca/partner-school-inquiry/)

 

 

The Skirt Project: connecting gender, religion, and colonialism

My name is Natalia, and I am a third year law student at the University of Victoria. I grew up on the territory of the Qayqayt First Nation, in New Westminster, British Columbia, and have since lived on Otomí, Totonac, Nahua and WSANEC lands. I’ve spent the last four months as a summer research assistant to Professor Rebecca Johnson, who has given me fascinating research tasks as well as significant freedom to explore related topics.

The research project started with a question about skirts. Why are women in some indigenous communities required to wear long skirts to participate in spiritual ceremonies? This question about a practice known as the “skirt protocol” quickly blossomed into a series of interconnected queries about the relationship of clothing to culture, religion, tradition, gender, colonialism, and identity. The complexity of these topics led me to simplify my job description when asked about it, and as a result most of my friends and family have been extremely jealous of my summer job “googling skirts”.

And I did engage in a significant amount of exploratory googling, bookmarking hundreds of newspaper articles, blog posts, and Twitter exchanges with the word “skirt” in the title. I also just talked to people. In casual discussions with family and friends about my research, I was really struck by how many individuals have had something to say about it. Almost every single woman I spoke with (and a few men, too) immediately wanted to share a personal anecdote about a moment in which they confronted rules about what they could or could not wear. For many people, these stories brought up strong feelings of anger, indignation, and resentment, even when they had occurred years earlier.

This was particularly true of my aunt, who recalled being made to kneel on the ground as a seventh-grader while her school principal measured the distance from her hemline to the floor. She describes being made to feel ashamed and embarrassed. Her mother, my 81-year-old grandma, remembers the incident as well. She marched to the school to support my aunt knowing that the skirt did, in fact, violate the dress code, because my aunt had outgrown it and she couldn’t afford to buy a new one – and because the vice principal’s own daughter had worn the exact same skirt and had not been punished. For my aunt, the primary injustice of the situation was related to gender; the dress code was unfair because it imposed much stricter rules on girls than on boys. For my grandmother, the injustice was class-based: the dress code was unfair because it was hard for lower-income families to ensure their children complied with it, and because it was unevenly enforced based on social rank. Both my aunt and my grandmother were right, and their experiences only go to show that rules about clothing are not neutral, arbitrary, or trivial, but in fact affect people in diverse and disproportionate ways.

But what does this slight from nearly five decades ago have to do with reconciliation?

Rules about how we dress are sometimes obvious and sometimes not, but either way, they are so ubiquitous that nearly everyone can recognize the symbolic power of clothing and identify with the experience of being told what or what not to wear. This means that clothing provides a really useful “way in” to more complex debates about cultural identity, spirituality, tradition, and gender in indigenous and non-indigenous communities. Serious tensions over how women should dress occur across diverse populations, but they are further complicated for indigenous peoples by the legacy of colonialism and the ongoing struggle to decolonize. Questions about whether the skirt protocol is really an indigenous tradition quickly give way to questions about how colonialism affects traditional practices, who has the power to decide which traditions are valuable, and how people are differently impacted by traditionalism depending on their gender. Learning about the rationales for the skirt protocol quickly spawns more questions about the relationship between spiritual belief and indigenous identity. Exploring indigenous identity leads to important questions about cultural authenticity.

This month, British Columbia will implement a new K-12 curriculum which mandates inclusion of indigenous content, perspectives, and pedagogies, and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women will officially begin. The new curriculum responds to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action by attempting to address the education system’s failure to acknowledge the grievous harm done by colonialism, and the system’s own role in committing and perpetuating that harm. The Inquiry will attempt to understand and address the enormous problem of violence against indigenous women. I think that reconciliation is best served when we make visible the connections between these two projects.

Over the summer, I developed a series of resources which I hope will be useful for learning and teaching about these connections and for facilitating conversations about how clothing is connected to gender, colonialism, religion, culture, and identity, using the skirt protocol as a point of entry. The resources are varied in scope and content. They include a short video as well as a Prezi presentation, and a paper entitled Clothing the Collective which explores these topics in greater detail. There are a series of workshop ideas and lesson plans: see the Talking Skirts Lesson Plan and Backgrounder and the Creating Conversations Activities. There is an annotated list of existing teaching resources, which I’ve categorized by grade level and format: see Teaching Resources. All of the materials have also been consolidated into a single document, available here: The Skirt Project Consolidated Materials. I hope that these materials can be of use in responding to Calls 27 and 28 and 60 to 63 of the TRC’s Calls to Action.

This project received support from the Religion and Diversity Project and the Indigenous Law Research Unit. For further information, please feel free to contact myself at nsudeyko@gmail.com, or Professor Rebecca Johnson, at rjohnson@uvic.ca.

 

 

Our Voices, Our Stories

“I want to get rid of the Indian problem… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department…”

–Deputy Superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs (1913-1932), Duncan Campbell Scott

My grandmother, Jean Jones/Borrows, ran away from home so she would not have to attend residential school in Ontario. Her siblings did not run away, and were taken to residential school. My grandma still expresses guilt that she could not help her siblings. She says, “sometimes there are things in life you can’t get over, but I believe you can get through them”.

From 1929-1975, an estimated 9,200 Indigenous children attended St. Michael’s Residential School in Alert Bay, BC.

One week ago I watched a film by renowned director Barbara Cranmer (‘Namgis First Nation) entitled, Our Voice, Our Stories. It told Truth. It showed Reconciliation. It illustrated Indigenous law in action—ceremony, mending harms, decision-makers coming together in deliberation, and the ongoing obligations to share stories.

The film was a story of people tending to a wound that they might not get over, but that they are getting through. The film showed residential school survivors coming together along with their descendants and allies from across British Columbia to watch the demolition of St. Michael’s Residential School. It was inspiring to see people together again to continue their healing.

One does not usually think of a demolition as a ceremony. For those who attended St. Michael’s Residential School, the school’s destruction was a form of emotional, intellectual, cultural and spiritual reconstruction. People wore button blankets, cedar woven hats, smudged with medicinal plants, sang, cried, embraced, told stories, and came together. The crumbling of the red brick school building lined with narrow rectangular windows stood in stark contrast to the strength of the people who participated in the ceremony. The sparkling blue ocean, surrounding forests and distant mountains also witnessed the ceremony.

What stood out to me the most out of the dialogue in the film was a young girl who said she saw a little boy’s spirit leave the residential school during the demolition. She said he looked happy to be leaving. To hear that acknowledgement of freedom coming from such a young voice gave me shivers and hope.

During the question and answer session filmmaker Cranmer said there are no plans yet as to what will replace the demolished school in that now empty space. While law schools will likely not physically build anything in that empty physical place, the spaces in people’s minds can be filled with knowledge and discussion about how to heal and learn moving forward. Barbara has not yet made any specific plans about teaching curriculum to share the film but she is very open to being contacted to allow people access to the film and to use it as a teaching resource. Her band office can be contacted. It is an informative and affective resource for bringing Our Voice to Our Stories.

The trailer can be watched at: https://vimeo.com/141833166