1. The Continuation of Past Discrimination: This point, in summary, is that our sovereign governments should stop denying First Nations the legal titles and rights that have been recognized and affirmed in the Constitution, and should instead concentrate on working toward reconciliation of those titles and rights with Crown sovereignty through negotiated accommodations and by refining the legal principles of justified infringement.

2. The Date of Sovereignty and the Douglas Treaties: This point is that the language and matrix of the Douglas Treaties, made between 1850 and 1854, are supremely relevant contemporaneous guides to what was then considered to be exclusive occupation for the purposes of demonstrating aboriginal title in 1846, the date of sovereignty. [for B.C.]

3. The Significance of Marshall and Bernard: My third point is that Chief Justice McLachlin in Marshall and Bernard did not say that she was changing the law, and she wasn’t. Aboriginal title and rights were sui generis before that decision and they still are. What Chief Justice McLachlin was doing was giving some additional explanation of the vocabulary required in order to make aboriginal title and rights, based on First Nations perspectives, comprehensible within the common law and civil law systems.

This is introduced as a contrast to “pictures of poverty and desperation in Attawapiskat”. Um… what’s your point? That the Catholic Church has plenty of money while the people of Attawapiskat are in a situation of dire poverty and homelessness?

Quotes that ensue with no stated sense of irony include:
“The couple received a $50,000 grant from the truth and reconciliation fund to create [the stained glass windows in the church].” (You mean that taxpayers dollars are going toward building and decorating a Catholic Church… as a method of compensating First Nations for crimes committed against them by the Catholic Church?).

http://aptn.ca/pages/news/2012/05/17/light-still-shines-in-attawapiskat-through-stained-glass/

The APTN reporter concludes by saying that “this project stands as a symbol of hope” –and, really, that may be the most pathetic reflection of them all. “Hope” is defined as a handout from church and state –or, in this case, to the church from the state.

In all, I’d say that for a guy who never took an Aboriginal Law class, I managed to learn quite a lot about aboriginal law, enough to know how much more there is to learn in any case, and what I learned was pretty critical of the usual Eurocentric interpretation of that law.

Could the school have done better? Yes I think so. I’ve since encountered a few things in my practice that point up the fact that for all its good intentions, there was still an amount of cultural filtering going on, and that I in no way got a true Aboriginal perspective on aboriginal law. Perhaps the best example of this occurred when we studied a case called Nanabush v. The Deer Nation. A great way to introduce green law students to the idea of conceptions of law foreign to their own, but it was still basically an attempt to shoehorn a fairly sophisticated instructional story into the format of a case brief. Not bad, but not really getting across the deeper, more important points, either.

I guess what I mean to say is that there are schools doing the job better, but I guess even those are still at the “See Jane Run” level.

Some might think it was wrong to skip that exam but Canada is better for it. You made a small difference that day and that’s better than I’ve done in my entire life. Keep it up.

For what it’s worth, I hope you do eventually become a lawyer, perhaps a judge, or a politician. You have a wonderful gift for writing and expression of ideas.

I rarely blog; did my first in over a year. Writing is so damn hard! Headaches, Health Care and Drug Dealers goes on about Canada’s Patent Laws, lawyers, and Canada’s drug oligarchs. Your training should help you get through it.

I have lived in the Netherlands for the last 5 years, and to be honest, I can’t believe some of the things that have happened in Canada in that time.

Success with whatever path you choose. You have already made a difference; may you continue to do more of the same. I expect you will.

Much of this was already lamented by Jeremy Bentham who wanted to abolish the profession (along with “legal fictions”) and have a system of public administration that would entail the massive inefficiency of a salaried class whose job is to read a mix of broken Latin and Norman French (called Legal English).

I don’t know if I’ve met anyone who wanted to be a lawyer; I’ve met many people who wanted to be rich.

When I was in Montreal a few weeks ago, I visited the Native Friendship Centre (that is, as you’ve mentioned, apparently shutting down, ASAP).

Although I realize that Cree is one of a dozen languages that could be taught in Montreal, they hadn’t heard of Cree being taught anywhere in Montreal, and although there are indigenous studies programs in various universities there (with many publications and conferences per annum) it seems that none of it pertains to actual language acquisition (neither for the students in the city nor for anyone living on reserve, etc.).

My problem is that this negative answer isn’t just coming from Montreal: I’ve asked about studying Cree at a long list of institutions (including universities, native outreach centers, and everything in-between) from B.C. to Quebec, with the greatest number being in Alberta, Sask., and Manitoba. The current situation seems to be that you can’t learn Cree in Montreal, but you can’t learn Cree in Winnipeg, either.

Many of the institutions I wrote to had some vague statement about a course (or a good intention pertaining to the language) but, when asked specifically, it seems that the course doesn’t really exist. Repeatedly, people said things like, “No, not here, but try talking to _____” –and, by now, I’m at the point where I’d have to reply, “No, I already talked to them, and they said they’re not teaching the language, and I should instead talk to you!”

In short, all of these efforts have come to a dead end.

There are very few active language teachers; and there are very few institutions of any kind teaching the language to adults.

The number of websites describing courses that don’t exist gives a false sense of reassurance; so too, the number of institutions that have some kind of First Nations “outreach” or “cultural center” gives some people the false impression that language acquisition (and transmission) are ongoing (i.e., in places that have never had a budget, nor a mandate, nor a teacher to carry on language courses, and most of them have never even thought about where the language could be learned when I’ve asked them).

Of course, many of these centers that people mistakenly assume deal with indigenous language because they’ve got the words “First Nations” and “Education” in their title are entirely occupied with helping kids fill out forms to enter college, or get scholarships, etc. etc. (there’s a lot of paperwork in the education system, and I’m aware that this is a real social service provided, especially for students struggling to bridge the rural-to-urban divide). However, all of this is a sort of distraction from the real paucity of any place to study the language …or even any place to hear the language spoken.

At this point, my question is where do I go from here?

Of course, more broadly, for anyone who wanted to learn Cree (in 2012) there would be the same question: many people falsely assume that having a single grandparent who speaks the language is sufficient to learn it (but I’ve met many people in that situation who lament that their grandmother or grandfather is not capable of (single-handedly) teaching or transmitting the language to them, even if they are capable of speaking it; in related news, not everyone who can speak Chinese is capable of teaching the language to someone whose only language is English, etc. etc.).

It really seems to me that I’ve exhausted all of the avenues open to me (over a huge geographic area) and I’m not in a position to create an institution that doesn’t exist. A few people have said to me that I should just hire a private teacher, but they really don’t understand how extremely scarce Cree language teachers are: it genuinely is an endangered language, and the few people who can teach it are generally very busy already. It simply isn’t the case that I can hire someone to teach me the language privately.

As with everywhere else I go, when I explained that I’m learning Cree in Montreal, they assumed that my wife was Cree (which is, I suppose, better than assuming that I’m a Christian Missionary who wants to translate the books of Psalms into Cree… again).