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- Title
L'nuwita'simk.
- Authors
YOUNG, TUMA
- Abstract
A few years ago, I was at a Mawiomi (pow wow) in Eskasoni and my cousin approached me about us dancing the Koju'wa, a traditional L'nu dance. The local pow wows are now are very pan-Indian, looking like any other pow wow across Canada. Our family is one of the last families that dance the traditional dances, and I do not get many chances to dance the traditional L'nu dances, perhaps at one or two funerals a year. I told her that I had heard that in order to request a particular song or dance, you had to approach the drummers with tobacco, so off she went to offer tobacco to them. My cousin came back with a puzzled expression and I asked her what's wrong. She stated that the drummers gave her back the tobacco and told her that she was not allowed to dance around the drum as she was wearing jeans and not a dress. The drummers told her women had to wear dresses and that this was our Mi'kmaq law. I had never heard of such a thing and was very curious as to how they came to know this. So I went to the drummers and asked them about this law. They stated that an elder had previously told them that women had to dance in dresses and not in jeans, leggings or pants. I asked them which elder: they could not tell me which one. They had heard it from someone who had heard from an elder somewhere. It became apparent to me that the drummers were told a "law" that was pulled out of the air and I pointed out that the traditional dress for a L'nu women is a smock worn over leggings, not jingle dresses or shawls. It is very traditional for both women and men to wear leggings or pants. This started me thinking about the source of L'nu law, how to find it and how it is expressed. Later on, I was working as a guardian ad litem in the tribal courts in Arizona and I had to appear in a child custody case. I noted that the court was located on the reservation, the judge was Indigenous, the lawyer for the mother was Indigenous, the lawyer for the father was Indigenous, the clerk was Indigenous, the sheriff was Indigenous - but we were referring to the state of Arizona laws regarding custody. I thought, why can we not use our own legal principles to settle our disputes? After much discussion with my sisters, who are language teachers, and other family members who are elders, in addition to reading scholarly articles by my Indigenous colleagues in legal academia, I came to this understanding of the source of L'nuwey Tplutaqan (Mi'kmaq Legal Principles), and offer this article as to how to locate it, how it is expressed and how to use it in contemporary times.
- Subjects
POWWOWS; MI'KMAQ (North American people); RITES &; ceremonies; NATIVE American councils; LEGAL status of indigenous peoples
- Publication
Indigenous Law Journal, 2016, Vol 13, Issue 1, p75
- ISSN
1703-4566
- Publication type
Article