This lecture considers conserving and upholding Anishinaabe law as it relates to the more-than-human world. It suggests that we must continually renew our broadest legal commitments to protect and preserve what sustains us. Protecting clans and the animals from which they derive is close to the heart of Anishinaabe law (ode'naakonige). This law is embodied through Anishinaabe treaties with our evolutionary progenitors, our clan relatives. These treaties with the more-than-human world were incorporated into treaties with other First Nations. From an Anishinaabe perspective, these obligations were, in turn, eventually imported into treaties with the Crown. Anishinaabe treaties with the more-than-human world continue to inform how Anishinaabe people practice constitutional law through consultation protocols, legislation, and participation in court proceedings.

Law students help universities and societies make meaning and purpose, particularly as it relates to Indigenous and Canadian law. They do this through their questions, research, committee work, service, career paths, and past experiences. Some of their insights are found in the unfolding of Indigenous legal education initiatives at the University of British Columbia, Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Victoria. These initiatives illustrate that law students are a significant force in persuading law schools to add Indigenous courses, moot courts, clinical experiences, internships, landbased events, scholarly journals, and teaching Indigenous legal traditions. In the process, these developments have implications for questions like why we are here and where we are going in our broader legal and political circles. As student action is changing how we teach and practice law in Canada, this essay examines ways in which meaning is more generally made in contextual terms, even as we struggle with the idea that law (and life) has broader, universal purposes.

In Chapter 1, John Borrows argues that the resurgence of Indigenous peoples’ law means that agreements are being evaluated against criteria which are not just formed by nation states or international instruments. The emergence of Indigenous normativity as an aspect of international investment and trade thus challenges communities and investors who must negotiate this new terrain. In making these points, Professor Borrows examines the role of Indigenous peoples’ law in implementing international investment and trade, including the impact of domestic law in recognizing and affirming Indigenous constitutional and statutory protections.

At the very beginning of her career, Sally Engle Merry focused on the legal relations of nonlegally trained people—often members of the working class, marginalized or racialized groups. She explored the disjuncture between those people's understandings of disputing and the concepts, language, and procedural distinctions of legal professionals (Merry 1979, 1990, and more). That work brought her into contact with a number of scholars working on what Merry (1988) would call “new legal pluralism”: taking legal pluralism beyond the colonial and postcolonial contexts in which it had predominantly been deployed (“old legal pluralism”) and portraying it as a characteristic of virtually all societies and all law.

This article examines pedagogical developments in Canadian law schools related to outdoor education. In the process, it shows how recommendations from the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission can be applied, which called for law schools to create Indigenous-focused courses related to skills-based training in intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights and anti-racism. Land-based education on reserves can give law students meaningful context for exploring these Calls to Action. At the same time this article illustrates that taking students outside law school walls is not solely an Indigenous development. Thus, it first provides a few examples about how outdoors legal education is occurring in non-Indigenous settings. Next, the article examines unique Indigenous legal methodologies for learning law on and from the land. Finally, the author discusses his own experience in teaching Anishinaabe law on his reserve to demonstrate how students can develop deeper understandings of their professional responsibilities.

The Supreme Court of Canada has created a narrow framework for recognizing Aboriginal and treaty rights in Canada's Constitution by reference to historic moments of contact, assertions of sovereignty, and negotiated agreements. This approach has placed historical inquiries that search for “original” understandings at the centre of the court's jurisprudence. This article argues that law should not be equated with history in this way. It has severely disadvantaged Indigenous peoples. As a “living tree,” Canadian constitutional law should regard the “past” as a grab bag of possibilities for present reasoning, rather than as a constraint on present developments, because they do not have analogues in a bygone era.