Coming For Everything Our Ancestors Were Denied: Indigenous Lawmakers Forging Pathways Ahead
“Are you a lawyer?”
I remember clearly the day I was with a Survivor, sitting amid the raw emotions that filled the space between us after we filled out their IAP form (the Independent Assessment Process was for claims involving sexual and physical abuse). It was July 2012, just months away from the September 19th deadline for Survivors to submit their claims. I had just finished explaining the next steps of the process, recommending that they find a lawyer to assist them with what would be a difficult journey. The Survivor asked, “Are you a lawyer?”
“No, I’m just a form filler,” I responded with regret. It pained me to inform Survivors that a relationship we had so quickly established was limited to filling out a form. I wanted to walk alongside them every step of the way so they didn’t feel alone in a system that I knew would re-traumatize their precious inner child. My role was to assist them in what was often the hardest first step. Beyond that, I didn’t have the credentials or job title to guide the process further.
We were holding hands. They squeezed mine a bit tighter. “I wish you could be my lawyer. We need more Anishinaabe people doing this work.”
I nod in agreement, having heard of the treatment of Survivors by opportunistic lawyers who coldly treated the claims process like a conveyor belt of compensation packages to collect fees from. Holding space for this reality, I was somewhat in awe at the thought of Anishinaabe lawyers doing this work instead. How we could take care of our own with the integrity and kindness they deserved. What if I became a lawyer? I quickly batted the idea away from my mind. I wasn’t smart enough. Too emotional. My work was needed on the ground.
We drink more tea, smudge, and eventually close our meeting.
A seed was planted that day. It grew for years until it was a looming tree, swaying between a world of self-doubt and what if’s and a world of possibility. Those negative thought processes told me I was too busy, that it would be unmanageable with a young child to raise, that the LSAT was too hard and I wouldn’t even get accepted to law school if I tried. But other voices said, you will never know unless you try.
In the legal realm, you receive your Call to Bar once you complete all of your schooling and articles. It’s the culmination of having gone through an arbitrary system of education and training necessary to earn the title of a lawyer.
In the Anishinaabe realm, you receive your calling, your Call to Life so to speak, through spiritual intervention. The culmination of wandering through paths and life experiences that eventually lead to a moment of discovery: that you already have within you all of the tools and knowledge to seize an opportunity and future that colonial narratives tell us we can’t have.
How do we answer those Calls?
In July of this year, I received my Call from the Law Society of Manitoba, holding an eagle feather near heart.
But in July of 2012, I received my Call from my People, holding the hand of a Survivor.
I walk with those Survivors in my heart every day. I hope they know that I answered their Call.
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I often wonder what drives a person’s aspirations of becoming a lawyer. If you tell any practicing lawyer or law student that you’re contemplating the career, they will quickly yell at you to run in the other direction. In our first days of law school, our professors acknowledged that many of us likely arrived with the hope of changing the world. Their jaded smirks and weary eyes should have be a dead giveaway to what lies ahead. Later, the real task presents itself: surviving those first few years of legal training turns on whether you remain hopeful or demoralized by the historical onslaught of case rulings and precedents that serve the idea of white supremacy, ownership and control.
And the bigger question on my mind has always been, what propels an Indigenous person to pursue the life? And then I met three incredible Indigenous women in law school and I caught a glimpse into like minds. Dell Dyck, Alyssa Bird, and Raven Dominique Gobeil all deserve their own introduction (foreshadowing for the next post). When I say we’ve navigated the trenches of law school together, it is by no means an understatement. While I don’t claim to speak for any of them (or all Indigenous lawyers for that matter), these are my observations:
Being Indigenous in the field of law is questioning your career choice in wake of the failure of our criminal justice system to treat with dignity and fairness the life of a young Indigenous man shot point blank by a white farmer in the name of protection of property.
Being Indigenous in the field of law is watching the Supreme Court of Canada flip flop on the opportunity to uphold Nation to Nation agreements in favour of industry, capitalism and consulting away our inherent rights as Treaty partners.
Being Indigenous in the field of law is feeling powerless against court injunction after court injunction that perpetuates the desecration and exploitation of our Mother’s greatest gifts –Aki and Nibi – the land and water.
Being Indigenous in the field of law is coming to the realization that in order to impact change we must carry on despite our hearts breaking over and over, that we must dig deep and find the creative solutions that escape the minds of a colonial mentality. That our own legal traditions and systems that have existed since time immemorial are the way forward and that historical and present forces are working against us to discredit those ways of being and knowing.
As difficult as the path may be and has been, it is an exciting time to be an Indigenous lawyer. We are no longer waiting for the government or courts to grant us the authority or jurisdiction to act in the best interest of our children, our families, our communities, and the land for which we have the inherent responsibility to protect. Our right to sovereignty and self-determination transcends history and precedents.
We are occupying a space that was historically reserved for the elite and dismantling hierarchies to make way for processes that are driven by grassroots movement and direction. We know who our own legal experts are, that our laws are passed through knowledge keepers and oral tradition, carried out through the beauty of our languages and ceremony. That our agreements are solidified through the sharing of a pipe, that offering tobacco forms a reciprocal relationship between us and each other, us and the land, us and the water and all the life that sustains our existence.
My observation and experience with Indigenous lawyers is this: many of us didn’t set out in life to become advocates. Rather, the injustice and oppression that we witness within our own families and communities becomes so unbearable that we are left with no choice but to answer the call to arms. We all have a part to play. We are all given gifts with which we can further the cause. The separate paths we take veer and cross over one another but the final destination is the same: to secure a safe and prosperous future for our People.
Very simply, to live mino bimaadiziwin - a good life.
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We have arrived.
The paths ahead of us were blazed by those who dared to walk them. As history will demonstrate, Indigenous people were and continue to be denied access to justice.
1876 - The Indian Act was passed to govern all aspects of the lives of Indigenous people whom are legally known as “Status Indians”. Initially passed as The Gradual Civilization Act in 1857, its sole purpose was to assimilate the Indian into settler society. It outlawed and attacked Indigenous life from all angles – culture and language, community and family structure, trade and economy, and political power.
Of note: Section 86(1) stated that any Indian (man) who received a university degree or became a doctor, lawyer or clergyman was involuntarily enfranchised – in other words, all of their treaty rights, and the treaty rights of their family and children, were extinguished. They were no longer considered an Indian and therefore assimilated into society.
1927 – In response to political organization and growing resistance from Indigenous people, the federal government amended the Indian Act with Section 141 barring any Indian or Indian nation to hire a lawyer, or raise funds for the purposes of hiring a lawyer.
It was not until 1951 that only some of the most oppressive assimilation policies were dropped from the Indian Act, with enfranchisement and gender inequality towards status Indian women persisting until 1985 with the passing of Bill C-31 and much later, the 2010 Gender Equity in Indian Registration Act. Inarguably, there is still a long way to go. There is still gender inequality. The Indian Act still exists.
Despite colonial laws stacked against Indigenous people in Canada, there were those who transcended times and barriers that sought to end Indian livelihood, and became trailblazers for many to follow.
In 1952, William Wuttunee of the Red Pheasant First Nation graduated from the University of Saskatchewan’s law school, received his Call to the Bar in 1954 and became Canada’s first Indigenous lawyer.
In 1976, Roberta L. Jamieson, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, became the first Indigenous woman to earn a law degree in Canada and first woman to be elected Chief of the Six Nations.
Delia Opekokew, member of Canoe Lake First Nation obtained her law degree from Osgoode Hall at York University in 1977 and became a practicing lawyer in 1979. She was the first woman to ever run for leadership of the Assembly of First Nations.
Also in 1977, Marion Meadmore of the Peepeekisis First Nation graduated from Robson Hall law school at the University of Manitoba and opened the first all-female law firm in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is a founding member of one of the first Friendship Centres in Canada, as well as a co-founder of the Indigenous Bar Association of Canada.
From these early days of an Indigenous resurgence follows a wave of Indigenous lawyers that to this day are leaders and visionaries in their own right.
Senator Murray Sinclair, Helen Semaganis, Donald Worme, Ovide Mercredi, Jean Teillet, Sakej Youngblood Henderson, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, Aimée Craft, John Borrows, Harold “Sonny” Cochrane, Tracey Lindberg, Val Napolean, Jody Wilson-Raybould, David C. Nahwegabow, Dianne Corbiere, J. Wilton Littlechild – to name just a few.
I often wondered how those who have passed on before us envisioned the next generation, and then I found myself graduating among that future of women in June of 2019. A year and a half later, we are all practicing lawyers. I’m in awe by the reality our ancestors prayed for.
We’ve come for everything we were told we couldn’t have. We have arrived.
Up next, Part Niizh (Two) to this story with proper introductions to the sisterhood. I can’t wait to share more on what we’ve been up to. I promise it won’t be another 10-month wait.
- Love, DMO