The Tripartite Forum’s Justice Committee is moving ahead with a plan to structure laws and decision making in Nova Scotia’s Indigenous communities around the stories of Glooscap.
At its April 18th meeting in Membertou, the Justice Committee passed a motion to refer Gluskabewimk (the Glooscap Stories Project), as submitted, to Project Fund Coordinator Brad Sullivan.
From this point, Brad will be bringing it to the Forum’s Oversight Committee, if it gains Co-chair support.
The $145,200 Glooscap Stories Project is an effort to recognize and establish a more traditionally Indigenous justice system, following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls To Action #42 and 50, which call for recognition of Aboriginal justice systems and Indigenous law institutes for the development, use and understanding of Indigenous laws.
The Glooscap Stories Project is an initiative to revitalize Indigenous laws and governance practices in the Atlantic region, based on Mi’kmaq mythology surrounding Glooscap (Kluscap, Gluskap).
Glooscap’s teachings offer advice and guidance on ecological and moral principles, relating to how people should treat one another and the world in the form of stories. The Glooscap Stories Project aims to use methods that include story briefing, linguistic and deliberative methods (including community discussions) to analyze and discuss those stories.
Analysis and discussion of stories will focus on fundamental processes, values, principles and rules to determine how they can be applied to contemporary law, governance and policy.
A series of story discussions will take place, involving a core group of Mi’kmaq people who will help identify themes (such as leadership attributes, treatment of the vulnerable, respect of individual and collective rights, etc.) in a series of meetings over the course of a year.
The findings from these discussions will lead to the formation of frameworks of legal principles. What will follow are draft reports on the discussions and frameworks.
This project is being led by Naomi Metallic, an associate Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Chair in Aboriginal Law and Policy at Dalhousie, Tanisha Blackmore, the project’s outreach coordinator and counsel based in Halifax and Kristan Belanger, the project’s research assistant and a data analytics officer with Canadian Heritage’s International Copyright Team.
The work associated with the Glooscap Stories Project will entail a partnership between:
- The Halifax Lnuwey Tplutaqan Wikuom law lodge
- Dalhousie’s faculties of Law and Management
- The Union of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq (UNSM), the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq (CMM)
- The Kwilmu’kw Maw-Klusuaqn Negotiation Office (KMKNO)
- The Tripartite Forum’s Justice Committee Mi’kmaq Co-chair.
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