LESSON 3 & 4: Indigenous Governance and Justice Systems

Question 1

Wampum belts

Answer 1

forms of symbolism depending on the Nation or tradition, commemorating laws, important agreements, or decisions THAT have been practiced by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial across Turtle Island

Question 2

Across various Indigenous communities and cultures, Indigenous laws emphasize:

Answer 2

social harmony, restoring balance, and re-establishing peace rather than retribution or punishment

Question 3

Turtle Island (2)

Answer 3

(1) stems from various nations’ creation stories
(2) Many of these stories are shared by elders who maintain the responsibility to do so.

Question 4

Creation stories typically speak of… (4)

Answer 4

(1) peace, harmony, and inclusion.
(2) Depending on the story, various participants will play equal roles in creation; sometimes animals, people, plants, and mud, among other things, are named as equally responsible in the development of Turtle Island.
(3) Creation stories provide a framework for understanding how Indigenous peoples govern themselves because their governing structures are rooted in this world view, which is inclusive of equality and balance
(4) many stories conveyed this idea of the people being equal to and in balance with the other aspects of creation

Question 5

essential to an understanding of Indigenous concepts of justice

Answer 5

idea that all elements of creation, and not just all peoples, are created as equals and should remain in balance

Question 6

central factors in Indigenous justice systems (2)

Answer 6

(1) sustains a view that justice is rooted in relationship, with the land and animals and plants, with the Creator, and with others, whether they are offenders or victims.
(2) Thus, restoring balance and healing relationships

Question 7

Traditional Governance and Governance Structures (4)

Answer 7

(1) assured all in the community had their needs met
(2) One of the most important things was the welfare of the community as a whole
(3) If the ‘whole’ is maintained, then beauty, harmony, and balance result
(4) concern for the whole resulted in health and lack of poverty

Question 8

Indigenous hierarchies

Answer 8

everyone had her or his own unique role to play. Social structures existed, but there was no “wealth hierarchy.

Question 9

the Five Nations

Answer 9

Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk

Question 10

What is the Circle Wampum and what does it represent? (3)

Answer 10

(1) It circles the people.
(2) The great law and the great peace that would result from the great law.
(3) For each string there is a clan mother and a chief.

Question 11

The Peacemaker planted a White Pine tree, and used it as a symbol of strength, what else does it symbolize?

Answer 11

Peace will never grow old if people are tending to it. Peace also gets tested. The chief’s job is to restore and maintain it.

Question 12

Rick Hill also further explains the Hiawatha Belt (pictured at the beginning of this lesson). He further explains what this belt represents. What does the purple background of the belt represent? What are “symbols of memory”? (3)

Answer 12

(1) Five nations Union (together formed this confederation)
(2) The purple represents very dark times (murder, war)
(3) Hope and peace will sustain the people for the future

Question 13

What does the Woman’s Nomination Belt represent?

Answer 13

They have a responsibility to ensure that young men can be stood up who can handle the responsibility of the Great Law. The Clan mother is always trying to help the young men be good and supervise their work or remove them if they do not fulfill their duties.

Question 14

On October 24, 1924, the RCMP came to the Grand River and tried to establish an elective system. What else did the RCMP do, and what was confiscated and why?

Answer 14

A string of beads that were purple and white and a bag of loose beads.

Question 15

The Grand Seal of the Haudenosaunee (designed by Oren Lyons) is presented. Outline what this represents.

Answer 15

50 men standing in a circle, holding hands, tree of peace, the peace maker with arrows and the weapons of war buried beneath. All the animals represent the various clans.

Question 16

the most common systems of Indigenous governance

Answer 16

called clans, houses, councils, and confederacies

Question 17

raising fallen trees

Answer 17

replacing dead chiefs

Question 18

Stó:lo¯

Answer 18

governance and leadership

Question 19

Haudenosaunee Confederacy consists of six nations

Answer 19

(originally five): Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora

Question 20

the founding constitution of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy

Answer 20

The Great Law of Peace

Question 21

The Great Law of Peace

Answer 21

It is an oral tradition codified in a series of wampum belts currently retained by the Onondaga Nation.

Question 22

Wampum belts

Answer 22

are made from sacred shells and clam beads, and these belts were typically used by the ancestors of the peoples of the Eastern Woodlands to symbolize or commemorate important events and agreements

Question 23

the values of peace that form the basis of the Great Law

Answer 23

are benevolence, good mind, and caring

Question 24

Righteousness

Answer 24

refers to a shared ideology of the people, one that is pure and unselfish. It happens when people synchronize their thoughts and feelings with the flow of the universe and have the intentions of the “Good Mind.” All judgements of privilege, superiority, or prejudice are cleared. Instead, acknowledgement is given to the equality among all things in the universe, recognizing that humans do not own the world but rather that all of creation is intended for everything to benefit equally, including animals, plants, insects, humans, and all that is

Question 25

Reason

Answer 25

is the power of the human mind to arrive at righteous decisions regarding complex questions or concerns.

Question 26

Power

Answer 26

Power is having the ability to call on fighting parties to lay down their weapons of war and arrive at an agreement. It involves the power of reason and persuasion, the power of the intrinsic good will of human beings, and the power of a unified and devoted people.

Question 27

primary reasons the North West Mounted Police (NWMP) (which would later become the RCMP) was formed in 1873

Answer 27

to appease Indigenous resistance to settler colonization and “deal with” Indigenous peoples impeding settler’s plans and priorities

Question 28

The haldimand treaty

Answer 28

was in recognition of their alliance with the British during this war, and the Treaty thereby confirmed that the Haudenosaunee would be in full possession of this tract of land—in recognition of their land taken resulting from the war with the United States.

Question 29

what Europeans used to gain authority over lands

Answer 29

papal rulings and other international legal documents, collectively known as “the doctrine of discovery

Question 30

The limits of self-determination were further narrowed through the implementation of what came to be known as the “salt-water thesis

Answer 30

thesis stipulates that “only territories separated by water or that were geographically separate from the colonizing power could invoke self-determinism

Question 31

discovery doctrine

Answer 31

When the explorers arrived in Indigenous lands (in the fifteenth century), they justified their governmental and property claims over those lands and peoples by developing this doctrine which was embodied in various documents issued under the authority of the pope

Question 32

These two men posited views on the natural state of human beings and on the origins of government that provided a rationale for colonization

Answer 32

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke

Question 33

Thomas Hobbes argues: (2)

Answer 33

(1) that there is no such thing as natural order or any justice in nature, so humans need to create a government, which Hobbes describes as an artificial man-state called Leviathan.
(2) if people were left in nature to their own devices, they would engage in war, “man against every man.

Question 34

“Sovereigns” of the “non-state” could use what Hobbes called: (3)

Answer 34

(1) “positive laws” (man-made laws) to maintain order and the state’s power, and only the sovereign of the man-state could command and make valid laws.
(2) Hobbes’s state of nature then became the starting point of Eurocentric discussions of government and politics.
(3) Indigenous peoples were deemed as being “in a state of nature and an antithetical civilized society.

Question 35

the principal author of the philosophical underpinnings of colonialism

Answer 35

John Locke

Question 36

How did Locke’s view differ from Hobbes? (2)

Answer 36

(1) Hobbes described the state of nature as being “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short but Locke considered humans in their natural state to be tolerant, joyful, free, and equal.
(2) By the same token, humans in this state of nature are “insecure and dangerous in their freedom,” so they must join with others in society and put themselves under a government, giving up some of their natural rights for mutual security and, in particular, for the preservation of their right to property enforced by human law.

Question 37

In defence of England’s colonial interests in the Americas, Locke develops this concept (2)

Answer 37

(1) agrarian labour, its fundamental premise being that the right to claim land as property was the result of agricultural labour
(2) This definition of property effectively dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their land.

Question 38

Lockian concept

Answer 38

the idea that land had to be cultivated in order to be owned

Question 39

wétiko psychosis

Answer 39

It is a disease of aggression against other living things, a disease that consumes other creatures’ lives and possessions.

Question 40

Yellow Bird outlines 3 types of colonialism

Answer 40

internal, external or exploitation, and settler

Question 41

Internal colonialism (2)

Answer 41

(1) is the biopolitical and geopolitical management of people—in this case, of Indigenous peoples and their land, territory, vegetation, and wildlife—all within the borders of the imperial nation.
(2) It involves particularized modes of control that manage populations through imperial political and economic systems and through institutions such as prisons, schools, and policing agencies.

Question 42

Exploitation colonialism

Answer 42

(1) refers to “the expropriation of fragments of Indigenous worlds, animals, plants, and human beings”; these are exploited for the benefit of the colonizers—“to build wealth . . . and privilege . . . or feed the appetites of . . . the colonizers who get marked as the first world.”
(2) Resource extraction is an example of exploitation colonialism, in that big multinational corporations reap profits by extracting resources from Indigenous territory.

Question 43

Settler colonialism (4)

Answer 43

(1) happens when “foreign family units move into a place and reproduce” and “an imperial power oversees the immigration of these settlers.”
(2) Eventually, settlers take over lands and attempt to destroy the people who live there.
(3) This form of colonialism involves master narratives framing the settlers as “superior” and as representative of so-called progress and civilization.
(4) It also involves ignoring or stripping away the identity of the land’s first inhabitants

Question 44

Orientalism

Answer 44

posits a “progressive civilization,” the West, and a “backwards civilization,” the East, but it is also a method of “normalized” research, writings, and study, dominated by imperatives, perceptions, and ideological preconceptions presumably suited to those being colonized.

Question 45

Contemporary Colonialism

Answer 45

is a method of postmodern colonization in which domination is still based on settler rules and priorities but settlers calculate and perform more indirect or crafty ways of achieving their goals

Question 46

Policies exist today that maintains these discrepancies. (3)

Answer 46

(1) The Indian Act of 1985
(2) This federal act still regulates “Indians” in Canada, and, consequently, First Nation communities fall under federal jurisdiction.
(3) the federal government allocates less to First Nations communities for things such as water, housing, and education than do the provincial, territorial, and municipal governments responsible for funding these things in non–First Nation communities.

Question 47

the Gradual Enfranchisement Act (3)

Answer 47

(1) for the first time, a blood quantum requirement was added to define who was and who was not a legal “Indian.”
(2) Only individuals with at least one-quarter Indian blood were eligible.
(3) As Canada expanded into the western regions of the continent and government officials encountered and negotiated treaties with additional First Nations, the government wanted more stringent controls on who would be recognized as “Indian

Question 48

the Indian Act frames the identity of First Nations people

Answer 48

according to colonial definitions and purposes.

Question 49

Christopher Columbus never set foot in mainland North America

Answer 49

True