Статті в журналах з теми "Coast Salish Indians – Medicine"

The Coast Salish Indians studied here have lived with pervasive financial insecurity. Most Indians have coped partly through preaching and practice of a collective ethic of sharing. Some with relatively high earned income have moved in the direction of a more narrow, competitive individualism. Those with social assistance incomes maintain a broad sphere of assistance with kin and community. Families who are strongly committed to Spirit Dancing and the Shaker Church keep alight the most broadly defined generosity towards kin and Indians in need.

Abstract The standard interpretation of Washington Territory’s “Indian War” of the mid-1850s is not only east-west in its orientation, it also leaves little room for Indian auxiliaries, let alone mercenaries-for-hire from the north Pacific coast. “Northern Indians” from what later became northwestern British Columbia and southeastern Alaska provided crucial productive, reproductive, and military labor for early Euro-American settlers. Because Coast Salish communities on both sides of the border had experienced decades of raids and conflicts with various groups of northern Indians by the 1850s, Euro-Americans’ hiring of northern Indians in particular illustrates the importance of intra-Indian geopolitics to subsequent events. When placed in this larger context, the “Indian War” of 1855–56 in western Washington must be seen as part of a longer continuum of disputes involving distant Native groups, intra-Indian negotiations, and forms of Indigenous diplomacy. A closer look at how the key players involved attempted to manipulate these connections for their own purposes complicates our understandings of the military conflicts of the mid-1850s and reveals the significance of evolving Native-newcomer and intra-Indian relations in this transformative decade.

Coast Salish women's participation in the salmon canning industry of the 20th century is well documented. However, most of the historical data focuses on the exploitation of these women in the context of the canning industry while the extent to which they were able to exercise cultural agency in that context has been largely ignored. This essay provides an overview of the importance of salmon in pre-contact Coast Salish cultures from the economic to the political and spiritual realms. Given this background, the essay examines what parts of this pre-contact culture were able to survive the colonial institution of capitalist labour and why, to the extent they were able to exercise agency, Coast Salish women chose to work in the canneries over other forms of employment.

Abstract: Instrumental phonetic study of Salish languages (Pacific Northwest) has primarily been conducted in the Interior branch of the family. Here, the acoustic properties of vowels in Lushootseed, a language of the Coast Salish branch, are examined, with particular attention to the effects of uvular consonants. Generally in line with what has been found for other languages, Lushootseed vowels adjacent to uvular consonants, including open central a , show an increase in the first formant and a decrease in the second formant (corresponding to lowering and backing, respectively, in articulatory terms).

Mountain Valley Spring Company (Hot Springs, Arkansas), the nation's first coast-to-coast bottled water company, ran an advertisement in 1939 that conflated American Indians and the natural world. While the company thought that it was selling bottled water by drawing upon a local myth that Hernando De Soto visited the area in 1541, in actuality it tapped into darker themes of conquest, exploitation, and co-opting the bodies of indigenous peoples into white American cultural conceptions of nature and health. This article contends that the Mountain Valley advertisement is indicative of many other advertisements at the time that functioned as the last step in normalizing indigenous people's conquest by the United States into dominant U.S. culture. Doing so allowed whites to experience both their conquest and the natural world in new ways by paying homage to the land's seemingly long-gone original inhabitants. The advertisement not only reflected dominant ideas about American Indians in U.S. society but actually helped to metaphysically reconquer peoples who were physically conquered long before.

A 41-year-old Coast Salish female was initially diagnosed with typical features of classical adult celiac disease. Clinical and pathological features of primary biliary cirrhosis were also present, along with a familial history of insulin-dependent diabetes. Later, childhood celiac disease was detected in a male first-degree relative with diabetes. These patients are the first reported natives in Canada with celiac disease, a disorder believed to be genetically based but dependent on environmental factors for its clinical expression. The recognition of a ‘new’ disease in the setting of an aboriginal population may reflect geographical and climatic factors that permitted subsistence of this culturally complex food-gathering society up until most recent historical times, followed by adaptation of this society to European-based agricultural methods, particularly wheat cultivation.

In July 2020, I relocated from the territory of the Lenape in New York City, New York, to the ancestral homelands of the Coast Salish Peoples and the Lummi Nation and Nooksack Tribe, otherwise known as Bellingham, Washington. As a settler Canadian and "dependent" on my partner's US work visa, I wrestle with my precarious yet privileged footing here in the southern part of Turtle Island. As well, friends and family often ask me how I am "settling in." I deploy this very question as a provocation to ask, As a white settler, what does it mean to both responsibly unsettle oneself and "settle in" to a new home on stolen land? At the same time, due to the complexities of moving across the country during COVID-19, I feel unmoored and disconnected from my immediate surroundings. I am the most grounded when I am dancing. Working through the metatarsals of my feet, those bones that absorb shock and engender soft landings, is both a metaphor and a methodology for my practice-based research as a settler artist-scholar. Thus, through a piece that is part photo essay and part embodied reflection, I move with the land here on the west coast. With Whatcom Falls Park as my studio and soundscape, I will work through these questions and acknowledge the Coast Salish Peoples, the Lummi Nation, and the Nooksack Tribe, on whose land I currently move.

This paper describes the first phase of a Coast Salish Knowledge Repatriation Project being coordinated by the Curator of Indigenous Collections and Engagement at the Museum of Vancouver, within the unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəýəm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. The goal of this knowledge repatriation work is to support cultural revitalization and language renewal through activities that generate learning opportunities for community members. These activities pivot around knowledge that has been lost due to urbanization, forced assimilation efforts, and other colonial activities that may have restricted access to traditional lands and resources, preventing knowledge transmission. This work is about shifting the focus from extractive projects, that benefit external audiences, to one that supports capacity building and cultural renewal within communities. This essay describes a project to reintroduce coiled cedar root basketry into communities within the Greater Vancouver area in the province of British Columbia, Canada.

For the state of Washington's one-hundredth birthday, in 1989, Native peoples there decided to revive a distinctive mode of transportation—long-distance journeys by canoe—along with an entire culture associated with it. Born as the "Paddle to Seattle," during the past two decades these canoe journeys have become a summertime staple for Native peoples as well as for thousands of non-Indians who follow the "pullers" in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. The Tribal Canoe Journey has become a metaphor for community, drawing peoples together over a large area. The annual Canoe Journey also represents a revival of indigenous culture and, to some extent, indigenous languages. The canoe journeys (and the land-based events associated with them) might be compared with powwows in other areas. The carving of canoes has been revived, along with the structures of canoe families that maintain them, along with songs, clothing, and other aspects of traditional culture. The Tribal Canoe Journey is neither a race nor a contest, although it is something of a feat of physical endurance, recalling a time when canoes were one of the central attributes of Coast Salish cultures. Canoes were vital for the gathering of much of people's food, the conduct of social relations, and the waging of war. Like many maritime peoples around the world, seaborne transport framed culture and invoked deep spiritual beliefs in life and death. Canoe culture also teaches respect for ancestors' survival skills to city-bred youth, forging bonds between generations. Young people are learning how to get along with others and how to stay clean and sober during journeys in which they represent their peoples. The young people also learn how to deal with conflicts that arise from living in close quarters and pulling canoes for hours at a time, day after day. The Tribal Canoe Journey thus revives culture while sustaining and improving modern Native life in the Pacific Northwest.

The opening of tobacco plantations in East Coast Sumatra in 1870 became a major factor in the creation of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity in there. All the Malays there were Muslim, then the Europeans came with their Christianity, which was followed by most of the Batak people, the Indians brought Hinduism and Sikhism, and the Chinese brought Buddhism. East Coast Sumatra is a pluralistic region, but there has never been a conflict between ethnicities or religions. Very interesting. However, the reality of the religious life of the people at that time had never been revealed in detail. Furthermore, during the 1930 census it was recorded that there were 4.293 Europeans in Medan and 2.001 of them were women, but their presence in the religious sphere has not been exposed. Therefore, this study aims to narrate the image of colonial women in religion in East Coast Sumatra. The images of colonial women in this study are all forms of mental, spiritual, and daily behaviour expressed by women in religion, including the outward appearance that appears in women and their religious activities in East Coast Sumatra in the period 1870-1942. This study uses the historical method, and the primary data are the Dutch Colonial Government Report (verslag),Volkstelling 1930, maps, newspapers, bulletins and magazines, photographs depicting the religious life of the people of East Sumatra in the period 1870-1942.

A case study was undertaken during wet and postwet seasons to improve the perennial and alternate submerged saucer-shaped ponded lands (tal and semi-tal lands) in the coasts and northeastern plains of the Indian subtropics through pisciculture and cultivation of starch- and protein-rich aquatic food crops like water chestnut (Trapa bispinosa Roxb.) and makhana or fox nut (Euryale ferox Salisb.). The study revealed that the physico-chemical properties of soils (pH, organic C, organic matter, available N, P, and K) as well as quality of water (pH, EC, BOD, COD, CO3+, HCO3�, NO3-N, SO4-S, and Cl�), growing fish, makhana, and water chestnut was remarkably influenced by different moisture regimes and exhibited a significant improvement of soil health. The amount of organic C, available N, P, and K content were found significantly highest in the treatment where makhana was grown under alternate flooding and drying situation with a depth >2 m as compared to other treatments. Such enrichment of soil fertility, particularly in available N and P content, might be due to the accumulation of considerable amounts of biomass and fish excreta and their subsequent decomposition in situ in the soils. Therefore, the present study suggests that the N-enriched soil may effectively be utilized further for growing subsequent arable crops surroundings during summer season, which not only saves the amount of applied N fertilizer but also increases the apparent N efficiency with simultaneous increase in yield, and would benefit the farmers in this region.

The psychoactive substance known as ayahuasca has long been identified with Amazonian shamanism and traditional medicine. Over the last two decades its use has spread outside this region to urban populations in different parts of the world. This paper examines the adoption of the ritual use of the beverage by the Guarani Indians along the southern coast of Brazil. We argue that this process is related to the growing politics of identity of Brazilian indigenous peoples as well as to public policies that promote cultural diversity. In the case analyzed here, the adoption of ayahuasca is articulated with an ongoing cultural revitalization in activities related to shamanism, health and education and with the specific desires and actions of the leading family in one Guarani village.

ObjectivesThis study examined associations between childhood maltreatment, colonial harms and sex/drug-related risks for HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection among young Indigenous people who use drugs.DesignThe Cedar Project is a cohort involving young Indigenous people who use drugs in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Indigenous collaborators, collectively known as the Cedar Project Partnership, govern the entire research process.SettingVancouver is a large city on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples. Prince George is a mid-sized city, on the traditional territory of Lheidli T’enneh First Nation.Participants420 participants completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and returned for follow-up from 2003 to 2016.Primary/secondary outcome measuresPrimary outcomes were HIV and HCV infection over the study period. Secondary outcomes included sex and substance use-related risks.ResultsPrevalence of childhood maltreatment was 92.6% experienced any maltreatment; 73.4% experienced emotional abuse; 62.6% experienced physical abuse; 60.3% experienced sexual abuse; 69.5% experienced emotional neglect and 79.1% experienced physical neglect. We observed significant associations between childhood maltreatment and apprehensions into residential schools and foster care. All maltreatment types were associated with higher odds of sex/substance use-related risks; sexual abuse was associated with higher odds of HCV infection (adjusted OR: 1.67; 95% CI 1.05 to 2.66; p=0.031).ConclusionsFindings reflect high prevalence of childhood maltreatment and their associations with HIV/HCV risk and HCV infection. Public health prevention and treatment initiatives must be trauma informed and culturally safe to support healing, health, and well-being.

SELEK̵TEL̵ (Goldstream River), on Coast Salish territory on Southern Vancouver Island in British Columbia, is an important salmon spawning river and fishing location for the WSÁNEĆ (Saanich) people. On April 16, 2011, it was also the site of a diesel and gasoline spill. In this article, I explore the processes of revitalizing WSÁNEĆ law and how we might think about the revitalization of WSÁNEĆ law in the context of this fuel spill. While I do not present a definitive statement of the application of WSÁNEĆ law, I explore what is needed in order to understand WSÁNEĆ law on its own terms. I turn to WSÁNEĆ stories to ground my understanding of WSÁNEĆ law in a different cosmological and ontological framework, and begin to explore the implications this different framework has for understanding the fuel spill and a WSÁNEĆ approach to “law”. I argue that this framework requires a greater attribution of “being” and “agency” to land, with an emphasis on repairing and maintaining relationships in an encompassing way. In exploring the implications of this shift in framework, I problematize the notions of “jurisdiction” and “remedy”. Specifically, rather than approaching the relationship to land through the idea of jurisdictional authority over it, I argue that WSÁNEĆ law develops a perspective centred on our mutual responsibilities with and to land. I also argue that the notion of jurisdiction can compartmentalize and limit WSÁNEĆ law’s attention to the encompassing nature of our relationships to land. Similarly, as opposed to engaging WSÁNEĆ law only to find a remedy, we must step back and consider how the harm of the fuel spill would be characterized within the distinctive framework of WSÁNEĆ law.

Full TextThe first law enacted in Canada to protect existing Aboriginal rights was section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.2 The first law in Canada to recognize the rights of non-human animals as anything other than property has yet to be enacted. The first Supreme Court of Canada (hereafter referred to as the Court) case to interpret section 35 was R. v. Sparrow.3 The 1990 case confirmed an Aboriginal right of the Musqueam peoples of British Columbia to fish for food, social and ceremonial purposes. Since this precedent-setting case, many similar claims have been brought before the courts by way of the fluctuating legal space created by s.35. Many of these cases have been about establishing rights to fish4, hunt5, and trap non-human animals (hereafter referred to as animals). The Court has developed, and continues to develop tests to determine the existence and scope of Aboriginal rights. These tests primarily embody cultural, political and, to a surprisingly lesser degree, legal forces. One of the principal problems with these tests is that they privilege, through the western philosophical lens, the interests of humans. Animals are, at best, the resources over which ownership is being contested. The Euro-centric legal conceptualization of animals as 'resources' over which ownership can be exerted is problematic for at least two reasons. First, the relegation of animals solely to a utilitarian role is antithetical to Indigenous-animal relationships and therefore demonstrates one of the fundamental ways the Canadian legal system is ill equipped to give adequate consideration to Indigenous law. Second, failure to consider animals' inherent value and agency in this context reproduces the human-animal and culture-nature binaries that are at the root of many of western Euro-centric society's inequities. This paper argues that Aboriginal peoples' relationships with animals are a necessary, integral and distinctive part of their cultures6 and, therefore, these relationships and the actors within them are entitled to the aegis of s.35. Through the legal protection of these relationships, animals will gain significant protection as a corollary benefit. If the Court were to protect the cultural relationships between animals and Aboriginal groups, a precondition would be acceptance of Indigenous legal systems. Thus, this paper gives a brief answer to the question, what are Indigenous legal systems and why are animals integral to them? The Anishinabe (also known Ojibwe or Chippewa) are Indigenous peoples who have historically lived in the Great Lakes region. The Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron is home to the Cape Croker Indian Reserve, where the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation live. The people of this First Nation identify as Anishinabe. The Anishinabek case of Nanabush v. Deer is a law among these people and is used throughout the paper as an example of Indigenous-animal relationships. Making the significant assumption that s.35 has the capacity to recognize Indigenous law, the subsequent section of the paper asks why we should protect these relationships and how that protection should be achieved. Finally, the paper concludes that both the ability of s.35 to recognize Indigenous-animal relationships, and the judicial and political will to grant such recognition, are unlikely. Indigenous-animal relationships are integral to the distinctive culture of the Anishinabek, however the courts would be hesitant to allow such an uncertain and potentially far-reaching right. This is not surprising given that such a claim by both Indigenous and animal groups would challenge the foundations upon which the Canadian legal system is based. There are many sensitive issues inherent in this topic. It should be noted the author is not of Indigenous ancestry, but is making every effort to learn about and respect the Indigenous legal systems discussed. While this paper focuses on a number of Anishinabek laws; it is neither a complete analysis of these practices, nor one that can be transferred, without adaptation, to other peoples. Finally, Indigenous peoples and animal rights and Indigenous law scholars, such as Tom Regan and Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, respectively, may insist on an abolitionist approach to animal 'use' or reject the legitimacy of s.35 itself.7 These perspectives are worthy and necessary. This paper positions itself amongst these and other sources in order to reflect upon the timely and important issue of the legal status of Indigenous-animal relationships. I:WHAT ARE INDIGENOUS LEGAL SYSTEMS? The Law Commission of Canada defines a legal tradition as “a set of deeply rooted, historically conditioned attitudes about the nature of law, the role of law in the society and the polity, the proper organization and operation of a legal system, and the way law is or should be made, applied, studied, perfected and taught.”8 Indigenous legal traditions fit this description. They are living systems of beliefs and practices, and have been recognized as such by the courts.9 Indigenous practices developed into systems of law that have guided communities in their governance, and in their relationships amongst their own and other cultures and with the Earth.10 These laws have developed through stories, historical events that may be viewed as ‘cases,’ and other lived experiences. Indigenous laws are generally non-prescriptive, non-adversarial and non-punitive and aim to promote respect and consensus, as well as close connection with the land, the Creator, and the community. Indigenous laws are a means through which vital knowledge of social order within the community is transmitted, revived and retained. After European ‘settlement’ the influence of Indigenous laws waned. This was due in part to the state’s policies of assimilation, relocation and enfranchisement. 11 Despite these assaults, Indigenous legal systems have persevered; they continue to provide guidance to many communities, and are being revived and re-learned in others. For example, the Nisga’a’s legal code, Ayuuk, guides their communities and strongly informs legislation enacted under the Nisga’a Final Agreement, the first modern treaty in British Columbia.12 The land and jurisdiction claims of the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan Nations ultimately resulted in the Court’s decision in Delgamuukw,13 a landmark case that established the existence of Aboriginal title. The (overturned) BC Supreme Court’s statement in Delgamuukw14 reveals two of the many challenges in demonstrating the validity of Indigenous laws: “what the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en witnesses[es] describe as law is really a most uncertain and highly flexible set of customs which are frequently not followed by the Indians [sic] themselves.” The first challenge is that many laws are not in full practice, and therefore not as visible as they could be and once were. What the courts fail to acknowledge, however, is that the ongoing colonial project has served to stifle, extinguish and alter these laws. The second challenge is that the kind of law held and practiced by Indigenous peoples is quite foreign to most non-Indigenous people. Many Indigenous laws have animals as central figures. In Anishinabek traditional law, often the animals are the lawmakers15: they develop the legal principles and have agency as law givers. For instance, the Anishinabek case Nanabush v. Deer, Wolf , as outlined by Burrows, is imbued with legal principles, lessons on conduct and community governance, as well as ‘offenses’ and penalties. It is not a case that was adjudicated by an appointed judge in a courtroom, but rather one that has developed over time as a result of peoples’ relationships with the Earth and its inhabitants. An abbreviated summary of the case hints at these legal lessons: Nanabush plays a trick on a deer and deliberately puts the deer in a vulnerable position. In that moment of vulnerability, Nanabush kills the deer and then roasts its body for dinner. While he is sleeping and waiting for the deer to be cooked, the Wolf people come by and take the deer. Nanabush wakes up hungry, and out of desperation transforms into a snake and eats the brains out of the deer head. Once full, he is stuck inside the head and transforms back into his original shape, but with the deer head still stuck on. He is then chased and nearly killed by hunters who mistake him for a real deer. This case is set within the legal context of the Anishinabek’s treaty with deer. In signing the treaty, the people were reminded to respect beings in life and death and that gifts come when beings respect each other in interrelationships.16 Nanabush violated the rights of the deer and his peoples’ treaty with the deer. He violated the laws by taking things through trickery, and by causing harm to those he owed respect. Because his actions were not in accordance with Anishinabek legal principles, he was punished: Nanabush lost the thing he was so desperately searching for, and he ended up nearly being killed. This case establishes two lessons. The first is that, like statutory and common law, with which Canadians are familiar, Indigenous law does not exist in isolation. Principles are devised based on multiple teachings, pre- vious rules and the application of these rules to facts. That there are myriad sources of Indigenous law suggests that the learning of Indigenous law would require substantial effort on the part of Canadian law-makers.17 The second is that animals hold an important place in Indigenous law, and those relationships with animals – and the whole ‘natural’ world – strongly inform the way they relate to the Earth. II: CAN CANADIAN LAW ACCEPT INDIGENOUS LEGAL SYSTEMS? If there were a right recognized under s.35 concerning the Indigenous-animal relationship, what would it look like? Courts develop legal tests to which the facts of each case are applied, theoretically creating a degree of predictability as to how a matter will be judged. Introduced in Sparrow, and more fully developed in Van der Peet, a ‘test’ for how to assess a valid Aboriginal right has been set out by the Court. Summarized, the test is: “in order to be an Aboriginal right an activity must be an element of a practice, custom or tradition integral to the distinctive culture of the Aboriginal group claiming the right.”18 There are ten, differently weighted factors that a court will consider in making this assessment. The right being ‘tested’ in this discussion is the one exemplified in Nanabush v. Deer: the ability of Indigenous peoples to recognize and practice their laws, which govern relationships, including death, with deer and other animals. The courts have agreed that a generous, large and liberal construction should be given to Indigenous rights in order to give full effect to the constitutional recognition of the distinctiveness of Aboriginal culture. Still, it is the courts that hold the power to define rights as they conceive them best aligning with Canadian society19; this is one way that the Canadian state reproduces its systems of power over Indigenous peoples.20 The application of the Aboriginal right exemplified in Nanbush v. Deer to the Sparrow and Van der Peet tests would likely conclude that the Anishinabek do have an integral and distinctive relationship with animals. However, due to the significant discretion of the Court on a number of very subjective and politically sensitive factors, it is uncertain that the Nanabush v. Deer case would ‘pass’ Van der Peet’s required ten factors.21 This is indicative of the structural restraints that s.35 imposes. 22 The questions it asks impair its ability to capture and respect the interrelationships inherent in Indigenous peoples’ interactions with animals. For example, the Court will characterize hunting or fishing as solely subsistence, perhaps with a cultural element. Shin Imai contends these activities mean much more: “To many…subsistence is a means of reaffirming Aboriginal identity by passing on traditional knowledge to future generations. Subsistence in this sense moves beyond mere economics, encompassing the cultural, social and spiritual aspects for the communities.”23 Scholar Kent McNeil concludes that: “regardless of the strengths of legal arguments in favour of Indigenous peoples, there are limits to how far the courts […] are willing to go to correct the injustices caused by colonialism and dispossession.”24 It is often not the legal principles that determine outcomes, but rather the extent to which Indigenous rights can be reconciled with the history of settlement without disturbing the current economic and political structure of the dominant culture. III:WHY PROTECT THE ANIMAL-INDIGENOUS RELATIONSHIP? Legally protecting animal-Indigenous relationships offers symbiotic, mutually respectful benefits for animals and for the scope of Aboriginal rights that can be practiced. For instance, a protected relationship would have indirect benefits for animals’ habitat and right to life: it would necessitate protecting the means necessary, such as governance of the land, for realization of the right. This could include greater conservation measures, more contiguous habitat, enforcement of endangered species laws, and, ideally, a greater awareness and appreciation by humans of animals and their needs. Critical studies scholars have developed the argument that minority groups should not be subject to culturally biased laws of the mainstream polity.24 Law professor Maneesha Deckha points out that animals, despite the central role they play in a lot of ‘cultural defences,’ have been excluded from our ethical consideration. Certainly, the role of animals has been absent in judicial consideration of Aboriginal rights.26 Including animals, Deckha argues, allows for a complete analysis of these cultural issues and avoids many of the anthropocentric attitudes inherent in Euro-centric legal traditions. In Jack and Charlie27 two Coast Salish men were charged with hunting deer out of season. They argued that they needed to kill a deer in order to have raw meat for an Aboriginal religious ceremony. The Court found that killing the deer was not part of the ceremony and that there was insufficient evidence to establish that raw meat was required. This is a case where a more nuanced consideration of the laws and relationships with animals would have resulted in a more just application of the (Canadian) law and prevented the reproduction of imperialist attitudes. A criticism that could be lodged against practicing these relationships is that they conflict with the liberty and life interests of animals.28 Theoretically, if Indigenous laws are given the legal and political room to fully operate, a balance between the liberty of animals and the cultural and legal rights of Indigenous peoples can be struck.29 Indeed, Indigenous peoples’ cultural and legal concern for Earth is at its most rudimentary a concern for the land, which is at the heart of the challenge to the Canadian colonial system. If a negotiated treaty was reached, or anti-cruelty and conservation laws were assured in the Indigenous peoples’ self government system, then Canadian anti-cruelty30 and conservation laws,31 the effectiveness of which are already questionable, could be displaced in recognition of Indigenous governance.32 Indigenous peoples in Canada were – and are, subject to imposed limitations – close to the environment in ways that can seem foreign to non-Indigenous people.33 For example, some origin stories and oral histories explain how boundaries between humans and animals are at times absent: Animal-human beings like raven, coyote and rabbit created them [humans] and other beings. People …acted with respect toward many animals in expectation of reciprocity; or expressed kinship or alliance with them in narratives, songs, poems, parables, performances, rituals, and material objects. 34 Furthering or reviving these relationships can advance the understanding of both Indigenous legal systems and animal rights theory. Some animal rights theorists struggle with how to explain the cultural construction of species difference: Indigenous relationships with animals are long standing, lived examples of a different cultural conception of how to relate to animals and also of an arguably healthy, minimally problematic way to approach the debate concerning the species divide.35 A key tenet of animal-Indigenous relationships is respect. Shepard Krech posits that Indigenous peoples are motivated to obtain the necessary resources and goals in ‘proper’ ways: many believe that animals return to the Earth to be killed, provided that hunters demonstrate proper respect.36 This demonstrates a spiritual connection, but there is also a concrete connection between Indigenous peoples and animals. In providing themselves with food and security, they ‘manage’ what Canadian law calls ‘resources.’37 Because of the physical nature of these activities, and their practical similarity with modern ‘resource management,’ offering this as ‘proof’ of physical connection with animals and their habitat may be more successful than ‘proving’ a spiritual relationship. Finally, there are health reasons that make the Indigenous-animal relationship is important. Many cultures have come to depend on the nutrients they derive from particular hunted or fished animals. For example, nutrition and physical activity transitions related to hunting cycles have had negative impacts on individual and community health.38 This shows the multidimensionality of hunting, the significance of health, and, by extension, the need for animal ‘resources’ to be protected. IV: HOW SHOULD WE PROTECT THESE ABORIGINAL RIGHTS? If the Anishinabek and the deer ‘win’ the constitutional legal test (‘against’ the state) and establish a right to protect their relationships with animals, what, other than common law remedies,39 would follow? Below are ideas for legal measures that could be taken from the human or the animal perspective, or both, where benefits accrue to both parties. If animals had greater agency and legal status, their needs as species and as individuals could have a meaningful place in Canadian common and statutory law. In Nanabush v. Deer, this would mean that the deer would be given representation and that legal tests would need to be developed to determine the animals’ rights and interests. Currently the courts support the view that animals can be treated under the law as any other inanimate item of property. Such a legal stance is inconsistent with a rational, common-sense view of animals,40 and certainly with Anishinabek legal principles discussed herein.41 There are ongoing theoretical debates that inform the practical questions of how animal equality would be achieved: none of these in isolation offers a complete solution, but combined they contribute to the long term goal. Barsh and James Sákéj Youngblood Henderson advocate an adoption of the reasoning in the Australian case Mabo v. Queensland,42 where whole Aboriginal legal systems were imported intact into the common law. Some principles that Canada should be following can also be drawn from international treaties that Canada has or should have signed on to.43 Another way to seek protection from the human perspective is through the freedom of religion and conscience section of the Charter. Professor John Borrows constructs a full argument for this, and cites its challenges, in Living Law on a Living Earth: Aboriginal Religion, Law and the Constitution.44 The strongest, but perhaps most legally improbable, way to protect the animal- Indigenous relationship is for Canada to recognize a third, Indigenous order of government (in addition to provincial and federal), where all three orders are equal and inform one another’s laws. This way, Indigenous laws would have the legal space to fully function and be revived. Endowing Indigenous peoples with the right to govern their relationships would require a great acquiescence of power by governments and a commitment to the establishment and maintenance of healthy self-government in Indigenous communities. Louise Mandell offers some reasons why Canada should treat Aboriginal people in new ways, at least one of which is salient to the third order of government argument: To mend the [E]arth, which must be done, governments must reassess the information which the dominant culture has dismissed. Some of that valuable information is located in the oral histories of Aboriginal Peoples. This knowledge will become incorporated into decisions affecting the [E]arth’s landscape when Aboriginal Peoples are equal partners in decisions affecting their territories.45 V: CONCLUSION A legal system that does not have to justify its existence or defend its worth is less vulnerable to challenges.46 While it can be concluded that s.35 has offered some legal space for Indigenous laws and practices, it is too deeply couched in Euro-centric legal traditions and the anthropocentric cultural assumptions that they carry. The most effective strategy for advancing Indigenous laws and culture, that would also endow many animals with greater agency, and relax the culture-nature, human-animal binaries, is the formal recognition of a third order of government. Lisa Chartrand explains that recognition of legal pluralism would be a mere affirmation of legal systems that exist, but which are stifled: “…this country is a multijuridical state, where the distinct laws and rules of three systems come together within the geographic boundaries of one political territory.” 47 Revitalizing Indigenous legal systems is and will be a challenging undertaking. Indigenous communities must reclaim, define and understand their own traditions: “The loss of culture and traditions caused by the historic treatment of Aboriginal communities makes this a formidable challenge for some communities. Equally significant is the challenge for the Canadian state to create political and legal space to accommodate revitalized Indigenous legal traditions and Aboriginal law-making.”48 The project of revitalizing Indigenous legal traditions requires the commitment of resources sufficient for the task, and transformative change to procedural and substantive law. The operation of these laws within, or in addition to, Canadian law would of course cause widespread, but worthwhile controversy. In Animal Bodies, Cultural Justice49 Deckha argues that an ethical relationship with the animal Other must be established in order realize cultural and animal rights. This paper explores and demonstrates the value in finding legal space where cultural pluralism and respect for animals can give rise to the practice of Indigenous laws and the revitalization of animal-Indigenous relationships. As Borrows writes: “Anishinabek law provides guidance about how to theorize, practice and order our association with the [E]arth, and could do so in a way that produces answers that are very different from those found in other sources.”50 (see PDF for references)

This article considers the terms culture and healing, critiques perpetuation of colonizing perspectives in conventional trauma-informed mental health approaches, and introduces Gathering Our Medicine, an innovative community framework created by Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish; Coast Salish Peoples Indigenous to the lands of Southern British Columbia, Canada) practitioner Denise Findlay in response to the need for decolonial approaches to mental health for Indigenous communities throughout British Columbia, Canada. The framework encourages re-imagining healing and mental health practices through values such as lateral kindness that draw from distinct traditional Indigenous philosophies, ontologies, and epistemologies. By revitalizing and centring distinctive traditional knowledges about actualization, transformation, and healing, the framework provides a role for allies that disrupts the impulse to deny culpability that Indigenous scholar Susan Dion calls the perfect stranger position. Findlay provides an alternative—the imperfect friend—drawing on kinship practices as effective indirect praxis for collective healing and well-being, transforming the distanced expert into engaged community member.

Abstract Objective: Understanding food insecurity and its health consequences is important for identifying strategies to best target support for individuals and communities. Given the limited information that exists for indigenous groups in Latin America, this study aimed to understand the association between food insecurity and mental health in an indigenous population in Panama. Design: Cross-sectional data were collected using a survey conducted with Kuna Indians residing off the coast of Panama. Data sources included measures from the Panamanian prevalence of risk factors associated with CVD survey, and validated measures for psychosocial factors and standardised health outcome measures. Regression models with each of the mental health outcomes (depression, serious psychological distress, perceived stress) were used to examine the association between food insecurity and mental health outcomes. Setting: Indigenous Kuna community residing on the San Blas Islands of Panama. Participants: Two-hundred nine adults. Results: Food insecurity was reported by 83 % of the participants. Across demographic categories, the only significant difference was by age with higher prevalence in younger ages. After adjusting for demographics, higher food insecurity was significantly associated with higher number of depressive symptoms and more serious psychological distress, but not with levels of perceived stress. Conclusions: Based on these findings, treatment for mental health in the Kuna community may need to account for social determinants of health and be tailored to meet the needs of younger age groups in this population. In addition, interventions designed to decrease food insecurity should be considered as a possible means for improving mental health.