DRIVING THE GIFT HOME

Abstract

In reflecting on the relationship between ongoing Canadian colonialism and sacred indigenous spaces, the author considers different conceptions of constitutionalism and of law from the location of Gaamitigomishkag, a sacred site for four Anishinaabe communities (including the author’s) in the Boundary Waters area of Treaty #3. The inquiry is framed by the author’s relationship with his grandmother. In the first section he recalls what it was like learning to learn Anishinaabe law from her. He invites his readers to join him in shifting their focus from what to how they learn something (perhaps radically) new. In the second section he shares an anecdote about learning from his grandmother on one particular summer day at Gaamitigomishkag. In the third section, he challenges readers to deploy the interrogative shift from what to how through a narrative that begins to disclose structural differences between Canadian and Anishinaabe constitutionalisms, and thus, their respective systems of law. Given the narrative form of much of this article, readers have to work for their meanings. Each arc in the third section’s narrative begins at Gaamitigomishkag, but discloses very different ways that peoples might constitute themselves as political community in, near and through it. A critical question the article poses is not what, but rather how should one think about community in this space? The article ends in the present where Canadian constitutionalism has been smashed on top of Anishinaabe constitutionalism. The author is left at Gaamitigomishkag reflecting on which community(ies) he belongs to. He invites the reader to consider whether he decides.