What are our relationships and responsibilities to one another? How do we reconcile our differences and find ways forward to live together sustainably? The Anishinaabeg have long considered these questions. This talk details how, in bringing the Crown into a treaty relationship, Anishinaabe leaders detailed their understanding of creation and relationship to the Creator. They used treaty forums to instruct newcomers how to live with creation and how to understand the legal web of relationships they would be entering into that carried duties and responsibilities to creation. As such, the United States and Canada are always animated and conditioned by the laws of creation and the laws of the Anishinaabeg outlined in the treaty relationships that enabled them to live here, accounting for all our relations.

 

 

HEIDI KIIWETINEPINESIIK STARK (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Victoria. She is the Director of the Centre for Indigenous Research and Community-led Engagement (CIRCLE) and the Director of the Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Nationhood. She has a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include Indigenous law and treaty practices, Aboriginal and Treaty rights, and Indigenous politics in the United States and Canada. She is the co-editor of Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World through Stories with Jill Doerfler and Niigaanwewidam Sinclair and is the co-author of American Indian Politics and the American Political System (3rd and 4th edition) with Dr. David E. Wilkins. She has published articles in journals such as Theory and Event, American Indian Quarterly, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and Michigan State University Law Review.