Furthermore, from the Aboriginal point of view, there is a
necessary therapeutic dimension to all law. By keeping the
law, one lives in tune with a system that produces the good
life…with Nature’s Law. Aboriginal people accepted the
truths of Nature’s Law because it was regarded as the best
way to live in tune with the larger reality to which they
were inextricably connected. That is why law could and was
referred to as "medicine." That is not to say that
Aboriginals believed that all laws, codes and taboos
originated in some transcendent domain. To be sure, people
to people issues did produce laws among Aboriginal peoples,
but the point is that these laws were held already to be
enshrined in the normative relationships existing between
currently-living humans and the physical and spiritual
landscape. It is that relatedness that made the law a law.
Thus Kluckhohn would write about the Athapascan-speaking
Navajo:
A Navaho cannot conceive of absolute good or absolute
evil, though perhaps it is misleading even to use these two
words. The Navaho conceive of what is to be desired and what
is to be feared more than of the morally approved and
disapproved … the two qualities of the sought and of the
avoided shade into each of the and blend. Categories like
"the social," "the economic," "the political" baffle the
schooled Navaho. Life is a whole. (Kluckhohn 365).
Proper relationship to that whole environment was a
prerequisite for any local and personal "norm" to be
approved. To use our language, Nature's Law was based upon a
worldview that regarded the whole apparatus of norms,
taboos, laws and treaties as having a sacrality. This was
the foundation of Nature’s Law. |