Heritage Community Foundation Presents
Alberta Online Encyclopedia
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Nature's Law
Spiritual Life, Governance, Culture, Traditions, Resources, Context and Background
The Heritage Community Foundation, Alberta Law Foundation and Albertasource.ca
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Judicial and Fiscal Order

Indigenous Peoples

Constitutional rights
and responsibilities

Social Reality

Rights of
Interpretation

Origin of
Interpretation

Exercised as a
People

Definition of People

Great Turtle Island

Relationships

Equality

Survival for
All Beings

Survival for
the People

Right to Exist

Implications

The Land

Spirit of the Land

Judicial and Fiscal Order

Empowering

Visual representation of nature's laws


The Rights and Responsibilities under Nature’s Laws include the Institution of Judicial and Fiscal Order.

Nature’s Laws imposed upon the People certain understandings on how one was to behave. This is turn rested upon values held to be inherent in the universe and worked out in rules and protocols:

I base our culture on four things: spirituality, language, sharing, and respect. Respect yourself and others and respect Mother Earth and then you can expect respect. (These ideas in) Nature’s Laws are important. Frank Weaselhead, Blood, April 2003.

Nature’s Laws covers all aspects of life. One of the more difficult aspects for Westerners to comprehend relates to the impact of menstruating women on ceremonies. The negative results of violations touches everyone within the community. Meili recounts this from George:

I ask George if he has words for girls just learning about Native culture who might feel shunned when not allowed to attend ceremonies while menstruating and for women who intellectualize when the body cleanses itself that it is a spiritual time to be in contact with ceremonies. "Women are far, far ahead of men. It's quite hard to understand, but when you start living the Native culture, you will. You are like Mother Earth, who once a year in the spring, washes herself down the river to the ocean. Everything ... all debris is washed away. Same thing with a woman, except it's every month. It's the power you have. You cannot enter a lodge or a spiritual gathering because you will kill all the prayers and offerings in there. You are more powerful than all of it, and if you come in you can't fool the spirits. At Sundances, if a woman in her time comes near the lodge, the singers and dancers know. I have to tell the older women to tell the younger ones not to stay around if they are like that. It's not because we don't like them, it's the power they have. They're way ahead of me," George repeats. (Meili 153).

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