Furthermore, from the Indigenous 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. Indigenous 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 Indigenouss believed that all laws, codes and taboos
originated in some transcendent domain. To be sure, people
to people issues did produce laws among Indigenous 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. |