It is not sufficient to acknowledge that some very basic
values operated differently in Indigenous culture…we must
also come to terms with the concept of evidence. Much of our
awareness of evidence privileges the first expression. It is
very important to Western notions of reality that we
determine what the origin of something is, for then we are
convinced that we have discovered the "real" meaning of an
phenomenon. From this conviction of the primacy of the first
place in antiquity, we have constructed a civilization that
idolizes the past…Christianity, for example, finds the story
of the Garden of Eden so convincing that it has come to
believe that all people have a sinful flaw brought about by
the first ancestors eating a forbidden fruit. Concepts of
history are built upon these models of the past and current
issues are "explained" by reference to the past. Yet the
notion of a past has implications for how time will be
experienced, and Indigenous peoples’ stories do not place
the same stress on the historical past and the earth’s
origins as we do. We need to keep in mind Ross’ insight
about Mi’kmaq language, for it has a bearing on the
perception of time among these Algonquian-speaking peoples;
the point is also evident among other language systems:
"The use of verbs rather than noun subjects and
objects is important; it means that there are very few
fixed and rigid objects in the Mi’kmaq worldview. What
they see is the great flux, external transformation, and
an interconnected order of time, space and events"
(Ross, Returning 115).
Consequently, time is oriented to the creation and
development of new perspectives and openness to other
interpretations. Chamberlin may be correct in his argument
that…"the remedy for the dispossession of Indigenous
historical discourses, and therefore of Indigenous history,
may ultimately lie less in recovering the realities of the
past than in encouraging the imagination of those who will
shape the stories in the present." (1999, 85) Were this
stance to be taken seriously, it is obvious that our courts
of law would necessarily have to adjust the process of
justice, as well as the primacy it gives to the history of a
person from a judicial perspective, for this perspective on
time seems to be of seminal importance in comprehending the
Indigenous sense of Nature’s Law, for if a shift were to
take place in the reading of past acts, inserting them
rather into other patterns of behaviour, then understanding
Indigenous claims would make much more sense.
At the very least, Nature’s Law is much less committed to
privileging one kind of understanding about time’s meanings.
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