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Then there are stories about cultural heroes, or great people of the past whose lives have shaped how people live. We can use as an example, that of "Young" Cutfoot. A legendary figure associated with the growth of the Grand Medicine society or the Midewiwin, Cutfoot was a towering figure as a healer directly connected to cosmic healing energy. Two aspects of many tales show his connection to healing and the cosmic system, and hence to his import for local law:

Born to two older parents who live along the shore of a large body of water, Cutfoot grows up and becomes strongly attached to his brother. After his brother becomes ill (or dies), Cutfoot has an eight-year series of visions in which Manido instructs him on methods of curing his brother. According to one version, Cutfoot returned after four years of instruction to his mourning parents with a water drum, herbs, the Mide lodge, and, according to Benton-Banai, seven gifts wisdom, respect, bravery, honesty, love, humility, and truth, each represented by a shell symbolizing the means that the "Creator used to blow his breath the four sacred elements and give life to Original Man" (Benton-Banai 1979: 65).

The second story, with another reference to Cutfoot, is about the origin of sleep. Ruth Landes' informant says this story is told during Midewiwin ceremonies by an official at the close of every night session, just before everyone left the Lodge. Here Cutfoot is portrayed as an old man who is the first Ojibwa to sleep. This story is about the coming of sleep to the people but it is also explicitly about the rhythmic relation between day and night as caused by periodic rising and setting of the sun (Landes 1968). The Cutfoot stories give us clues to the vision and role that the Mide signatories, whether members of the Midewiwin or its priests, might have had at treaty signing. Cutfoot is a twofold mediator: first, he is the medium through which the Great Spirit works to bring a healing ceremonial to the Ojibwa. This ceremonial, believed to have originated before contact with Europeans, became a focal point of identity for the many Ojibwa groups. While many Ojibwa were not privy to its ceremonies, its moral tone and injunctions pervaded all of Ojibwa life.

Second, lame and tottering Cutfoot is a mediator in bringing a cosmic order in the form of waking and sleeping for individuals, and in ordering periodicity of day and night for the earth. (Pomedli 81-2)

The Midewewin was immensely powerful throughout Western Canada immediately before the coming of the Europeans. Its values permeated most aspects of ceremonial and cultural life. Its emphasis on the healing energy of the cosmos provided a stable imaginative world for the People when they faced epidemics and the culture shock of European visitors. It also provided a charismatic center to Indigenous values. Yet, for all its power, it was a secret movement apparently about which few had any firm idea, beyond the cosmic references to sleep, and day and night. As Pomedli notes: "After 1840, the Mide continued to enforce authority in civic and foreign matters through religious power. Religious ceremonies and political meetings often on a large scale became closely allied. They were attractive because of charismatic leadership and their absorbing ritual and oratorical finesse. While the Ojibwa continued to accept decision-making in a consensual way, influence through rank also became acceptable in this egalitarian society (Lovisek 1993)."(Pomedli, 82)

An important further principle is found in local oral law: Traditional knowledge. In fact, historical precedent has activated the outlook that the People have had about Nature's Law and how it was to apply in their case. The best example of this is found in Heather Anne Harris, exploration of the local story of a cataclysmic event in the history of the Git'skan People on the west coast. The essence of the history was that some 10,000 years ago, the coastal area in which the People lived had suffered an incredible rift, in which part of the traditional territory had been thrown up in the air and other parts of the land had sunk into the sea, taking many of the People with it. The story was known to archeologists, but there was no evidence that this was anything more than a kind of 'tale' told to amuse the youngsters. Yet for the Git'skan people, this earthquake had left much of the original village site covered with debris and soil, in effect burying the validating evidence, and cutting them off from their ancestral grounds. After a terrific storm and flood in the 90s, the soil and debris were washed out to sea, and the remainders of the original village began to appear above ground. Archeologists confirmed the story…indeed the People had suffered a cataclysm of the magnitude that had come down to the People, and it had occurred about 10,000 years ago. The extraordinary validation of traditional knowledge has now raised questions about whether very ancient stories can be so easily dismissed in courts of law. It also indicates that corporate oral memory is a formidable tool for Indigenous culture, because its truths continue to shape understandings of Indigenous peoples much longer, for example, than the stories of Genesis or the pyramids of Egypt in Western circles. (Heather Anne Harris, Ph.D. Anthropology, 2003).

With this in mind, it is imperative, that we understand the way local oral law has responded to the coming of the Europeans. It suggests that local responses might indicate shifts and orientations that would not have concerned the ancestral formulators of law. For example, even the way that Nature's Laws were understood may well have been re-interpreted after the European came…for example, such things as "the land" would henceforth have to be interpreted with a "possessive" meaning, since the European attached his own "belonging" to it, necessitating the People to respond in kind. Thus Anishinabe Chief Mawedopenais had to argue that the land was given to the People by the Great Spirit, an argument they would never have ever articulated with other tribes, but necessary now because of the revised meaning of "ownership" imposed upon them. Here, Nature's Law is claimed as a "right:"

"We think where we are is our property. I will tell you what he said to us when he planted us here; the rules that we should follow -us Indians - He has given us rules that we should follow to govern us rightly" (Morris 1991:59).

In retrospect, it is evident that local oral law also became necessary as a way of affirming Indigenous "ownership" because not to do so would have been tantamount to destroying the very basis of Indigenous life. This is of the utmost importance when we place treaty-making within the context of Indigenous life. As Pomedli notes:

Natives would not mindlessly and irreligiously have given up trees and woods, for they provide material for the sacred pipes, nor would they have forfeited lands, for they grow tobacco to be used in ceremonies. They would not have ceded Indian rights to animals (Martin 1992), for they are necessary for livelihood and ceremony. Financial gain and agricultural implements provided by the treaty did not supersede the ritual demands of the drum (Vecsey 1984, Landes 1968, Redsky 1972, Hoffman 1891), rattle, birchbark scrolls, songs and the lodge, validated by their stories. (Pomedli 82-3)

The point is underlined by Cree lawyer Harold Cardinal:

"... as long as the Sun shines, the Grass grows, and the Rivers flow". These words have a symbolic meaning to Indian people because the water, the grass, and the sun are all basic elements of life. In the Indian religion, they have a special role to play in human life. In naming these people were saying that they would not give up any elements basic to religious practices. Our people were calling upon the sun, the water, the grass as witnesses to the fact that they were not surrendering, by the treaties, either their sovereignty or their relationship with the Great Spirit.

If we are told that we gave up all the timber by the treaties, we say that that cannot be accurate, because if we had given up the forests, we would have sacrificed a material basic to our religious practices. Our pipes an integral part of our religious ritual. The pipe stem is made of wood. Our elders would never have agreed to give away the forests because they would have been giving away part of the responsibility they had to the religious ceremonies.

In our religious rituals, we use sweetgrass as incense in our prayers. If our elders had given up the grass that grew on Mother Earth, they would have be surrendering an important adjunct of their religious beliefs to outsiders who did not understand these beliefs. This they would not, and did not, do. Water, fire and other natural elements play a role in our ritual. From a religious standpoint we never intended the surrender of any of those things to be a part of any treaty-making process. I don't think that the white people ever thought that religion was any part of the treaty-making process. (Cardinal 1977:148-149)

In sum, local oral law demonstrates that local history, local movements and local perceptions did have a creative role to play in shaping the understanding of Nature's Laws. Contrariwise, Nature's Laws still held the People's attention as a compendium of authorative structures under which the People lived from time immemorial. The main outline of these understandings have been goal of this research.