Managed by the Sociology Department at Laurentian University, the project's main objectives are to document and articulate the fundamental elements of the legal relationship to territory and resources, as they emerge from the Innu oral tradition, and to foster its transmission and effective implementation. The project will also seek to analyze this oral tradition to better understand the specificity of the political and legal culture it conveys within an updating and sharing perspective.
The issue of recognition of customary adoption among Aboriginal people raises currently important controversies and is confronted to a marked resistance from non-Aboriginal social service agencies. This sub-project, managed by the Université du Québec en Outaouais, and originated as a request from Uauitshitun, the health center and social services of the Innu community of Uashat mak Mani-Utenam (Sept-Iles Maliotenam in eastern Quebec). It aims to shed new lights on customary adoption practices of the Innu. We try to highlight the existence and to analyze the content of the Innu adoption practices prevalent in Uashat mak Mani-Utenam and to determine the legal and institutional frameworks that promote internormativity of coordination between the legal Innu system and the state law.
The ultimate goal of the project is to support and strengthen the Atikamekw governance. The project focuses specifically on State models and Atikamekw models to deal with problems and conflicts related to domestic and family violence and children protection whose development is compromised. It aims to strengthen, develop and support the Atikamekw methods of conflict resolution and to ensure their recognition both within the Atikamekw nation and the Quebec government (especially in a negotiating context with the later). The project deals therefore with two levels: political and social.
The Indigenous Law Research Unit (ILRU) partners with Indigenous communities across Canada to research and substantively articulate Indigenous law. Its approach to researching and working with Indigenous law is to treat Indigenous laws seriously as laws.
