Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Daily Read: Val Napolean, the novel Birdie, and Cree Justice
Over at Jotwell, University of Victoria Professor of Law Val Napolean's contribution to the Equality section suggests that the novel Birdie be "approached as a Cree law text—as a performance of law with difficult questions expressed and examined through narrative."
Napolean writes:
Cases are law stories about something that has happened and that are publicly recorded in a particular way to be recalled in future collaborative legal reasoning through specific problems. In the same way, Birdie is a Cree law story placed in northern Alberta (near fictitious Little Loon First Nation) about a woman whose life is a personal chronicle of colonial law and history. But it is far more than this. It is also about Cree law that is undermined by colonization, but which has not disappeared . . . .
For US Con Law Profs teaching constitutional law, Napolean's discussion is an invitation to interrogate the stories that are told - - - or not told - - - in cases about Native peoples and justice.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/2015/09/daily-read-val-napolean-the-novel-birdie-and-cree-justice.html