Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Contemporary Kinship and Cowessess First Nation

In the pre-reserve era, Aboriginal bands in the northern plains were relatively small multicultural communities that actively maintained fluid and inclusive membership through traditional kinship practices. These practices were governed by the Law of the People as described in the traditional stories of Wîsashkêcâhk, or Elder Brother, that outlined social interaction, marriage, adoption, and kinship roles and responsibilities.In Elder Brother and the Law of the People, Robert Innes offers a detailed analysis of the role of Elder Brother stories in historical and contemporary kinship practices in Cowessess First Nation, located in southeastern Saskatchewan. He reveals how these tradition-inspired practices act to undermine legal and scholarly definitions of "Indian" and counter the perception that First Nations people have internalized such classifications. He presents Cowessess's successful negotiation of the 1996 Treaty Land Agreement and their high inclusion rate of new "Bill-C31s" as evidence of the persistence of historical kinship values and their continuing role as the central unifying factor for band membership.Elder Brother and the Law of the People presents an entirely new way of viewing Aboriginal cultural identity on the northern plains.

Author: Robert Alexander Innes
Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
Published: 11/13/2013
Pages: 216
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.70d
ISBN13: 9780887557460
ISBN10: 0887557465
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | Native American Studies
- History | Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
- Social Science | Sociology | Marriage & Family

About the Author
Robert Alexander Innes is Assistant Professor in the department of Native Studies at the University of Saskatchewan and a Plains Cree member of Cowessess First Nation.