Roberta Cory’s Review of Sylvia McAdam’s “Nationhood Interupted”

Nationhood Interrupted: Revitalizing nehiyaw Legal Systems by Sylvia McAdam (saysewahum).

Book review – Roberta Cory

The European colonizers of Turtle Island made the assumption that the inhabitants were savages and had no culture. Using their own culture as a yardstick, they saw lack of a written language, no property rights for land, subsistence hunting and gathering, and ignorance of Christianity as primitive and set about imposing European values and laws onto the original inhabitants. But what they did not know, because they did not care to find out, was that there already existed a very complicated culture which functioned very well if left alone. 

Sylvia McAdam shares her Cree (nihiyaw) culture and legal system with us in this book. Her main topics are language, protocol, oral history, types of relationships and the breaking of laws governing these relationships, gender, and right mind. 

Treaty 6 was created under these nihiyaw laws. The understanding of the nihiyaw was based upon the only system they knew, their own, and the meaning of their own words in the context of the treaty. Therefore, the English words and interpretation of Treaty 6 are not binding. The Nihiyaw see all words as imbedded in a matrix of relationships. Language is active. It is a dynamic world of responsibilities and obligations so that both parties to a treaty or agreement enter into it with a clean conscience, a positive attitude, and trust. For the Nihiyaw, the Creator made everything to live in a positive relationship. Everything was in ecological balance in the physical world, and in social balance in the human world. They thought of each type of creature or plant as a nation and nations do not touch or hurt one another. 

Their language is nuanced. Pastahowin means to go beyond or over. For us it means breaking a law against another human being. This can happen through an act, through omission, or by talk. Pastamowin is what someone said which lead to an undesirable happening. Words have power and are a gift from the Creator. Only humans were given the power of language. Ways of committing pastamowin are threats, gossip, profanity, and boastfulness. Words have power because once you say them they have a life of their own. Ohcinewin is breaking a law against anything other than a human being. This means any human activity that has a negative impact upon the environment. Torturing an animal, polluting the land, overharvesting of resources, hunting laws that are broken are all examples of Ohcinewin.

The Earth is female and the Clan mothers have a great connection to Mother Earth. The sweet grass is her hair and when they braid it they are braiding the hair of their mother. When a law is broken, the legal council is composed of the Clan mothers. Because they have known the person since even before they were born (the pregnant mother is considered to be bringing a soulfire from the Creator into the human world), and have watched the child grow and develop character, they understand how to best treat the breaking of a law. The treaties that speak of hunting and fishing rights are patriarchal and do not acknowledge the power held by the women of the clan. Women were left out of the treaties.

Some of the early Jesuit priests observed that there was almost no crime. Every child was born into responsibilities and relationships to others and was taught continually by their parents. They were born into a world that is meaningful. Those meanings were shared by all others in the clan. Each child was nurtured in right living. When wrong doing happened, such as harvesting too much of a plant species, or trapping a beaver and hurting it, or not sharing the bounty with others, ceremonies for apologizing and setting things right must take place. 

Europeans only honoured written treaties. But the nihiyaw had an oral tradition and history. Certain children were raised to remember and repeat what was said. Europeans had to be very careful in all negotiations. It is reported that a European could hardly believe that what he had said two years ago, at a treaty meeting, was repeated word for word by the Chief who was involved in the negotiations. 

When I read how hard the nihiyaw people tried in every aspect of their living to do the right thing and to live within the social compact with other humans and with all members of creation, from smudging and going to a clean and quiet place before doing something important, to making it right after breaking a law, I understood that if there was a higher or more advanced civilization when Treaty 6 was made, it was the nihiyaw and not the Europeans.
Roberta Cory