Drawing upon the Wealth of Indigenous Laws in the Yukon

Abstract

As there is a collective renaissance in the recognition of Indigenous legal traditions and laws in Canada, this reflection focuses on a “constitutive” approach that non-Indigenous Yukoners can take to law making, in that it explores how the constitutive practices and institutions of Yukon First Nations can be utilized to inform both lawyerly approaches to First Nations law and the interactions of the non-Indigenous Yukon public with Indigenous laws. This reflection explores this in two ways: 1) the necessity to view the constitutive and legal practices of Indigenous communities from a broad, normative lens; and 2) how a normative approach provides different fruitful approaches to accessing, understanding, and drawing upon Indigenous laws.