Ian Record:

“Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host, Ian Record. On today’s program, we are honored to have with us John Borrows. John is Anishinaabe and a citizen of Ontario’s Chippewa Nawash First Nation and he currently serves as the Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy and Society at the University of Minnesota School of Law. John, welcome and good to have you with us today.”

John Borrows:

“It’s good to be here.”

Ian Record:

“Before we dive into our conversation, I was hoping you’d just start out by telling us a little bit more about yourself.”

John Borrows:

“Yeah. So I’ve been a law teacher about 20 some odd years now and really have enjoyed that being in different schools. I’ve spent some time in U.S. schools -- ASU [Arizona State University], Minnesota obviously, Princeton; also taught across Canada, University of Toronto, Osgoode Hall Law School, UBC [University of British Columbia], and University of Victoria. So I’ve got around in my career.”

Ian Record:

“So I wanted to start out by getting a little bit more of a perspective on your scholarly work. In preparing for this interview, I talked with a lot of your legal colleagues -- including some of them here at the University of Arizona in Tucson -- and they said you’re really one of the innovative thinkers and scholars when it comes to Indigenous law and I think differentiating that from federal Indian law but Indigenous law, and can you just provide a quick nutshell about why the focus on Indigenous law, why have you dedicated your career to this particular issue?”

John Borrows:

“Yeah. I think it started growing up. A lot of the standards for judgments in our family were often taken from what we were seeing around us outside our door and we had lots of conversations about what our obligations were in relationship to one another and the world around us. We had a treaty that my great-great grandfather signed back in the 1850s and that was also a part of the conversation. So when I began my legal career and my graduate work I actually wrote an LLM thesis called The Genealogy of Law, where I took the seven past generations of my family and looked at what the criteria was that they used to be able to respond to the challenges they were encountering as they encountered the Canadian State. And I noticed in each one of those encounters they drew upon a deep wellspring of our own sense of what the appropriate standards were as to how to deal with the War of 1812 or the Royal Proclamation or the signing of the treaty, whatever it might be. And so what was exciting to me as I then started my legal career was a recognition that we have a lot of sources of authority that we can turn to to answer our questions. And so I think it grew from that place to just continue to drive my research and my interests in my work today.”

Ian Record:

“So you’ve spent the last two days participating in the Nation Nations Institute’s Tribal Constitution seminar both as a presenter and also as an observer. And I’m curious, what from the proceedings of the last two days as they’re still fresh in your mind really struck a chord with you?”

John Borrows:

“I think I like the examples that I saw that were practical and on the ground, that had a lot of deep thought behind them. I think when people come to seminars like this they might expect they’d encounter a process, but in fact what they see is a lot of work that’s done over a period of years that’s been cultivating of the different traditions and understandings that people bring to what constitutionalism is. And so I was impressed by the hard work that underlies and is behind many of those presentations. And while there are lessons that we can generalize, you did a great job I think of pulling out those generalized lessons, more fundamentally was context matters and paying attention to the specific context that a nation comes from seems to be the message that I took from the seminar.”

Ian Record:

“One of the first things we tackled on day one of the seminar was starting at the beginning and really defining what in the most fundamental sense a constitution really is and that can take many forms. It can be a written constitution, an unwritten constitution, and I’m curious, given that you spend so much time thinking about these things and writing about these things and doing research about things around this idea of constitutionalism I’m curious to get your perspective on what that is and maybe your definition of what that is.”

John Borrows:

“Yeah. So I think of constitutionalism as a conversation and a set of practices around living tradition. Sometimes when people think of constitutions they just think of pieces of paper, but really what a constitution is is a verb, it’s a way of constituting a people through time. There’s a past and a present and a future tense as a part of how they might relate to one another. And so for me constitutionalism is this living, ongoing, breathing set of understandings, customs, procedures around trying to create a better life, a more orderly set of relationships between the people. The Anishinaabe have lots of different words for constitutionalism. [Anishinaabe language] is one of those words. It means 'the great guided way of decision making.' This idea of [Anishinaabe language] is almost the process of the creation of a tradition as you move from generation to generation. But there’s another word in Anishinaabemowin that communicates constitutionalism, which is [Anishinaabe language]. The root of that is [Anishinaabe language], which means 'old time, a long time.' So there’s this other strand of constitutionalism, which is you draw upon a long time way of doing things and you continually place it in a present context so that it can speak to the future.

And I think the tension there between those two different ways of looking at constitutionalism is important. One of those ways of proceeding is seeing this constitution as ongoing, living, breathing, continued in its development. The other one is a process of creation anew. That is, there’s an idea in constitutionalism that you would always have new starting points, that it’s never done, it’s never over. Like I said, it’s an ongoing conversation. That sense of constitutionalism isn’t something you just find within an Anishinaabeg or Indigenous peoples as well. In the United States, we have a constitutional tradition, which is called 'originalism.' And so you try to figure out what the meaning of the constitution is by going back to some magic moment, 1787, and you draw on the intent or the public meaning of what the founders said at that time.

We have another tradition within U.S. constitutionalism, which is called 'living constitutionalism,' which is yes, history is important, but we’ve developed as a people through time and while we take guidance from the history, the history is not determinative and I think within Indigenous constitutionalism we have that same kind of tension that’s present. Some of us want to go to that original moment, a creation story, a treaty, some kind of drafting of a document and you would find that people argue vigorously that the constitution can only mean what was said when that creation happened or when those people signed that document. In the U.S. constitutional context, you have [U.S. Supreme Court justices] [William] Rehnquist and [Antonin] Scalia that kind of take that way of proceeding though you have this other strand, living constitutionalism where you would look to what the people now understand the constitution means 200 or some odd years later and you would allow for that to occur.

In the Canadian context, we call this 'living treaty jurisprudence.' In the 1930s, the court was asked to consider whether or not women could be seated in the Senate because at the time that the constitution was drafted women were not political citizens and in the court...in looking at that they could have taken an originalist approach and said, ‘Well, at the time women didn’t mean persons, therefore they couldn’t be seated to sit in the senate,’ but the court took another approach. They said that the British-North America Act had placed in Canada a living treaty, which was capable of growth through the ages and that its roots continue to extend out branches that have new obligations that the people would encounter and so therefore the dominate mode of constitutionalism in Canada is living constitutionalism as opposed to originalism. Again, within a Native context you see those tensions very much present. Some want to look to that initial moment and find all the meaning in that moment. Others see it as a tree, they see it as more organic, living, growing, breathing through the ages.”

Ian Record:

“In some sense, doesn’t the constitutionalism of any nation and particularly Indigenous nations given all that they’ve experienced in North America in particular over the last 200, 300, 400 years that it must be able to adapt to the times, adapt to the changing circumstances, the new challenges, growing populations, all sorts of things?”

John Borrows:

“That is definitely my understanding of how constitutionalism proceeds in most Indigenous nations. I certainly see that within my own nation as well, though there are people that would differ. They say when the old people put us in the four corners of these sacred mountains they set up a way of being that we cannot mess with and that we have to ensure that we live in accordance with those original instructions. And to the extent that you start to take in influences from United States or Canada or just whatever the context you are in today, they would critique that and they would say, ‘That is polluting, that is compromising, that is not being true to what the founders said that we should abide by.’ And so while I do agree with you that a constitution needs this definite grafting on, growing, organic way of being in the world, there are people that would take a different approach and I think at heart some of the debates that happen throughout Indian Country around constitutionalism are that very debate, the worry that we’re departing from something that’s original that was given to us and that by trying to adapt to the present situation we’re just assimilating or swallowing some other kind of complicit line.”

Ian Record:

“Let’s talk a little bit more about the Anishinaabe and prior to colonization -- I’m curious, you’ve learned -- I think first and foremost through your own upbringing and then in the research you’ve been doing since getting into the academic realm -- a great deal about what the Anishinaabe constitution looked like traditionally and where it was found, where it lived and where it breathed. Can you shed some light on that?”

John Borrows:

“Yeah. So I think one of the main influences on Anishinaabe constitutionalism is the environment that we lived in and live in today. And so we would take from the Great Lakes area and that watershed that surrounds it and the plants and the animals and the birds and the clouds and the rivers and we would see that behavior that was taking place in the natural world and we would learn from it. And when we saw things that were positive and uplifting and sustaining and nurturing and nourishing, we would try to analogize those behaviors to our own sets of ways that we should be. Or if we saw something that was troubling in nature, we would then take a lesson that we shouldn’t behave in that fashion. And so our constitutionalism is very much in the ecological type of principle.

In U.S. and Canadian constitutionalism, when you draw analogies, you often do so from the cases that are there, the stories that have been told by judges through the ages. Our analogies were first of all the stories that were told to us by the plants and the animals and the rivers and the trees and then it was the stories that our elders, our wise ones told us about the animals, the plants, the rivers and the trees and so our case law became stories about how the skunk got its stripe and how the robin came to sing like it does and why the trickster is intervening in the creation of the beaver dam in that place. And so for Anishinaabe people that constitutionalism can be labeled [Anishinaabe language], which is you look at everything, [Anishinaabe language] and you take the lessons from what you’re seeing. Another way of thinking about that is [Anishinaabe language]. [Anishinaabe language] is the Anishinaabe word for 'earth,' [Anishinaabe language] is 'to point towards.' [Anishinaabe language] then is this concept of you point towards the earth and you learn from the earth and you apply those teachings from the natural world around us in creating our sense of obligations to one another. It’s the similar word to our word for 'teaching,' which is [Anishinaabe language]. So to practice this way of constituting ourselves is to understand what the earth is trying to teach us.

I remember going to a seminar with an elder, Basil Johnston, back in 1996 when I was a newer law professor and we had convened at Cape Croker, [Anishinaabe language], to talk about our constitution and I was surprised. I shouldn’t have been but I was surprised that we began with the creation of the earth and the first formation of the rocks. And then after the rocks, we had stories about how the water came into place and after the rocks and the water we would start to talk about the first little crawlers in the ocean and on the lands and what they did in relationship to one another. And then the plants and there were stories about how we got corn and how we got cabbage and all these other things and then this went on to animals. We had all of these stories about the natural world for maybe four or five hours. Humans came along in the afternoon after lunch. And I realized in listening to that that Basil was trying to teach us that Anishinaabe constitutionalism is how are we constituted as human beings in relationship to this wider order that we see around us. And I’ll never forget that and it’s become one of the guiding lights for me in thinking about the practice of Anishinaabe constitutional law in a present day.”

Ian Record:

“It’s interesting you bring that up because one of the things as a student of tribal constitutions who often...in my role with the Native Nations Institute, we’re asked to come in and help tribes wrestle with their current constitutionalism and wrestle with a deep...often a deep conflict between their sense of who they are and their sense of right and wrong with this whatever written document they have, whether it’s an Indian Reorganization Act constitution here in the U.S. or an Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act constitution or up in Canada it’s wrestling with the Indian Act system. And what you often see in reviewing these written documents is a lack of explanation of the people’s relationship with place and I use the word 'place' very purposely because you often will see references to, ‘Okay, this is our territory and we have jurisdiction over this territory,’ but it doesn’t evoke anything about the relationship between people and place, the reciprocity between people and place, exactly what you’re talking about with Basil Johnston. Do you see that as one of the big challenges that tribes face is, how do we evoke that and perhaps revitalize that relationship with place and then be nourished by that process of reciprocity that has sustained the people up until this day?”

John Borrows:

“Yeah, I definitely see that. One of the things I worry about in some of the contemporary constitutionalism that’s happening amongst Indigenous peoples across North America is that they de-contextualize who they are and their relationships to one another. By 'de-contextualizing,' meaning there’s something of a universal nature that appears in these constitutions as if all time and place can be subsumed in the wording that’s contained in the document. And yes, there are generalizations we can make, of course, but those generalizations have to be rooted in a particular set of relationships that a people have to a place. If not, the constitution’s actually not going to work. What you see in looking at constitutionalism in a non-Indigenous context is there’s many pretty documents that are in place in Central and South America or in some Asian countries, but that’s all they are is pretty documents. They don’t get connected or rooted to the place and the people that have to live in relationship to them. So you get nice words and maybe even good decisions from the court, but the decisions of the court, the words on the paper mean nothing unless people are also internalizing their constitution as well. And that’s why I started out by saying that a constitution is an ongoing set of conversations and practices about your tradition in a particular place and if the constitution is not doing that, you’re not really internalizing the ways of being and of course if you’re not internalizing a constitution, it’s someone else’s document. It’s the people’s or the place, the land, the animals, the plants, constitution there. So I think maybe, and I’m not sure it’s our biggest challenge, but one of our biggest challenges is to make sure that the constitutions that we’re dealing with actually reflect the place that they’re coming from.”

Ian Record:

“So what are some of the other challenges? Obviously you sat through a lot of different discussions over the last couple days and heard a lot about some of the challenges and I’m sure came into the conference well aware of some of the other challenges that Native nations in the U.S. and Canada and elsewhere, Indigenous peoples face when it comes to their constitutionalism and reconciling the past with the present and outside forces with internal ones and so forth. What are some of the other challenges you see?”

John Borrows:

“Yeah. Well, I think one of the biggest challenges in relationship to the creation of constitutions is having hope, having faith, having trust, to having love for one another. If we’re going to really internalize our constitutionalism, we have to think about those values at that level. When the U.S. was drafting its constitution, it put big words out there, 'life' and 'liberty' and the 'pursuit of happiness,' and there was the sense of freedom and association and forming a more perfect union. These big ideas were a part of what the aspirations of the people are and were and I think that sometimes we sell ourselves short by borrowing those words and not actually thinking about what our own aspirations and words are. For me, it would be what can we do in living together that would facilitate greater love, greater respect, greater honesty? There’s something called the Seven Grandfather/Grandmother Teachings of the Anishinaabe and those, I think, could be legal terms of art as well as spiritual and cultural and other types of ways of relating. We have a hard time when we put big words out there, then define them in a constitution. We’ve had no end of disputes through the years about what does freedom mean in the First Amendment? What does equality require in the 14th Amendment? But just because we have difficulty with the big words and we can’t quite pin them down doesn’t mean that we leave them behind. In fact, it increases our expectations of what those words might do for us. And so I would love to see Anishinaabe and other Indigenous nations start to...what do we want to create, what’s our equivalent of freedom and equality? If it is things like in Anishinaabemowin, [Anishinaabe language], thinking about love or [Anishinaabe language]. There’s different meanings of love that I’ve just given you. One’s kind of a stinginess, the other one’s kind of a compassionate way of being in the world or likewise around trust and honesty, [Anishinaabe language]. There’s a lot I think that we need on that ground. So I think that’s the biggest challenge actually.”

Ian Record:

“And you’ve discussed those things, those Anishinaabe values, those Grandfather teachings within the context of citizenship and identity and that’s a huge issue right now. I think in the nations I’ve worked with, there’s typically two considerations that tend to dominate. One is that if we continue with the criteria that we have...and I think most people understand where those come from and although I do think that some people still need to understand where those come from, but there’s two tracks. One is that if we continue this criteria we’re going to not be around because there’s not anyone that will be...that will qualify to continue to be citizens. And another is around basically what you were talking about, that we need to address what the criteria is doing to us in terms of our unity, in terms of our relations, in terms of how healthy our relationships are and how revisiting this might strengthen that in some way. How do you see that challenge today and what do you think nations who are wrestling with that issue need to really be thinking about as they in particular engage their community about this critical topic?”

John Borrows:

“So again, context is everything and each nation would have to pay attention to its own way of framing these larger ideas in relationship with the particular challenges they face around membership or citizenship. But what I would say is that we need eyes wide open to both of these concerns. One is that we have been overrun as a people and so there is a need to be able to create a set of criteria that would say who is Anishinaabe and who is not and those kinds of line-drawing exercises are very, very hard to do. Unfortunately, what I think we’ve done is we’ve drawn those lines in a very cramped and stingy and closed way and I’m not sure that that is consistent with that other stream that we need to be taking account of which has to do with all our relations, with our responsibilities, with the hospitality ethics that have been passed on through the generations within many Indigenous peoples. So I do think that lines have to be drawn somewhere, but I think we should be much more generous and open and liberal and large and gracious and hospitable in that regard. And when we do so, I think what we’ll start to do is not see the government as the source of authority and the source of resources that would help fund the future of a nation because when you start opening up the opportunities for people to participate who are connected to the nation, what you get is a huge infusion of what in some places is called human capital, but in just of speaking plainly of creativity and possibility.”

So when you see a broader-based conception of citizenship, what you do is you tap the potential of many sources of innovation and I think eventually that will create a broader base of resources for nations through time. And I think that’s going to contribute to our freedom as peoples, that we won’t be tied to a colonial government in the United States or Canada, that our freedom will come from our relationships with the earth, our relationship with one another writ large. The Anishinaabe word for 'freedom' is [Anishinaabe language]. [Anishinaabe language] means 'to own something.' [Anishinaabe language] is this idea of owning our relationships, freedom being this sense of stewardship and responsibility to others. This isn’t necessarily the ownership concept that you would get in kind of western property law that we would alienate others or land and therefore have a sense of possession. This is the idea of ownership that comes through responsible stewardship and relationships. The word for 'citizenship' in Anishinaabemowin is [Anishinaabe language], literally freedom is owning...citizenship is owning our responsibilities with one another and our relationships. So yes, lines have to be drawn, but we I think can do much better in thinking beyond what the colonial criteria for that is and looking to our own legal traditions and then doing the analysis around what economically and socially and politically could be possible if we saw ourselves in that broader light.”

Ian Record:

“It’s interesting you bring that up, the need to be more inclusive and that being an Indigenous value. We’ve seen a number of Native nations that, two that jump to mind, are Citizen Potawatomi and also Osage Nation in Oklahoma who’ve taken a more inclusive approach and they’re starting to see the benefits of that because they have gained this...regained this huge reservoir of human capital, of people who have things to contribute. They have skills, they have assets, they have ideas, they have creativity as you mentioned to contribute to the life of the nation and it’s starting...you’re starting to see a real shift in the ability of the nation to actually live as a nation. On the flip side of that though, isn’t it incumbent upon, as nations engage this issue of redefining citizenship criteria, of looking at their current criteria and saying is this...does this really work for us, isn’t it critical that they understand that this criteria of blood quantum is not cultural because we see that...we’ve seen because it’s been in place in a lot of communities for so long, we see some people embrace it as some sort of cultural value, that this is how we equate our identity and also that in that criteria there is a lack of civic obligation, of civic responsibility because the mentality is that, ‘As long as I have the blood I qualify and my work is done.’ Is that important to this conversation do you feel?”

John Borrows:

“It is. What I think it does is it identifies where our traditions may be harmful. That is, this is not something that was a historic tradition prior to the arrival of Europeans to set blood as a criteria for membership. Anishinaabe people could take in Potawatomi or Odawa people, sometimes Haudenosaunee people who were enemies became Anishinaabe so there’s that fluidity there prior to the arrival of Europeans. But you’re right, some people now, as a result of introductions from the Canadian and the U.S. government think that blood is the thing that marks out our identity and it’s a very, very...it’s a proxy for belonging, but it’s a very poor proxy for belonging because it doesn’t engage our traditions. Largely we’re talking about the plants and the animals and the...there’s just something that is then short circuited by that criteria. Again, I understand the need to be able to draw lines and some where you’re going to draw a line, I don’t think blood should be the way that we draw that line. There are other kinds of criteria that we could take that would form a gate-keeping function if that’s what we’re concerned about, but hopefully that gate keeping then would be around conceptions of civic responsibility that flow from an Indigenous legal perspective and the gate keeping is not the U.S. government’s worried about their obligations of having to fund 10 extra hospital beds if we increase the numbers of people in the tribe.”

Ian Record:

“So let’s turn to...back to this issue of constitutional challenges. As I mentioned at the beginning, you’re from the Nawash First Nation up in Ontario and the nation works...operates using an Indian Act government and I’m curious, what do you feel are your own nation’s largest constitutional challenges here in the year 2014?”

John Borrows:

“Yeah. So just a little thing about constitutionalism more generally in Canada, we don’t have one document that sets out our constitution. In fact, the preamble of our 1867 British North America Act is that we’ll have a constitution that’s similar in principle to that of Great Britain. Great Britain does not have a written constitution. It means that Canadian constitutionalism is not distilled into one written place. There’s an ongoing tradition in Canadian and British constitutionalism that extends back 1,000 years and then there’s little markers along the way like this 1867 document or 1982 document, but they never purport to spell out what the entire relationship of the people will be through their constitution. If I could draw an analogy here then, Anishinaabe people have a constitutional tradition that goes well beyond 1,000 years back into the mists of time and that tradition is what we’ve been talking about today. And then we’ve got the Indian Act, which is one moment of constitutionalism, which is an imposition from the Canadian government and what I would like to see is similar to what we have in the British context that that’s not the be-all and end-all of constitutions and that you can overturn that, that you can go back to some of the things that were there in the past, graft on other things today, but I don’t think the people see the Indian Act in that way. I think they see the Indian Act in somewhat a similar way to how some might regard something like the U.S. Constitution. It’s written in stone, can’t be changed, it can never be put aside and this is a matter of the heart and the mind so our challenge is to see the Indian Act for what it is -- anomalous, a drop in time. Yes, a very powerful set of Trojan horse-like laws that have run into our community and tried to take us over, but nevertheless have not. So when band decisions are made today at Cape Croker under the Indian Act, it is true that when you make a by-law, in order to have that approved you have to submit it to the Minister of Indian Affairs, if you don’t hear back in 40 days then it becomes the law of the community. But that exists in the midst of a wider tradition of people still trying to consult with family, still watching the land, still looking through the language, taking account of the deliberative structures that flow from the clans and the chiefs, etc. In other words, our constitutional tradition is not limited to that Indian Act imposition. It’s there and what we need to do obviously is peel out and pear off and get rid of that Indian Act oversight just as people try to get rid of secretarial approval in the IRA style of constitutions in the United States. And when we do that, it’s not as if there’s a legal vacuum that’s present because even under the Indian Act there is a set of traditions that have been flowing through our community that come from the past, but are the present and have something to speak to the future. And so when we peel that Indian Act out we’re not starting from scratch and then what we need to do is identify, have conversations, fight, discuss what are those things that we’re doing now that we can distill for this moment, not for all time and place again, but for this moment that would help us further remove ourselves from the Indian Act.”

Ian Record:

“So you’re probably well aware that in Canada there are a growing number of First Nations that are working to get out from under the Indian Act. They’re developing their own constitutions and sometimes it’s through the treaty processes that are going on in British Columbia and elsewhere, sometimes it’s through the development of custom election, what’s called custom election code approaches, and down here obviously in the U.S. there is a tremendous amount of activity going on, some successful, some not. And I’m curious -- we’ve been talking a lot about context and historical context and you just sort of related the historical and cultural context within what your nation tries to reconcile, wrestle with the Indian Act in your reserve and sustain your Indigenous Anishinaabe legal traditions and ways of doing, ways of constituting with that system. How important is it for nations who are engaging in this reform effort to really fully understand their traditional Indigenous legal tradition, their traditional Indigenous constitutionalism and also the origin story of how they came to have what they have now with often an imposed system? And when I say that, I’m speaking specifically for them, for their community, for their nation in particular because yes, for instance, all First Nations in Canada, most of them have the Indian Act, they work under the Indian Act. In the U.S. yes, most or a great number of tribes work with an IRA system or something akin to it, but their specific histories are very distinct. How important is it for nations as they engage this constitutional change prospect to have that cultural context, to have that historical context?”

John Borrows:

“Yeah, it’s huge and what you need is a lot of storytelling that can occur from the elders and from the teachers that might be there in the community, but you also need storytelling that’s good social science, research that has economic analysis and looks at the political system structures, you need education that’s also of a more public nature through Twitter and Facebook and media, YouTube, etc., putting those altogether, having people understand what are the different streams that are flowing into the present way that we’re constituted. Some of those streams are colonial, they come from the Indian Act and how does that...what is...how is blood quantum one of those streams, it’s actually polluting us right now, and identify that history and those streams and then also say, and yet there’s this other stream that we continue to pull upon. Why is it we begin with prayer at the beginning of our council meeting? Why is it that we do a lot of our business going in home to home to home? That’s not written in the Indian Act anywhere, but there’s a sense of people and clan and place still being involved in that. Why is it that my head councilor goes out and owl calls as a part of what he does with people in the community? And putting that all together and saying, ‘These streams are not so healthy, but these streams are continuing to be vibrant.’ Without that context, without that history, without both traditional and social science research you’re not in a place to do a good analysis about where you are and where you could possibly go from here. And I know that’s hard to do because there are just so many other pressing needs that a community has to encounter. You’ve probably heard that analogy before, often there’s people that are falling off a cliff, what ends up happening is the councilmen come over, ‘We need to get these people that are at the bottom of the cliff and make sure that they get help and healing.’ And so where all the time people are falling over the cliff in our communities and they’re bruised and bloody at the base of the cliff and we’re just dealing with the crisis of the moment instead of taking the time to put the fence at the top of the cliff and show where the boundaries might be so that we can cut off that flow of trauma that’s happening in our place. And so yes, there are those every day-to-day needs, but those day-to-day needs will eventually be attenuated if we could take that longer term approach and put systems, structures, fences in place that prevent us from falling down and really seeing the damage that’s a part of us.”

Ian Record:

“So a lot of what we’ve been discussing focuses on one of the key research findings of the Native nation building research that both the Native Nations Institute and the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development have been engaged in for the past 30 years and that is cultural match. Basically the match between...what is the match between the people and the governance system they use to thrive, survive, move forward as a people? Perhaps you can share your perspective on that, because it sounds like that’s really at the forefront of your mind when you think about the issues around constitutionalism and other issues as well.”

John Borrows:

“Yeah. So I’m really celebratory of many of the findings that come from the Native Nations Institute and the Harvard Project because I think they’re right -- we do have to pay attention to cultural match, that we need to find greater fit between the context of a particular people and their own then constitutional expressions and that is not occurring and that message needs to be loud and clear and just repeated over and over and over again. But there is a caution in taking that approach, which is constitutions also have to challenge the culture of the people. It’s not just about matching the culture of the people. So let’s take an example just looking at the U.S. context. There was a tradition of slavery in the United States that of course was harmful to the people that were caught up into it that led to a civil war and the constitution, when it was first drafted, tried to paper over the differences that were there between the peoples and how they were living culturally in the North and the South, etc. Fortunately we found in the U.S. constitutional context that there was the ability of the 13th, the 14th and the 15th Amendment as they eventually were drafted or through the Brown vs. Board of Education case that the constitution itself became a challenge to the tradition and a challenge to the culture and without that challenge we would have continued to reproduce prejudice and racism and policies that are harmful to people that we should be in better relationships with. And the same thing could be put into any context. You think about the British constitutionalism, it of course is by and large a product of matching cultures of the people and their place, but that constitution also has conventions that says to the king, ‘You can’t just do what you want.’ It says, ‘If you want to act, you have to do so through a legislature,’ and there’s a lot of conventions that are found in British constitutionalism that go against the flow basically. And when a tribe designs a constitution, again the message that must be the overriding message is cultural match. We don’t have near enough of that. But as we do so, just be careful that we don’t get carried away because we need to think about those who might be a minority amongst us. That could be families, it could be clans, it could be non-Native people that are associating with us in our place and unless we have ways to also challenge our own traditions and have things that would go against the flow of the way we’re living, we will reproduce our own abuses and we will create conditions that diminish the dignity of people that live amongst us. And so it’s going to be a hard thing to do because you want the popular sovereignty of the people to largely guide your constitutions, you want people’s voices to be by and large what guides the day, but it’s worthwhile considering the trickster, which is an Indigenous tradition, by what is contrary there, what’s going on in another moment that we need to take account of and if we heeded our traditions of the trickster, that is contemplating at the same time things that can be harmful and helpful, kind and cunning, charming and playing mean tricks, our constitutions need to do that too and if we’re just all about a celebration of match and neglect those elements of push back that are within the community, we are not going to be living well together.”

Ian Record:

“Well, John, I think our listeners and viewers have learned quite a bit from you and giving them a lot of food for thought and we really appreciate you taking some time to sit down and share your thoughts and experience with us.”

John Borrows:

“Thank you. It’s been fun.”

Ian Record:

“Thank you.”

John Borrows:

“Great.”