Trip to Walpole Island turns teachers into students

Eight professors from the University of Windsor recently travelled to Walpole Island, so they could learn about aboriginal laws and traditions.

It was an occasion in which the teachers became students, but also one that will allow them to pass on what they have learned to their own students in time.

Anneke Smit was among the professors who took part in the three-day event.

"We talked a lot about the sources of law, the way in which legal norms are developed in indigenous communities and in particular, in the Anishinabe tradition,"she told CBC Radio's Afternoon Drive in an interview on Monday.

Smit said much of that process involves stories. And the professors heard stories and spent time learning about their meaning.

"We spend a lot of years becoming experts in the common law or the civil law, as the case may be, and it will take us a while to become comfortable there, but this is a really good starting point,"she said.

The professors were also taught about broader things that weren't so closely related to the law.

"We learned about things as diverse as traditional forms of medicine,"Smit said. "We visited the memorial to Tecumseh, we visited and heard about the residential schools'legacy on Walpole Island and visited the monuments there and heard from a survivor."

For Smit, the trip to Walpole Island is one that she will remember. And it will also have an immediate impact on the courses she teaches.

"One of the courses that I teach is property law,"said Smit. "I have an obligation that I make sure that students are educated about indigenous legal traditions, with respect to land, as well as common law and the way that those two interact."

To date, Smit has taught these issues with the help of colleagues, including members of aboriginal communities.

But she said the session at Walpole Island has further underlined the need for her to ensure "there is a thread running through my courses and understanding that whatever we're dealing with in terms of conflicts between private property rights and the common-law system, there are also underlying land claims."