Keewatin v. Minister of Natural Resources

Part 5. The Ojibway Perspective - Ojibway History 39ethnographic analysis of the documentary record of the Treaty 3 negotiations and the dealings ofthe Ojibway with Euro-Canadians.The Life and Culture of the Ojibway/European Contact to 1871[219] Lovisek's uncontradicted evidence was that the Ojibway were well-established in the areaaround the Lake of the Woods well before 1873, as shown on a series of maps published byanthropologist Dr. C. Bishop entitled "Ojibway Distribution Maps 1649 to 1775."[220] She described Ojibway society, culture, values and understanding of the 1873 Treaty overmany days of evidence.Social Structure[221] Basic Ojibway social units were clans, named after animals and fish. Because clanmembers did not marry within their own clan, each clan included those who had been born intoother clans.2011 ONSC 4801 (CanLII)Governance[222] The basic Ojibway political unit was the band.[223] The Grand Council of Chiefs and leading men made decisions on important matters,including the allocation of resources to be harvested, matters of war, HBC relations and treatydeliberations.[224] The Ojibway lived according to precepts they believed had come to them from the GreatSpirit. They ascribed to egalitarian principles. They valued consensus, both at the band andGrand Council levels. They had no top-down authority as in European societies. Although theChiefs and leading men had great powers of persuasion and their advice was usually taken, in theevent of a failure to reach consensus, members of Grand Council did not have the authority toenforce their will. That would have been unacceptable in Ojibway culture.[225] Dawson reported in 1868 (Ex. 1, Vol. 4, tab 53) that on important matters affectinggeneral interests, "they neither reply to a proposition nor make one themselves, until it is fullydiscussed and deliberated upon in Council by all the Chiefs…"Religion[226] The Ojibway believed, not in a sky God, but in an underwater God. They followed rulesprovided to them by the Great Spirit. They believed that their shamans could engage with thespirits of various objects, animate and inanimate. (Lovisek, October 23, 2009.)[227] By 1857, when the Treaty 3 Ojibway came into contact with the Palliser and Hindexpeditions mentioned earlier, they had already rejected Christianity. Lovisek's evidence onOctober 20, 2009 includes the following: