In January of 2020, the Indigenous Law Research Unit (ILRU), based at the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Law, hosted a workshop in partnership with Niijkiwendidaa Anishinaabekwewag Services Circle (NASC) in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough).

The workshop introduced NASC staff, and interested Nogojiwanong community members to the ILRU methodology and identified emergent themes for their research project including Anishinabek legal principles and processes for adoption, responsibilities to family, responding to unhealthy relationships, responding to a community member in need, and upholding agreements between family and community.

The project, tentatively entitled Kipimoojikewin (“the things we carry with us”), seeks to learn more about the legal principles and processes of how families are central to governance in Anishinaabe communities. We are also interested in how communities respond to issues of vulnerability and safety within families.

The ILRU has secured funding for this project from The Law Foundation of Ontario.

After meeting with the NASC staff and board members, ILRU researchers identified two research questions:

• What does kinship mean?
• How do these concepts of kinship inform how people respond to situations of conflict, vulnerability, and harm?

Following the COVID-19 outbreak ILRU and NASC, have been working to create innovative research approaches to produce content that is relevant and useful to community members in these extraordinary times and to carry on this work.

This wordpress will act as an archive and a site for discussion, deliberation, and (virtual) visiting during COVID-19 and beyond. ILRU researchers are working to produce useful, relevant, and kid-friendly content to engage with Anishinabek law and stories, during these times.