| Summary: |
"Otter's Journey employs the Anishinaabe tradition of storytelling to explore how Indigenous language revitalization can inform the emerging field of Indigenous legal revitalization. Indigenous languages and laws need bodies to live in. Learning an endangered language or a suppressed legal system are similar experiences. When we bring language back to life, it becomes a medium for developing human relationships. Likewise, when laws are written on people's hearts, rather than merely on paper, true revitalization has occurred. Storytelling has the capacity to address feelings and demonstrate themes--to go beyond argumentation and theoretical exposition. Within this paradigm, Otter, the clan figure of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation, journeys across Anishinaabe, Inuit, Maori, Coast Salish, and Abenaki territories to learn how Indigenous struggles toward self-determination compare. While Otter's Journey is guided by a literal truth, it also splices and recombines real-world events and characters. Through her engaging protagonist, Lindsay Keegitah Borrows reveals that the processes, philosophies, and standards of decision making held within Indigenous languages and laws can emerge from the layers of contemporary settler nation-state laws, policies, and language to guide us in the twenty-first century. We need the best of all people's teachings to lead us into the future."-- |
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