About 30 years before the Wet'suwet'en First Nation faced the possibility of a natural gas pipeline through its territory, members fought a different battle in court.
Lawyer Peter Grant, who represented the Wet'suwet'en and neighbouring Gitxsan First Nation, reportedly called an elder as a witness and asked her to sing a death song.
The company plans to build a 670-kilometre pipeline from northeastern British Columbia to LNG Canada's $40-billion export terminal on the coast in Kitimat. It's long been a challenge for the Canadian legal system to hear and incorporate Indigenous law and legal traditions in its decisions, and the latest decision reflects the status quo, he said.
"The reconciliation of the common law with Indigenous legal perspectives is still in its infancy," Justice Marguerite Church wrote. In the family law realm, the Canadian legal system has taken Indigenous customary law into account. As early as 1889, Canada recognized Indigenous models of marriage and there were several adoption cases in the 1940s recognizing Indigenous family models, White said.
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