John Borrows (Kegedonce), a law professor at both the University of Minnesota and the University of Victoria (where he is Law Foundation Chair in Aboriginal Justice) and a member of Ontario’s Chippewas of Nawash First Nation, asked this question in his lecture at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights on Feb. 17.

The talk, “First Nations and Human Rights,”  was part of the Fragile Freedoms Lecture Series sponsored by the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the U of M.

Borrows pointed out that other abstract ideas such as life, liberty, and equality are intrinsic to law. So why not love?  With the lecture taking place on Louis Riel Day, Borrows reminded his audience that Riel talked about love in his speeches. Borrows argued Aboriginal rights require the bridging of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures and the accommodation of values from both groups. And Indigenous peoples’ privileging of love could provide such a bridge.

The Anishinabek word for love is related to the word for the mouth of a river, Borrows explained, and love, like a river’s mouth, is full of the nutrients required for an abundant life. Citing historical examples of love’s prominent role in the elaborate ceremonies of exchange that took place among Anishinabe and other Indigenous groups and British and French people, Borrows pointed out that the Indian Act and additional Treaty interpretations are contrary to love. They ignore the intercultural and intersocietal bridges necessary for harmonious relations among these different peoples.

Responding to a question from the audience, Borrows acknowledged that love can be paternalistic or even infantalising. What is needed, Borrows suggested, is for love to be triangulated with equality and freedom. Referencing Indigenous people’s love of the land, Borrows recommends being “more romantic,” overall, when it comes to the Earth, especially when considering activities like fracking, nuclear energy, mining, and logging.

Borrows has a lengthy list of publications, which have won numerous awards. Perhaps the authoritative statement of his views is found in his book Canada’s Indigenous Constitution. In its preface, Borrows describes how “Anishinabek legal traditions are drawn from places other than courts, legislatures, lawyer’s briefs, or law professors’ lectures….They are nourished by a grandparent’s teachings, a law professor’s reflections, an animal’s behaviour, an engraved image, and a landscape’s contours.”  Borrows’s lecture showed how indigenous law can be a source of creativity for all Canadians, and how the law itself can be a source for reconciliation.

Borrows’s lecture was broadcast on the CBC Ideas programme, and is available from the CBC website.

Burrows was originally slated to speak on Jan. 20, but that lecture was cancelled due to illness.

John Burrows is a member of Ontario’s Chippewas of Nawash First Nation and Anishinaabe, and he is a leading scholar and teacher in Indigenous, constitutional, and environmental law. He has written and spoken widely on such issues as Aboriginal legal rights and traditions, treaties and land claims, and religion and the law. He is currently a member of the faculty of law of both the University of Minnesota and the University of Victoria.

Click here for tickets.

John Burrows: First Nations and human rights
Date: February 17, 2014
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Borrows is a leading scholar on First Nations and human rights.

Organizers are trying to reschedule the lecture.  For more information about that, or about ticket refunds, please go to fragilefreedoms.com. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Tonight’s lecture was meant to be the third of the series. Previous lecturers include Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah and Professor Martha Nussbaum.

Kwame Anthony Appiah

The idea of human rights has never been a mere abstraction for Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, whose recent Fragile Freedoms lecture will air on CBC’s Ideas on Nov. 21.

Professor Appiah, who on November 13 gave the third lecture in the Fragile Freedoms series at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, grew up in Ghana, where his father Joe Appiah was a leader of the independence movement.  After independence, Joe Appiah broke with the government of his former friend Kwame Nkrumah, and the young boy had to watch as his father was arrested and imprisoned, and his house ransacked for evidence of sedition.  A new organization called Amnesty International took up his father’s cause, and people all over the world wrote letters demanding freedom for one of the first people ever described as a “prisoner of conscience”. During his lecture, professor Appiah reminded his audience that we too have the obligation to help those who are denied their basic freedoms, wherever they may live.

Professor Appiah, the author of many books and a professor at Princeton University, emphasized that justice is about more than protecting people’s basic freedoms. It is also about allowing them to form their own identity. This means we must respect not just the things we all have in common, but also the things that make us different. He insisted that before we criticize the practices of other cultures, we must first ensure that we understand them. Professor Appiah discussed Quebec’s new charter of values, which he said threatens to undermine the diversity of its society and make religious minorities feel less welcome.

 “He may have said some things that not everyone in the room wanted to hear. But the audience afterwards was buzzing with discussion. He gave everyone something to think about, ” Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, said after the lecture.

The Fragile Freedoms lecture series is sponsored by the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, in conjunction with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and CBC’s Ideas programme, which will broadcast all of the lectures. Appiah’s lecture will air on Ideas on Thursday, Nov. 21.

Tickets for future lectures may be purchased through the series website: fragilefreedoms.com.

Listen to previous Fragile Freedoms lectures

A.C. Grayling’s Sept 25 lecture on Ideas.

Martha Nussbaum’s Oct. 31 lecture on Ideas

Martha Nussbaum, philosopher

When people think of human rights, they naturally think of things like free speech and freedom of religion. Renowned philosopher Martha Nussbaum (University of Chicago Law School) has traveled through the developing world, and she believes that a poor woman living in India, trying to support herself and her family, needs more  than that. She needs not just freedom from oppression by her government, but also the resources necessary to pursue a fulfilling life. Professor Nussbaum calls this view “the Capabilities Approach” to human rights. And on Friday October 25, she presented this view to a sold-out audience at the new Canadian Museum of Human Rights.

Professor Nussbaum’s lecture was the second in a series titled “Fragile Freedoms: The Global Struggle for Human Rights”. The series is organised by the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, in conjunction with the Museum, and Ideas, CBC’s programme dedicated to contemporary thought. There will be eight lectures in the series concluding in May 2014 with a talk by Germaine Greer. All will be broadcast on Ideas; Nussbaum’s lecture will air on Ideas on Oct. 31.

The Capabilities Approach was developed by Professor Nussbaum in conjunction with several others, including Amartya Sen, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on international development. By challenging more traditional conceptions of human welfare, the approach has stirred controversy both within academic circles and among those who work on international development. Professor Nussbaum provided a list of ten central capabilities that are necessary to a flourishing life, including bodily integrity, control over one’s environment, and the opportunity for leisure and play. She says that we all must do what we can to ensure that people everywhere in the world have the ability to realise these capacities in their own way.

“Professor Nussbaum did what a philosopher is supposed to do,” says Ethics Centre Director Arthur Schafer. “She challenged our assumptions about the world, and she helped inspire us to make the world a less unjust place for its inhabitants.” Professor Schafer says he is confident that future lectures in the series will be equally exciting, and he encourages people to visit the series’ website for information about future lectures and to obtain tickets: fragilefreedoms.com

About Fragile Freedoms

The University of Manitoba’s Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, together with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are bringing some of the world’s preeminent human rights thinkers to Winnipeg for an original lecture series. The series, which will take place in the Museum, is being organized to celebrate the Museum’s forthcoming opening.

Tickets to many lectures are sold-out, so visit the website today to order yours before to it’s too late.

Listen to A.C. Grayling’s series opening lecture on Ideas