What Evicting Grizzly Bear Spirit Does (and Doesn’t) Tell Us about Indigenous “Religion” and Indigenous Rights

Abstract

The Canadian Supreme Court’s (2017) decision in Ktunaxa First Nation v. British Columbia is instructive because it demonstrates the continuing incompatibility of what religion “means” in the Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, respectively. There are, however, additional lessons to be learned by looking carefully at an aspect of this case that troubled many non-Indigenous commentators, namely, that much of the Ktunaxa claim seemed to rest upon an “epiphany” experienced by a single Ktunaxa elder. What can be detected in the documentary record about that epiphany is evidence of a gradual process by which better understandings of the world are brought into being under the influence of a “web of interconnections” understanding of the world. Recognizing that this process is operative in Indigenous communities has implications not just for the study of Indigenous religion, but also for the way Courts (using their own criteria) might “think about” Indigenous rights.