| dbo:abstract | - Indigenous law in Canada refers to the legal traditions, customs, and practices of Indigenous peoples and groups. Canadian aboriginal law is different from Indigenous Law. Canadian Aboriginal law provides certain constitutionally recognized rights to land and traditional practices. Canada original territories of over 900 different Indigenous groups, each using different Indigenous legal traditions. Cree, Blackfoot, Mi'kmaq and numerous other First Nations; Inuit; and Métis will apply their own legal traditions in daily life, creating contracts, working with governmental and corporate entities, ecological management and criminal proceedings and family law. Most maintain their laws through traditional governance alongside the elected officials and federal laws. The legal precedents set millennia ago are known through stories and derived from the actions and past responses as well as through continuous interpretation by elders and law-keepers—the same process by which nearly all legal traditions, from common laws and civil codes, are formed. While the many legal traditions appear similar in that none were codified, each has quite different sets of laws. Many laws stem from stories which in turn may stem from writings or markings, such as geographic features, petroglyphs, pictographs, wiigwaasabakoon and more. Inuit Nunangat's governance differs quite markedly from its many-nationed neighbour Denendeh, as Denendeh's diverse Dene Laws differ quite markedly from laws governing Lingít Aaní, Gitx̱san Lax̱yip or Wet'suwet'en Yin'tah; and, as those differ from Haudenosaunee's, Eeyou-Istchee's or Mi'kma'ki's. One thing most Indigenous legal and governance traditions have in common is their use of clans such as Anishinaabek's doodeman (though most are matrilineal like Gitx̱san's Wilps). (en)
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