When Custom Is Law
This text chronicles some of the author’s intercultural involvement as an expert witness to help Inuit defend their rights in court. This involvement has resulted from his work with them (1956-2016) as an ethnographer, social anthropologist, and friend. Such experiences have made him understand that some traditional Inuit practices, like confession, testimony, arbitration, nature of punishment, making amends, or notions like those of person, family, adoption, and responsibility, did not have the same meaning in a society of hunter-gatherers with oral tradition as they do in a Western society with colonial heritage, like Canada, with its legislation and case law. At a time when communications and the economy are being globalized, Inuit cultures are going through profound changes. The logic of the included middle, which underlies ancient Inuit social cosmology, aimed for social harmony rather than punishment, and complementarity rather than antagonism. It is hardly compatible with Western law, which purports to be universal with its binary logic of the excluded middle (truth/falsehood, guiltiness/innocence, incarceration/community rehabilitation). Some enlightened jurists are trying to build bridges between Aboriginal cultures and our own to come to a « living together » that would be acceptable to everyone. Let us hope that they will soon be joined in this effort by many of the small numbers of Inuit jurists – judges, lawyers, or teachers trained in law school.