Terri-Lynn is proud to be participating in Testify, an evolving and growing dialogue between Artists and Legal Thinkers.

Traveling performances and art show celebrating Indigenous laws: Nanaimo (November, 2016), Victoria (February, 2017), Kamloops (Spring, 2017), Ontario: Windsor (TBC), Toronto (TBC), Quebec: Montreal (TBC)

Artists and legal thinkers in conversation with each other to explore Indigenous laws and opportunities for the dynamic expression.   Testify creates a space for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians to dream a way forward which respects and reflects the diversity, strength and hope embodied within Indigenous traditions.

Law has been a powerful tool of the colonial project. Law was used to subjugate and attempt to wipe out Indigenous Peoples as distinct Peoples, and prohibit Indigenous ceremonies, governance, laws, and cultural expression.

Law continues to be used to remove children from their families, nations and cultures; to imprison people; and as a weapon of indifference in the failure to act to address the violence done to Indigenous Peoples (particularly women and children).  Indigenous laws – for caring for each other, for caring for the land, for mediating relationships across cultures and territories – continue to be ignored or undermined.

Canada remains a country incomplete : The failure to make space for Indigenous laws remains the unfinished business of Confederation.

Only by the active involvement of Indigenous laws can we avoid (re)conciliation morphing, unchallenged, into (re)colonization.