Fontaine, Jerry

Nikawiy narratives including Mother to daughter, nation to nation, spirit and intent, and Treaty Enforcement are based on nikawiy (my mother's) teachings that I interpret as my inherent role as Nehiyaw iskwew (Cree woman) specifically for governance and numbered Treaty Enforcement. My methodology 1is also based on nikawiy's Circle of Life, Pimatisiwin, Calendar (Poitras, 1996) curriculum that is related and included in the "universe is listening to me" paskwaw moostoos Treaty Law School (Poitras, 2016). We are from the Peepeekisis Cree Nation in what is now known as Saskatchewan. My mother osawastimahkoop iskwew is originally from Onion Lake on what is now the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan. Peepeekisis is in Treaty Four territory and Onion Lake is in Treaty Six territory.Is there a 'gap' for the role of Indian women and Nehiyawak Iskwew in the numbered Indian Treaty negotiations and generally in leadership? 2Though such a 'gap' may be said to be relatively common knowledge perhaps from the time of the treaty negotiations, a comprehensive and chronological review has yet to be produced that may address this. Treaty Four was entered into in 1874 and Treaty Six was entered into in 1876. Before this and in historical accounts, this gap may also be apparent and indicative of European/settler ethnocentrism based on white male research and documentation of this history.3 The colonial disruption of the Indian Residential School, in particular, would have also impacted oral transmission of any history including the role of women in the treaty negotiations that might also denote a role in governance and leadership. In a contemporary context now, the question for this role is the search for inherent foundations that may be identified as the base to contemporary governance and leadership frameworks for Nehiyaw Iskwewak (Cree women) in Treaty Four and Treaty Six.

1 Protocol has been offered to nikawiy to request her interpretation of "methodology' meaning.2 I could not find any written historical accounts for the role of Cree women during numbered Treaty negotiations. I know that, in general, there are few sources for Indian women in leadership, and particularly for any historical accounts of Indian women leadership. In Treaty Four and Treaty Six, there are no written accounts of Nehiyaw iskwew (Cree women) involvement in these treaty negotiations. The signatories to these treaties are documented as Nehiyaw napew (Cree men) only. Historical accounts document what Cree men leaders/Chiefs may have stated at this time. 3 A reason for the lack of any Cree women documentation in historical accounts of numbered Treaty negotiations is that there could be a lack of understanding for the role of Cree women by the European men who wrote these accounts. Generally, Europeans were coming from white patriarchal societies where women did not commonly have leadership roles.

Author Keywords: Calendar of Life, Cree

In the 1980's, Hollow Water First Nation citizens created a healing movement to address community issues from an Indigenous perspective resulting in the development of the Community Holistic Circle Healing (CHCH) in 1989. The CHCH organization developed a Community (Restorative) Justice process as an alternative to a Western-based Justice approach to address issues such as domestic violence and sexual abuse. The CHCH organization addresses justice from a healing perspective (rather than the Western approach's punitive/surveillance model) and includes the offender and offender's family, the victim and the victim's family, as well as the community to identify issues, develop plans, implement healing activities, and evaluate the outcome so that the root systemic issues affecting community can be addressed holistically. Hollow Water First Nation is much more engaged in addressing the roots of why the offence occurred and looks for Anishinaabek approaches to resolve community-defined issues. Western society tends to implement a symptomatic approach to violence deterrence through punishment rather than address issues through a healing process. My research looks at the complex history of the healing movement, the operation of the CHCH organization and the personal values that emerged from the healing movement, and Hollow Water's next iteration of organization from the children of the people that began the healing movement. These people are now aged around mid-40's and have seen their parents engage in a community justice movement, saw their parents develop their own way to address community issues through the emergence and operation of the CHCH organization, and now, themselves, have developed highly critical and creative skills around the workings of community development.

I use Berger and Luckmann's seminal 1966 book The Social Construction of Reality, Hallowell's perspectives on the Anishinaabek culture in his anthropological research conducted in Beren's River, Manitoba during the 1930's, Max Weber's The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1915), interviews with the original activists, and my experiences living in Hollow Water for 4+ years (from 1997 to 2001) to give an account of the history of the healing movement and its consequent personal transformation of the people engaged in examining their thoughts, values and behavioural processes. I use the Learning Organization Theory, developed by Peter Senge (a management professor from Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in his 1990 book The Fifth Discipline, interviews of CHCH staff and other community organization staff members, as well as, Indigenous authors, such as, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's Dancing on Our Turtle's Back (2011) and Michael Hart's Seeking Mino-Pimatisiwin (2002) to provide an understanding of Indigenous concepts as they apply to the process of CHCH's healing/learning operations. From these sources and interviews, I provide an account of Hollow Water's Healing Movement which includes the decline of the CHCH organization from late 1990s to 2020. Given the current hyperpolitical environment in Canada, Hollow Water's next generation of community member activists are perhaps about to reclaim power and establish empowered relationships as the Indigenous Renaissance unfolds.

Author Keywords: Community Healing Movement Process, Hollow Water First Nation, Indigenous Axiology and Praxis, Learning Organization, Restorative Justice, Systems-Thinking