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I can't find the resources I was looking at but here's one paper on the subject https://cirl.ca/files/cirl/david_laidlaw-en.pdf https://cirl.ca/files/cirl/davi

I can't find the resources I was looking at but here's one paper on the subject https://cirl.ca/files/cirl/david_laidlaw-en.pdf https://cirl.ca/files/cirl/david_laidlaw-en.pdf Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge DOES have weight in the Canadian legal system just not very much especially in the lower courts. A point bought up in the context of using it in the courts is - isn't oral tradition fundamentally built on hearsay?

tomlock 8y ago
It is a super interesting jurisprudential question, because legal systems are typically objective in part, but also rely on some idea of what a "reasonable person" would consider factual or reasonable. It stands to reason then, that under a native epistemology, it is reasonable for oral tradition aka hearsay to be given legal weight - when under the modern tradition we wouldn't. It is probably worth wondering if we'd consider aboriginals to have no knowledge if we took a hardline view that all hearsay was not knowledge. I think that's a pretty counterintuitive conclusion, so I think there must be some credit given to knowledge in a system with no written record. And, the next question that comes to my mind anyhow is what would it be like if nothing was considered knowledge unless it was written down? This isn't even currently the case in our modern tradition, given that witnesses and memories are still considered to have at least some weight.