The Anishinabek Nation's legal traditions are deeply embedded in many aspects of customary life. In Drawing Out Law, John Borrows (Kegedonce) skillfully juxtaposes Canadian legal policy and practice with the more broadly defined Anishinabek perception of law as it applies to community life, nature, and individuals.

This innovative work combines fictional and non-fictional elements in a series of connected short stories that symbolize different ways of Anishinabek engagement with the world. Drawing on oral traditions, pictographic scrolls, dreams, common law case analysis, and philosophical reflection, Borrows' narrative explores issues of pressing importance to the future of indigenous law and offers readers new ways to think about the direction of Canadian law.

Shedding light on Canadian law and policy as they relate to Indigenous peoples, Drawing Out Law illustrates past and present moral agency of Indigenous peoples and their approaches to the law and calls for the renewal of ancient Ojibway teaching in contemporary circumstances.

This is a major work by one of Canada's leading legal scholars, and an essential companion to Canada's Indigenous Constitution.

John Borrows is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria and is the winner of both the Canadian Political Science Association’s Donald Smiley Prize (for Recovering Canada) and the Canadian Law and Society Association Book Prize (for Canada’s Indigenous Constitution)..

John Borrows' profile page

‘Drawing Out Law is a book with wide appeal. It is accessible to those with little or no training in either Anishinabek or common law traditions… It will also be of interest to anyone who believes that there is room in law for whole people.’

Saskatchewan Law Review, vol 76: 2013