First of all, that's quite an old case. It's an important case. There's actually an 1867 case called Connolly v. Woolrich, which is important for British Columbians because Sir James Douglas's wife's mother is the plaintiff's family. It was a Cree marriage of the country between a fur trader and a Cree woman. There was an issue in the Quebec court in 1867 as to whether the laws of the Cree.... There was an obligation to make sure that customary family law applied. In Connolly and Woolrich it was recognized that there was something called “marriages of the country” and aboriginal laws around family, and those were valid marriages.
There are a whole variety of cases. That's one very important one, and the case you reference is also critical. There are recent decisions as well, on issues like custom adoption and other things. We have three sources of law in Canada. We have indigenous law, civil law and common law. We must always think about how to harmonize these.
This is why I think BIll C-92 is quite positive. By focusing on children and child and family reunification, we will probably get beyond some of these concepts, like adoption, which are not necessarily indigenous concepts. We will get more into family unity. I think that's a progressive thing. I think it's consistent with jurisprudence, but we have to understand that after 1982, the jurisprudence in Canada has progressed.