Debandaagziwin – Citizenship/Membership

When I introduced myself I said, ‘hello all my relations’. Who are my relations? You are my relations. As I came to this place today, I noticed the beauty that surrounds with the plants and the trees and the birds and again the livingness. When we talk about Anishinaabemowin as Anishinabe people, there's an encouragement there to be generous in who we identify as a part of us, to be open in thinking about others as being a part of us. When we begin ceremony, we often try to encourage this understanding by putting down tobacco, asemaa. That is, there's a sense of reciprocity that's involved when we ask for help as to how we should proceed because we realize that we are nothing without our relations. We need all our relations to be fully Anishinaabe and if we don't practice that sense of reciprocity and if, through our citizenship laws, we find ways to narrow our world of relationships, we are not being consistent with our ceremonial paths, we are not being consistent again with what we learn as we look at the world around us - John Borrows

The twelve “Rights of an Anishnawbek Child” (Nogdawindamin Family and Community Services Naadmaagejik, 2018 “Rights of an Anishnawbek Child”) include debandaagziwin or the right to “where your roots are”. Debandaagziwin means connection to one’s nation and territory or as a form of citizenship within the Anishinaabe nation. Debandaagziwin is incredibly important in the face of the Indian Act and other Canadian laws that have been designed to control and reduce Anishinaabe connection and belonging to culture and identity. As such, any child wellbeing law should apply to members of their nation who live off-reserve or who are disconnected from their families and nations as a result of colonial policies. Anishinaabe people and nations should be able to control their own associations and the extent and application of their own laws.

Many of the nations along the North Shore act to uphold and maintain debandaagziwin through seeking out Nation’ members who have been dislocated and to bring them home. This also means that any child wellbeing law needs to be recognizable internationally as there are North Shore children across North America. As such, North Shore communities and band reps need any court system to recognize Anishinaabe jurisdiction wherever a member may be and where band reps and other community child wellbeing workers can represent and bring children back to their home community.

Similarly, the new community-led Koognaasewin child wellbeing law will also support and include youth aging out of the foster care system. Youth in foster care living outside of their home community belong in community. It is important to allow freedom of movement to nation members without losing debandaagziwin or their connection to community. Any child wellbeing law needs to consider debandaagziwin and the impacts of how nation members are defined regarding who they are related to as well as for future generations to ensure all nation members have access to services that enhance their wellbeing.

John Borrows argues for an expansive form of debandaagziwin that is grounded in love. “If our laws get in the way of love by cutting people out of our extended family or immediate family relationships, I want to suggest that they are not facilitating love.” This approach stands in strong contrast to the Indian Act and the concept of blood quantum which reduces the number of relations and citizens available to a nation. As John Borrows states,

…blood quantum can be in my view likened to a windigo. It's consumptive, it's voracious, it never ends in searching for that perfect moment of finding that blood quantum. I've heard it said that blood quantum is the vampire of Anishinaabe and Indigenous communities, sucking the life out of us by paying attention to blood. We need this healing from the earth, [Anishinaabe language], this ability to be able to stop...stop that flow of people being cut away from us.

Traditional Anishinaabe systems of governance such as the dodemiwan or clan system encourage Anishinaabe people to think about citizenship not being arranged hierarchically but arranged vertically. If Anishinaabe people imagine their relationships as being spread out as opposed to being aligned in a hierarchy, John Burrows says that “blood quantum often aligns us in that hierarchy and doesn't spread us out across the land in the way that made us strong as Anishinaabe people for thousands of years”.

For one recent focus group member, the narrowness of the current definition of band member excludes them despite having married in and been a part of the community for most of their life:

Because it’s not all Batchewana Band members. Because I’m a community member, and there’s a lot of good community members here, right? Everybody’s partner is from another Band a lot of times. They are still family to that child, that grandchild, that great-grandchild, that niece, that nephew. And they should always have a voice; they know that child. I know my grandkids better than anybody else; nobody knows them; I do. I’d like to have that voice. I may not have a final say, but I would like my voice to be heard. And a lot of things in this reserve is for band members only, so I do not have a voice.

The narrowness of the Indian Act definition of band member determines who is included and excluded from governance and limits full participation of relations in decision-making. In contrast, the Anishinaabe conception of debandaagziwin or citizenship should expand outward to even include the non-human relations Anishinaabe people depend upon. This reflects what can be learned in ceremony and through observation of the world. Anishinaabe need all our relations to be fully Anishinaabe. If Anishinaabe don’t practice reciprocity and if, through our citizenship laws, we find ways to narrow our world of relationships, we are not being consistent with our teachings or ceremonies.

Wilma Bissaillon says:

Before talking about the Law, we have to start talking about, “How do we pass on those laws to our children when they’re starting to lose a lot of the teachings and how do we bring them back?” Are we looking at land-based learning? Are we looking at being able to reintroduce our language? Because, without our language, we don’t have a culture – at least, that’s the way I look it. And a lot of our Elders who did speak the language are slowly leaving us to go on that journey. The one thing we should be considering is “what about those generations to come – seven generations?” And it’s up to those generations that are behind us to pick up and re-establish who we were as, not only Mississaugas, but as Ojibwe people and the Anishinaabek. So that’s what I think of when I look at this, is that we were taught this; we weren't told this; I guess there’s a difference. And we knew how to raise our children and we knew that, early on, if you put a child in a term in Anishinaabemowin, they learned patience, they learned how to stay quiet. I can remember my Dad taking the boys out to hunt at a very young age, and the first thing they would learn is that you had to be quiet, you had to be patient, and you just couldn't be... like, even whistling in the bush …[laughs]. So you had to learn all of that. But that was taught, and right now, we aren't teaching that to our next generation, and it would be really nice to be able to bring that back when we’re looking at our child wellbeing because it is our children who are going to carry on. And if they don’t, guess what happens? We kind of lose our battle that we’ve been fighting for millennia, of them trying to assimilate us or get rid of us.