Royal visit receiving a First Nations welcome during a Royal Tour of Canada, September 2016.In 1987 I was called as an expert witness in the case known as Delgamuukw versus The Queen. This case, which would turn out to be the longest and, in some crucial ways, the most complex case in Canadian legal history, sought to resolve fundamental questions about Aboriginal rights and title, focused on the extensive hunting, gathering and fishing territories of two First Nations, the Gitxan and the Wet’suwet’en, in northern British Columbia.
Much of the evidence came to the court as oral testimony, given by First Nation Chiefs and elders; but some was led by both the litigants and the Crown in the form of historical and anthropological submissions. In the course of these, social scientists at times had the job of interpreting events and documents from the nineteenth and early twentieth century; and, in doing so, had to speak to issues of prevailing ideology and various forms of prejudice. At times this issue of prejudice spilled over into observations on ways of seeing, describing and understanding Aboriginal life and vital interests up to the present day.
This arose at a tense moment in my cross-examination. Rebutting an implication of mine to the effect that Native societies and cultures were again and again described through distorting lenses of ideology, the leading counsel for the Crown snapped at me: “I check my prejudices at the door to the court.” “I check my prejudices at the door to the court.”
