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This chapter shares the stories of a Mi'kmaq grandmother's reflections of stories from Elders of the Mi'kmaq Nation to share with Masie, born at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in Mi'kma'ki. These stories form a story-net of teachings and reflections to help guide Masie on her journey as a Mi'kmaq girl growing up in a kind and sometimes unkind world. These stories represent a gift in a written form from a grandmother to a beautiful soul who will need help to navigate a world of uncertainty, but a world with tremendous beauty when seen through a Mi'kmaq historical perspective.

As Jennifer, Lucy, Jerri-Lynn, Lulu, Brenda Mary, and Khea storied and restoried their lives in the ways earlier noted, we were in the midst of, as earlier noted, gradually growing in our wakefulness of attending to new possible intergenerational narrative reverberations made visible in their storied lives, in their stories to live by. As they storied their lives Jennifer, Lucy, Jerri-Lynn, Lulu, Brenda Mary, and Khea not only taught us of ways in which the intergenerational narrative reverberation of colonizing Aboriginal people continues to reverberate in their lives, in their stories to live by, but they also showed us the new possible intergenerational narrative reverberations they are composing. These new possible intergenerational narrative reverberations are poised to counter and to restory the colonization and oppression of Aboriginal people. In this way, by tracing the counter stories to live by they are composing so as to shape new possible intergenerational narrative reverberations we see that their counterstories to live by carry much potential for shaping a future in which the spirits of Aboriginal teachers, children, youth, families, and communities in Canada are strong.

There is much to think narratively about in the experiences storied by Lulu, Brenda Mary, Jennifer, Jerri-Lynn, Khea, and Lucy of ways their stories to live by rubbed up against narratives constructing them as not “real” teachers. Untangling these experiences shows ways the historically dominant narrative of colonizing Aboriginal people is still shaping intergenerational narrative reverberations, reverberations that weave into the life of each teacher, and as well, into the familial, communal, institutional, and broader provincial landscapes on which each teacher is composing her life.

Our Mi’kmaq and Anishinabe Elders, Sister Dorothy and Florence, remind us of the centrality of family in our lives and who we are becoming. When children are taken away from their families and familial contexts the suffering endured by the children, parents, family members, and community is unbearable. This removal of Aboriginal children from families, communities, and the places they knew was unnecessary. Aboriginal people have always known what they want for their children: “We all agree that respect is one of the foundations of what defines our values of our people.” This teaching of respect given to us by the Elders has sustained us in the past and in the present. These teachings will continue to sustain us into the future. The stories of our parents have sustained us too. When our mothers and fathers urged us to not lose our languages they were reminding us of who we are and where we come from. In this way they were giving us a legacy of being proud of our language, of our traditions, and of our ways of being Aboriginal people. It is as we claim and reconnect with these stories of the Elders and our ancestors that we know ways forward (Archibald, 2008; Cajete, 2001; Restoule, 2000).

This case was developed using a mixture of publicly available documents created by the partner community, general information from public sources like the First Nations Finance Authority (FNFA) website and Government of Canada websites, and personal and first-hand experience of the indigenous coauthor, Storm Gould.

Wisikk is a Mi’kmaq sovereign reserve territory located in Mi’kmaq’ki in the place that settler governments call Nova Scotia. The community has existed in its location since time immemorial and has been recognized by the settler government since the early 19th century. An opportunity for community-run business has arisen for Wisikk based on the legalization of cannabis throughout Canada in 2018. This case’s protagonist is the community’s Vice-President for Business Development, Andrew Googoo, as he considers bringing a proposal for a cannabis retailing venture to the Chief and Council. Cannabis legalization in Canada left sales policies to the provinces and was silent as to the rules governing cannabis sales by indigenous communities on their sovereign territory. Considering both potential negative impacts to the community, as well as the potential financial benefits from a successful reserve-based cannabis dispensary, Andrew must soon present his initial findings to the Chief and Council for their deliberation and decision. Any venture undertaken by the reserve would require a loan from the FNFA, so Andrew must also consider the projections and reports that the FNFA would require to support their lending decision.

The case is appropriate for mid-level or capstone undergraduate and graduate business courses, especially those focused on entrepreneurship, business ownership or indigenous ownership. The case was originally developed for the accounting division of an international undergraduate case competition. In addition to accounting concepts like pro forma/budgeted income statements and decision analysis, it is intended to showcase some legal and cultural features of community-led indigenous business ventures. The idea is for students to explore concepts of sovereignty, community involvement and broader stakeholder impact, as well as more technical accounting and financial concepts.

We began this chapter with storied experiences of relationships with children and youth and of questions around tensions they can experience as they make home, familial, community, and school transitions. These questions included: Why do we do it this way? Who decides? Can’t I think about what's best for my child? For Aboriginal children? As Khea, Jennifer, and Brenda Mary storied the experiences noted earlier, and as we collectively inquired into their stories, attentive to the intergenerational narrative reverberations of colonization made visible, it was their attentiveness to the particular life of a youth, Robbie; of a child, Rachel; and of a grandchild that we were first drawn. Their deep yearnings for something different in schools also turned our attention toward the counterstories to live by which they were composing. Across Khea's, Jennifer's, and Brenda Mary's earlier storied experiences the counterstories to live by around which they were threading new possible intergenerational narrative reverberations were focused on understanding children and youth as composing lives shaped by multiple contexts, that is, lives shaped through multiple relationships in places in and outside of school. This need for understanding the multiple places and relationships shaping the lives of children and youth as they enter into schools is, as shown in the earlier noted stories, vital in Aboriginal families and communities given the ways in which the narrative of colonization continues to reverberate in present lives.

Carries out a statistical and economic analysis of socio‐economic survey results on the Mi’kmaq People of Cape Breton in the light of the criterion of the social wellbeing function. Focuses on studying the social wellbeing criterion with the socio‐economic variables involved in the surveys in a relational perspective among alternatives. Points out that this approach is distinct from the neoclassical resource substitution method. Instead, the relational perspective is shown to be premissed on a system of universal complementarities.

Writing, much like composing a life (Bateson, 1989), is not a straightforward, linear process. Indeed, storying and restorying lives is, as highlighted in the writing of Marmon Silko (1996), a winding, crisscrossing process:For those of you accustomed to being taken from point A to point B to point C, this presentation may be somewhat difficult to follow. Pueblo expression resembles something like a spider's web – with many little threads radiating from the centre, crisscrossing one another. As with the web, the structure emerges as it is made, and you must simply listen and trust, as the Pueblo people do, that meaning will be made. (pp. 48–49)As we shared and inquired into our storied lives in narrative inquiry circles in Manitoba and Nova Scotia, and then again in yearly whole group narrative inquiry circles, we grew in our knowing of one another, of one another's lives, of where we are each from, of one another's stories to live by. In Chapter 1, we gave a sense of some of the places from which Mary and Janice are from and of ways in which their experiences in these places drew them toward ideas which they began to thread together as a way to shape a frame for our relational narrative inquiry. In this chapter we invite readers to gain a sense of the multiplicity of people, and the multiplicity of lives which shaped our relational narrative inquiry.

Jennifer: There have been many meaningful experiences that have occurred throughout our time together. Being a part of this work has not only allowed me to develop a better understanding about myself and the path that I choose to take from this day on, but it has resulted in new friendships with women whose stories have become part of my own.

This chapter is a journey into the ontological significance of place in consideration of the Atlantic Tasmanian salmon industry and its challenges to the ethical discourse around the social license to operate (SLO) beyond the oxymoron of a name. It centres the discourse around the salmon itself. A once totem animal, responsible for the balance of Canada’s abundant ecosystem, now reduced to a mere source of protein, manipulated, and commodified by Tasmania’s ‘big business’ and against the SLO of Flanagan’s ‘Toxic’. It applies Ortega y Gasset’s mid-twentieth century solution to the problem of our western disconnection from place to the current neoliberal political framework. This welcomes an inclusive dialogue with kinship structures of the Mi’kmaq peoples reflected also in the ontological narrative of the First Nations people of Tasmania. This multidisciplinary journey necessitates a concept of the SLO founded upon ethical responsibility and a cultural license if it is to genuinely hold to account the corporate sovereign.