Kategoria BISAC: Law >> Indigenous Peoples

Many liberal theorists consider group identity claims a necessary condition of equality in Canada, but do these claims do more harm than good? To answer this question, Caroline Dick examines the identity-driven theories of Charles Taylor, Will Kymlicka, and Avigail Eisenberg in the context of Sawridge Band v. Canada, a case which sets a First Nation's right to self-determination against indigenous women's right to equality. The concept of identity itself is not the problem, Dick argues, but rather the way in which prevailing conceptions of identity and group rights obscure intragroup...

Just as dahshaa--a rare type of dried, rotted spruce wood--is essential to the Dene moosehide-tanning process, self-determination and the alleviation of social suffering are necessary to Indigenous survival in the Northwest Territories. Finding Dahshaa shows where self-government negotiations between Canada and the Dehcho, D?l?n?, and Inuvialuit and Gwich?in peoples have gone wrong and offers an alternative model for negotiations through descriptions of tanning practices that embody the principles and values of self-determination.

An informed and passionate account, with a...

The political concept of recognition has introduced new ways of thinking about the relationship between minorities and justice in plural societies. But is a politics informed by recognition valuable to minorities today? Critics contend that relations of recognition allow dominant groups to distort and essentialize the cultures of minorities, and to co-opt them through promises for modest reforms rather than deeper structural changes to political systems which are unjust. In contrast, struggles for self-determination promise freedom from the constraints one group imposes on another. But...

Oil and gas companies now recognize that industrial projects in the Canadian North can only succeed if Aboriginal communities are involved in decision-making processes. Where the Rivers Meet is an ethnographic account of Sahtu Dene involvement in the environmental assessment of the Mackenzie Gas Project, a massive pipeline that, if completed, would have unprecedented effects on Aboriginal communities. The book reveals that while there has been some progress in establishing avenues for Dene participation in decision making, the ultimate assessment of such projects remains rooted in...

In a brilliant comparative study of law and imperialism, Lisa Ford argues that modern settler sovereignty emerged when settlers in North America and Australia defined indigenous theft and violence as crime.

This occurred, not at the moment of settlement or federation, but in the second quarter of the nineteenth century when notions of statehood, sovereignty, empire, and civilization were in rapid, global flux. Ford traces the emergence of modern settler sovereignty in everyday contests between settlers and indigenous people in early national Georgia and the colony of New South Wales....