Aboriginal Law & Indigenous Laws

This book is the result of the years-long intellectual and personal journey of an Alberta jurist who went against the grain and actually learned about Canada's Indigenous people in order to become a public servant. "Probably my greatest claim to fame is that I changed my mind," writes John Reilly in this interrogation of the Canadian justice system. Building on his previous two books, Reilly acquaints the reader with the ironies and futilities of an approach to justice so adversarial and dysfunctional that it often increases crime rather than reducing it. He examines the radically different Indigenous approach to wrongdoing, which is restorative rather than retributive, founded on the premise that people are basically good and wrongdoing is the aberration, not that humans are essentially evil and have to be deterred by horrendous punishments. "My proposition is that the dominant Canadian society should scrap its criminal justice system and replace it with the gentler, and more effective, process used by the Indigenous people."

Kent Roach critically reconstructs the Gerald Stanley/Colten Boushie case to examine how it may be a miscarriage of justice. Roach provides historical, legal, political, and sociological background to the case including misunderstandings over crime when Treaty 6 was negotiated, the 1885 hanging of eight Indigenous men at Fort Battleford, the role of the RCMP, prior litigation over Indigenous underrepresentation on juries and the racially charged debate about defence of property and rural crime.

This text analyzes the consequences of assimilation policies, dishonoured treaty agreements, manipulative legislation, and systematic racism, arguing that the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian criminal justice system is not an Indian problem but a colonial one.

This is the first Canadian open access criminal law casebook, incorporating a wide range of traditional and audio/visual materials such as podcasts and documentary films. It is also notable for being the first to present Indigenous laws alongside Canadian criminal law. Cree law is featured throughout and the editors hope to include more Indigenous laws in future editions.

Funded by the Law Foundation of Ontario Access to Justice Fund, this informative report shares knowledge with respect to both the crisis of Indigenous over-incarceration in Saskatchewan and the justice system’s response. This report is a compilation of the findings from the ILC’s Gladue Awareness Project, which focused primarily on sharing information about the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in R v Gladue [1999] 2 CNLR 252. The Project reviewed the unique considerations involved in the sentencing of Indigenous people with all those who work in or are exposed to the criminal justice system in Saskatchewan. The Final Report2 summarizes the work completed through the Project and also provides a baseline for future research and education in this area. Ultimately, Gladue Awareness Project: Final Report aims to foster greater knowledge of the Gladue decision and its implementation in Saskatchewan and nationally.

In spite of the fact that the Gladue decision was released some 20 years ago, appellate courts still end up reviewing many lower court decisions for failure to properly apply section 718.2(e) and many issues with its implementation are still evolving, such as the role played by Indigenous peoples' "traditional conceptions of justice" and the amount of detail required of Gladue reports. The authors hope that this book will lead to courts better applying section 718.2(e), which should lead to less court time spent on appealing those lower court decisions and ultimately fairer sentences that are determined more efficiently.

Indigenous women continue to be overrepresented in Canadian prisons; research demonstrates how their overincarceration and often extensive experiences of victimization are interconnected with and through ongoing processes of colonization. This text navigates the issues in sentencing by examining related discourses in selected judgments from a review of 175 decisions.

This book explores the major inquiries and cases, Gladue Court and reports, sentencing circles, and a host of emerging issues.

In this book, leading researchers provide a broad overview of criminal justice issues that Indigenous people in Canada have faced historically and continue to face today. Both Indigenous and Canadian scholars situate current issues of justice for Indigenous peoples, broadly defined, within the context of historical realities and ongoing developments. By examining how justice is defined, both from within Indigenous communities and outside of them, this volume examines the force of Constitutional reform and subsequent case law on Indigenous rights historically and in contemporary contexts.

This book provides an account of the ongoing ties between the enduring trauma caused by the residential schools and Indigenous over-incarceration.

Canada's criminal justice system reinforces dominant relations of power and further entrenches the country in its colonial past. Through the mechanisms of surveillance, segregation, and containment, the criminal justice system ensures that Indigenous peoples remain in a state of economic deprivation, social isolation, and political subjection. By examining the ways in which the Canadian justice system continues to sanction overtly discriminatory and racist practices, the authors in this collection demonstrate clearly how historical patterns of privilege and domination are extended and reinforced.