Aboriginal Law & Indigenous Laws

With contributions from Sámi and non-Sámi scholars from Arctic regions, this book provides new insights into our understanding of the significance and legal protection of sacred sites for Sámi of the Arctic. It examines the role of international human rights, environmental law, and longstanding customary law that uphold Arctic indigenous peoples' rights in conservation, and their associated management systems. It also demonstrates the complex relationships between indigenous knowledge, cultural/spiritual values and belief systems and nature conservation.

Indigenous Peoples in Canada are continuing to assert their right to self-determination in this era of reconciliation. While dozens of Indigenous communities have signed varying forms of self-government agreements with the federal government, Indigenous Nations still face many obstacles along the path to true self-determination. How do Indigenous Peoples move on from this defective system? Chief Wolf Collar identifies 17 issues that currently hinder Indigenous Nations along with potential solutions to overcome them.

An important contribution to evolving studies on conservation of sacred natural sites (SNS), the book elucidates the complexity of development scenarios within cultural landscapes related to the appropriation of religion, environmental change in indigenous territories, and new conservation management approaches. The book explores how these struggles for land, rights, and political power are embedded within physical landscapes, and how indigenous identity is reconstituted as globalizing forces simultaneously threaten and promote the notion of indigeneity.

This book brings together contributions from scientists, indigenous and non-indigenous researchers, local leaders, and members of the policy community that: document Indigenous/Aboriginal approaches to governance of land and protected areas at the local, regional and international level; explore new territorial governance models that are emerging as part of the Indigenous/Aboriginal governance within Arctic States, provinces, territories and regions; analyse the recognition or lack thereof concerning indigenous rights to self-determination in the Arctic; and examine how traditional decision-making arrangements and practices can be linked with governments in the process of good governance.

With over two decades experience with Indigenous organisations and communities, Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh's book offers the first systematic analysis of agreement outcomes and the factors that shape them, based on evaluative criteria developed especially for this study; on an analysis of 45 negotiations between Aboriginal peoples and mining companies across all of Australia's major resource-producing regions; and on detailed case studies of four negotiations in Australia and Canada.

This text traces the political journey toward self-governance taken by three predominantly Inuit regions over the past forty years: Nunavik in northern Québec, the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the western Northwest Territories, and Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador. Policymakers and politicians have responded by situating almost all these regions politically and institutionally within existing constituent units of the Canadian federation. Following the development trajectories of these three northern regions, the authors investigate their internal dynamics and their relationships with other levels of government in several key policy areas. This meticulous analysis offers new insight into the evolution of Indigenous self-government, as well as its consequences for Indigenous communities and for the future of Canadian federalism.

Reclaiming Indigenous Governance examines the efforts of Indigenous peoples in four important countries to reclaim their right to self-govern. Showcasing Native nations, this timely book presents diverse perspectives of both practitioners and researchers involved in Indigenous governance in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (the CANZUS states).