Aboriginal Law & Indigenous Laws

Since its creation in 1876, the Indian Act has shaped, controlled, and constrained the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Peoples, and is at the root of many enduring stereotypes. Joseph explains how Indigenous Peoples can step out from under the Indian Act and return to self-government, self-determination, and self-reliance. He dissects the complex issues around truth and reconciliation, and clearly demonstrates why learning about the Indian Act's cruel, enduring legacy is essential for the country to move toward true reconciliation.

An indigenized, de-colonized world view for Indigenous leaders and academics seeking a path to reconciliation. Indigenization within the academy and the idea of truth and reconciliation within Canada have been seen as the remedy to correct the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Canadian society. While honourable, these actions are difficult to achieve given the Western nature of institutions in Canada and the collective memory of its citizens, and the burden of proof has always been the responsibility of Anishinabeg. Authors makwa ogimaa (Jerry Fontaine) and ka-pi-ta-aht (Don McCaskill) tell their di-bah-ji-mo-wi-nan (personal stories) to understand the cultural, political, social, and academic events in the past fifty years of Ojibway-Anishinabe resistance in Canada. They suggest that Ojibway-Anishinabe i-zhi-gay-win zhigo kayn-dah-so-win (Anishinabe ways of doing and knowing) can provide an alternative way of living sustainably in the world. This distinctive world view as well as values, language, and ceremonial practices can provide an alternative to Western political and academic institutions and peel away the layers of colonialism, violence, and injustice, speaking truth and leading to true reconciliation

As the largest class action suit in Canadian history, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (2007-2015) had a great impact on the lives of Aboriginal survivors across Canada. In a rare account exploring survivor perspectives, Anne-Marie Reynaud considers the settlement's reconciliatory aspiration in conjunction with the local reality for the Mitchikanibikok Inik First Nations in Quebec. Drawing from anthropological fieldwork, this carefully crafted book weaves survivor experiences of the financial compensations and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission together with current theorizing on emotions, memory, trauma, and transitional justice.

As the settler state of Canada expanded into Indigenous lands, two traditions clashed in a bruising series of asymmetrical encounters over land use and ownership. This meticulously researched book is connected to larger issues of human relations with environments, communal and individual ways of relating to land, legal pluralism, historical racism and inequality, and Indigenous resurgence. Also available in print.

When it comes to federal Indigenous policy, ordinary Indigenous people in Canada are voiceless and powerless. In Let the People Speak: Oppression in a time of reconciliation, author and journalist Sheilla Jones raises an important question: are the well-documented social inequities in Indigenous communities the symptoms of this long-standing, institutionalized powerlessness? Jones argues that there can be meaningful reconciliation only when ordinary Indigenous Canadians are finally empowered to make their voices heard, and ordinary non-Indigenous Canadians can join with them to advance a shared future.

From the opening chapter, this edited collection contextualizes why Canada is on a reconciliation journey, and how that journey is far from over. It is a multi-disciplinary treatise on decolonization, peacebuilding, and conflict transformation. Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and influencers from across Canada describe positive conflict transformation through various lenses, including education, economics, business, land sharing, and justice reform. The authors describe their personal and professional journeys, offering insights and research into how individuals and institutions are responding to reconciliation.

This volume considers processes of political reconciliation, appraising the results of South Africa's Commission, of the recently concluded Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and of the on-going process of the Waitangi Tribunal of Aotearoa New Zealand. Contributors discuss the separate politics of Indigenous resurgence, linguistic justice, environmental justice and law. Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices from four regions of the world are represented in this critical assessment of the prospects for political reconciliation, for transitional justice and for alternative, nascent conceptions of just politics.

The horrors of the Indian Residential Schools are by now well-known historical facts. The history of violence and the struggles of survivors for redress resulted in a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which chronicled the harms inflicted by the residential schools and explored ways to address the social fallouts that have been left behind. One of those fallouts is the crisis of Indigenous over-incarceration. This book provides an account of the ongoing ties between the enduring traumas caused by the residential schools and Indigenous over-incarceration.

In this book Arthur Manuel and Grand Chief Ronald Derrickson challenge virtually everything that non-Indigenous Canadians believe about their relationship with Indigenous Peoples and the steps that are needed to place this relationship on a healthy and honourable footing. Manuel and Derrickson offer an illuminating vision of what Canada and Canadians need for true reconciliation. In this book, readers will recognize their profound understanding of the country, of its past, present, and potential future.

Providing a clear, critical analysis of the history of Aboriginal law, A Reconciliation without Recollection? exposes the limitations of the current constitutional framework of reconciliation by following the lines of descent underlying the relationship between Crown and Aboriginal sovereignty.

This edited collection features essays by Indigenous legal academics from across Canada about renewing relationships between Indigenous peoples and Canada. It builds on existing literature on Indigenous-Crown relationships that addresses issues such as the inclusion of Indigenous laws, self-determination, and the role of the constitution. The chapters explore questions such as: What does a renewed relationship look like in modern Canadian society? What is the role of Indigenous law in renewing the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada? What does the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples contribute to an understanding of a renewed relationship? How do treaties define Indigenous-Crown relationships? What shifts must occur within Canadian institutions to move away from the current colonial relationship?

The two major schools of thought in Indigenous-Settler relations are resurgence and reconciliation. Critically and constructively analyzing these two schools from a wide variety of perspectives and lived experiences, this volume connects both discourses to the ecosystem dynamics that animate the living earth. Resurgence and Reconciliation is multi-disciplinary, blending law, political science, political economy, women's studies, ecology, history, anthropology, sustainability, and climate change. This timely volume shows how the complexities and interconnections of resurgence and reconciliation and the living earth are often overlooked in contemporary discourse and debate.

Rhetoric and Settler Inertia: Strategies of Canadian Decolonization explores how communication might accelerate decolonial actions in Canada. Tracing a middle path between essential Indigenous-focused calls for resurgence, and idealistic appeals to settler conscience, Patrick Belanger identifies communication forms that can generate settler support for decolonization. Accenting the importance of both Indigenous and settler audiences, this book suggests the promise of decolonial rhetoric framed in the language of mutual benefit.

True Reconciliation is broken down into three core practices—Learn, Understand, and Act—that can be applied by individuals, communities, organizations, and governments. They are based on the historical and contemporary experience of Indigenous peoples in their relentless efforts to effect transformative change and decolonization; and deep understanding and expertise about what has been effective in the past, what we are doing right, and wrong, today, and what our collective future requires. True Reconciliation, ultimately, is about building transformed patterns of just and harmonious relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples at all levels of society.

In this updated edition, Niezen discusses the Final Report and Calls to Action bringing the book up to date and making it a valuable text for teaching about transitional justice, colonialism and redress, public anthropology, and human rights. Thoughtful, provocative, and uncompromising in the need to tell the "truth" as he sees it, Niezen offers an important contribution to understanding truth and reconciliation processes in general, and the Canadian experience in particular.

Charles and Rah aim to recover a common memory and shared understanding of where we have been and where we are going within this text. As other nations have instituted truth and reconciliation commissions, the authors call for a truth-telling that will expose past injustices and open the door to conciliation and true community.

Valley of the Birdtail is about how two communities became separate and unequal--and what it means for the rest of us. In Rossburn, once settled by Ukrainian immigrants who fled poverty and persecution, family income is near the national average and more than a third of adults have graduated from university. In Waywayseecappo, the average family lives below the national poverty line and less than a third of adults have graduated from high school, with many haunted by their time in residential schools. This book follows multiple generations of two families, one white and one Indigenous, and weaves their lives into the larger story of Canada.

Chief Robert Joseph, globally recognized peacebuilder and Hereditary Chief of the Gwawaenuk People, traces his journey from his childhood surviving residential school to his present-day role as a leader who inspires individual hope, collective change, and global transformation. Reconciliation represents a long way forward, but it is a pathway toward our higher humanity, our highest selves, and an understanding that everybody matters. As we learn about, honour, and respect the truth of the stories we tell, we can also discover how to dismantle the walls of discrimination, hatred, and racism in our society. As one of the remaining first-language speakers of Kwak'wala, his wisdom is grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing while making space for something bigger and better for all of us.