Aboriginal Law & Indigenous Laws

Allotment Stories collects more than two dozen chronicles of white imperialism and Indigenous resistance. Ranging from the historical to the contemporary and grappling with Indigenous land struggles around the globe, these narratives showcase both scholarly and creative forms of expression, constructing a multifaceted book of diverse perspectives that will inform readers while provoking them toward further research into Indigenous resilience.

This book offers a comparative study of the management of legal pluralism. The authors describe and analyse the way state and non-state legal systems acknowledge legal pluralism - defined as the coexistence of a state and non-state legal systems in the same space in respect of the same subject matter for the same population - and determine its consequences for their own purposes. The book sheds light on the management processes deployed by legal systems in Africa, Canada, Central Europe and the South Pacific, the multitudinous factors circumscribing the action of systems and individuals with respect to legal pluralism, and the effects of management strategies and processes on systems as well as on individuals. The book offers fresh practical and analytical insight on applied legal pluralism, a fast-growing field of scholarship and professional practice. Drawing from a wealth of original empirical data collected in several countries by a multilingual and multidisciplinary team, it provides a thorough account of the intricate patterns of state and non-state practices with respect to legal pluralism. As the book's non-prescriptive approach helps to uncover and evaluate several biases or assumptions on the part of policy makers, scholars and development agencies regarding the nature and the consequences of legal pluralism, it will appeal to a wide range of scholars and practitioners in law, development studies, political science and social sciences

A Common Hunger is a comparative work on the history of indigenous land rights in Canada and post-apartheid South Africa. By reclaiming rights to the land and an equitable share in the wealth-producing resources they contain, the first peoples of Canada and South Africa are taking important steps to confront the legacies of poverty that characterize many of their communities. A Common Hunger provides historical context to the current land claim process in these two former British colonies and examines the efforts of governments and the courts to ensure that justice is done.

The book considers Australian First Nations constitutionalism by drawing on the chthonic constitutional traditions of three distinct Australian First Nations legal orders: the Warlpiri, Yolngu, and Pintupi legal orders, in the endeavour of identifying, via a comparative analysis, a core of similarities to be drawn upon and articulate an emergent legal theory common to the three legal orders. In so doing, the book expounds how Australian First Nations constitutionalism unfolds into holistic orders of spiritual, political, and legal authority that are explainable in terms of legal theory.

This book provides the first comprehensive study of Indigenous constitutional recognition in Australia. It puts the idea of constitutional recognition into broader historical and theoretical perspective. After telling a wide-ranging history of Australian debates on Indigenous recognition, the book develops a theoretical account that sees constitutional recognition in terms of Indigenous peoples' struggles to have their identities respected within the settler constitutional order. When studied through Indigenous peoples' historical and contemporary struggles for recognition as citizens and peoples, constitutional recognition emerges not as a postcolonial endpoint but as an ongoing process of renegotiating the basic Indigenous - settler political relationship. With first peoples continuing to press for the recognition of their sovereignty and peoplehood, the future of their relationship with the Australian state is best captured in the ideal of federalism.

"The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi emphasises that the original drafting of the Treaty by British officials in 1840 cannot be separated from the wider circumstances of that time. This context encompasses the history of British dealings with indigenous peoples throughout the Empire and the currents of thought in the mid-nineteenth century, a period of rapid change in society and knowledge. It also includes the backgrounds and motivations of those primarily responsible for framing the Treaty: British resident James Busby, Consul and future Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson, and Colonial Office official James Stephen.Through groundbreaking scholarship, Fletcher concludes that the Māori and English texts of the Treaty reconcile, and that those who framed the English text intended Māori to have continuing rights to self-government (rangatiratanga) and ownership of their lands. This original understanding of the Treaty, however, was then lost in the face of powerful forces in the British Empire post-1840, as hostility towards indigenous peoples grew alongside increased intolerance of plural systems of government."

This text strives to recount and understand Indigenous Law, as set within a remote community in northern Australia. It pays close attention to the realpolitik and high-level political functioning of Indigenous Laws, which inspires a discussion of how this Law models the relational, influences governance and emplaces people in an ordered kincentric lifeworld. The book argues that Indigenous Law can be examined for the ways in which it is a deliberate, stabilizing and powerful force to maintain communal order in relation to Country, a counter framing to popular and ‘soft law or soft power asset’ visions of such Laws often held in the national and international imaginary.

Indigenous Water Rights in Law and Regulation responds to an unresolved question in legal scholarship: how are (or how might be) indigenous peoples' rights included in contemporary regulatory regimes for water. This book considers that question in the context of two key trajectories of comparative water law and policy. First, the tendency to 'commoditise' the natural environment and use private property rights and market mechanisms in water regulation. Second, the tendency of domestic and international courts and legislatures to devise new legal mechanisms for the management and governance of water resources, in particular 'legal person' models. This book adopts a comparative research method to explore opportunities for accommodating indigenous peoples' rights in contemporary water regulation, with country studies in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Chile and Colombia, providing much needed attention to the role of rights and regulation in determining indigenous access to, and involvement with, water in comparative law.

This collection celebrates the breadth and depth of how Indigenous writers are shaping the decolonizing research world today. With contributions from Indigenous female researchers, this collection offers the much needed academic space to distinguish methodological approaches, and overcome the novelty confines of being marginal voices.

This book compares the land and forest rights of Amazonian indigenous peoples from Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, and analyses these rights in the context of international law, property law theory, and forest and soil sciences. Within this scope and against the historical background, the recent interrelations between the Amazonian indigenous peoples' land, forest and community forest management rights and their importance for the self-determination of indigenous peoples in the Amazonian region are examined.

The Land is the Source of Law brings an inter-jurisdictional dimension to the field of Indigenous jurisprudence: comparing Indigenous legal regimes in New Zealand, the USA and Australia, it offers a 'dialogical encounter with an Indigenous jurisprudence' in which individuals are characterised by their rights and responsibilities into the Land. Though a relatively "new" field, indigenous jurisprudence is the product of the oldest continuous legal system in the world. Utilising a range of texts - films, novels, poetry, as well as "law stories" CF Black blends legality and narrative in order to redefine jurisprudentia in indigenous terms.

This comprehensive and authoritative work provides the reader with an understanding of both the current operation of native title in Australia, and its historical and political background and development. It covers the nature of the concept, and explains the proof, content and extinguishment of native title. It examines the validation of past grants and acts, and the limited degree of protection from future acts; compensation for native title; and the application of native title principles to resource development and traditional pursuits. It considers both the common law and the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth).

This second edition takes a fresh look at modern treaty-making between Indigenous peoples and governments in Australia. Exploring the why, where, and how of treaty, it concludes by offering seven strategies for achieving treaty. In Australia, key events include the emergence of State and Territory driven treaty processes, the negotiation and finalisation of the Noongar Settlement, and the delivery of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. International and comparative standards also continue to evolve. In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, while Canada and New Zealand continue to negotiate a range of claims involving land and other points of difference. Treaty presents readers with everything they need to know about treaties, from the basic question of “what is a treaty?” to “how have other countries negotiated treaties?”. It challenges the reader to question whether Australia should go down the treaty path; a path that could lead to political settlements that empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and address the injustices at the heart of the Australian state.