Discrimination and Equality Law

"A teen's suspicious death, a shocking police cover-up and a mother's search for truth: this landmark investigation into justice and Canada's Indigenous people is re-issued and updated here for the first time in over a decade.

"In August 2016 Colten Boushie, a twenty-two-year-old Cree man from Red Pheasant First Nation, was fatally shot on a Saskatchewan farm by white farmer Gerald Stanley. In a trial that bitterly divided Canadians, Stanley was acquitted of both murder and manslaughter by a jury in Battleford with no visible Indigenous representation.

"Religious ceremonies were an inseparable part of Aboriginal traditional life, reinforcing social, economic, and political values. However, missionaries and government officials with ethnocentric attitudes of cultural superiority decreed that Native dances and ceremonies were immoral or un-Christian and an impediment to the integration of the Native population into Canadian society.

"Judgement at Stoney Creek has been released in a new edition of an aboriginal studies classic: an engrossing look at the investigation into the hit-and-run death of Coreen Thomas, a young Native woman in her ninth month of pregnancy, at the wheels of a car driven by a young white man in central BC.

"Although there was no Canadian law enforcement in the Eastern High Arctic when a crazed white fur trader was killed by an Inuk, authorities put Nuqallaq and two other Baffin Island Inuit on trial. The Canadian government saw Robert Janes's death as murder; the Inuit saw it as removing a threat from their society according to custom. Nuqallaq was sentenced to ten years hard labour in Stony Mountain Penitentiary where he contracted tuberculosis. He died shortly after being returned to Pond Inlet.

"Mixed-blood urban Native people in Canada are profoundly affected by federal legislation that divides Aboriginal people into different legal categories. In this pioneering book, Bonita Lawrence reveals the ways in which mixed-blood urban Native people understand their identities and struggle to survive in a world that, more often than not, fails to recognize them.

"In Canada, indigenous peoples and official-language minorities benefit from certain rights that are not available to the rest of the population, but exactly who can claim membership in these groups remains a controversial issue. Protecting a group's culture and resources is often seen to be at odds with the freedom of individuals to claim membership in that group.

"The struggle for voting rights was not limited to African Americans in the South. American Indians also faced discrimination at the polls and still do today. This book explores their fight for equal voting rights and carefully documents how non-Indian officials have tried to maintain dominance over Native peoples despite the rights they are guaranteed as American citizens.

"Author Pamela Palmater argues that the Indian Act's registration provisions will lead to the extinguishment of First Nations as legal and constitutional entities. The current status criteria contain descent-based rules akin to blood quantum that are particularly discriminatory against women and their descendants. Beginning with a historic overview of legislative enactments defining Indian status and their impact on First nations, the author examines contemporary court rulings dealing with Aboriginal rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in relation to Indigenous identity.

"Policing is a controversial subject, generating considerable debate. One issue of concern has been “racial profiling” by police, that is, the alleged practice of targeting individuals and groups on the basis of “race.” Racialized Policing argues that the debate has been limited by its individualized frame. As well, the concentration on police relations with people of colour means that Aboriginal people’s encounters with police receive far less scrutiny.