Treaty Law

"The heart of the traditional legal order of the Lake Babine Nation of north-central British Columbia is the grand ceremonial feast known as the balhats, or potlach. Misunderstood and widely condemned as a wasteful display of pride, the balhats ceremonies were outlawed by the Canadian government in the later nineteenth century. Throughout the years that followed, the Lake Babine Nation struggled to adapt their laws to a changing society while maintaining their cultural identity.

In recent decades, Indigenous peoples in the Yukon have signed land claim and self-government agreements that spell out the nature of government-to-government relations and grant individual First Nations significant, albeit limited, powers of governance over their peoples, lands, and resources. Those agreements, however, are predicated on the assumption that if First Nations are to qualify as governments at all, they must be fundamentally state-like, and they frame First Nation powers in the culturally contingent idiom of sovereignty.

"This important collection emerges from the growing academic and public policy interest in the area of Indigenous peoples, treaties and agreements—challenging readers to engage with the idea of treaty and agreement making in changing political and legal landscapes. Honour Among Nations? contains contributions from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors from Australia, New Zealand and North America including Marcia Langton, Gillian Triggs, Joe Williams, Paul Chartrand and Noel Pearson. It features a preface by Sir Anthony Mason.

"Permission to Develop is a unique, Canadian resource that legal practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers will find valuable in their work. It provides a framework for understanding the complex web of agreements, legislation, case-law, and regulations pertaining to Aboriginal rights and claims at both the federal and provincial/territorial levels. It also provides insight into the legal constraints that structure the economic development of First Nations in Canada.

"Canadians greeted the disruptions in Native-newcomer relations that occasionally erupted during the 1990s with incomprehension. Politicians, journalists, and ordinary citizens understood neither how nor why the crisis of the moment had arisen, much less how its deep historical roots made it resistant to solutions. J.R. Miller believes that it takes a historical understanding of public policy affecting Canadian Natives to truly comprehend the issues and their ramifications.

"For more than a century, government policy towards Aboriginal peoples in Canada was shaped by paternalistic attitudes and an ultimate goal of assimilation. Indeed, remnants of that thinking still linger today, more than thirty years after protests against the White Paper of 1969 led to reconsideration Canada's 'Indian' policy. In A Fatherly Eye, historian Robin Brownlie examines how paternalism and assimilation during the interwar period were made manifest in the 'field', far from the bureaucrats in Ottawa, but never free of their oppressive supervision.

"Based on a deposition signed by fourteen Chiefs of the Thompson River basin in the occasion of a visit to their lands by Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1910, Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout is a ritualized retelling of how the Native Peoples of British Columbia lost their fishing, hunting and grazing rights, their lands, and finally their language without their agreement or consent, and without any treaties ever having been signed.

"There is an unconscious racism at work in Canada—an ignorance of Aboriginal peoples and culture that breeds indifference to, and ambivalence about, Aboriginal poverty and ill health. Warry examines conservative arguments and mainstream views that promote assimilation and integration as the solution to Aboriginal marginalization. He argues that we must acknowledge our denial of colonialism in order to reach a deeper understanding of contemporary Aboriginal culture and identity, both on and off the reserve.

"Base closures, use of airspace for weapons testing and low-level flying, environmental awareness, and Aboriginal land claims have focused attention in recent years on the use of Native lands for military training. But is the military's interest in Aboriginal lands new? Battle Grounds analyzes a century of government-Aboriginal interaction and negotiation to explore how the Canadian military came to use Aboriginal lands for training.

"Power Struggles: Hydro Development and First Nations in Manitoba and Quebec examines the evolution of new agreements between First Nations and Inuit and the hydro corporations in Quebec and Manitoba, including the Wuskwatim Dam Project, Paix des Braves, and the Great Whale Project. In the 1970s, both provinces signed so-called “modern treaties” with First Nations for the development of large hydro projects in Aboriginal territories.