Redefining the Lexicon of Power, Envisioning the Future: The Atikamekw Nehirowisiw Nation and the Comprehensive Land Claims Negotiations (original) (raw)
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Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
2000
This book sets out to explore through its contributors the following questions: How can we render justice to indigenous people, and 'morally rehabilitate[ ]' (p. 3) those state projects that began in colonial occupation. The solution, the contributors argue, involves a re-creative act, one that not only overhauls the institutions and power structures of the dominant state and society, but also requires us to revise the way in which we think about political life. The volume brings together authors of different backgrounds, theoretical interests, and regional knowledge, and the contributors include both established figures and newer voices in the field. The editors juxtapose the experience and insights garnered from different regions F primarily Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States F and put these contributions within an overall frame that reflects the main markers of political legitimacy in the contemporary era F those of sovereignty, identity, and democracy. For many of the contributors, one of the major obstacles in addressing indigenous claims is a lack of imagination on the part of political practitioners who have become attached to limited conceptions of sovereignty, unity, nationality, jurisdiction, etc. Once we learn to be more flexible in our expectations, they argue, it will be possible for indigenous and non-indigenous peoples to live alongside one another in a legitimate and mutually rewarding way F or at least to live alongside one another in pursuit of these objectives. One of the narrow concepts we need to dispense with, for example, is the idea that there is a once-and-for-all solution to the question of indigenous status and rights. Instead, authors such as J.G.A. Pocock and Jeremy Webber recommend that we adjust to the idea that the terms of coexistence should be born of mutual negotiation and that they should be subject to ongoing renegotiation. At one point in the book, Pocock recalls joking that the indigenous and non-indigenous peoples of New Zealand could both consider themselves 'peoples of the ship'. It seems that the direction envisioned by Pocock and others in the volume would involve multinational or multicultural populations becoming 'peoples of the table' F committed to a life of perpetual negotiation concerning the relationship of the state and indigenous populations.
This research examines the conflict between provincial and Indigenous land use planning approaches in northern Ontario that involve the traditional territories of the Mushkegowuk Cree. Specifically, I examine how the politics of resurgence were evident in the Mushkegowuk Regional Land Use Planning initiative (2008-2015) in ways that challenged or broadened the conception of rights reconciliation envisioned in the Ontario government’s Far North Act (2010). Significant tensions often exist between the goals of state directed environmental governance and management initiatives, and the needs and aspirations of Indigenous communities. Therefore, Indigenous communities in some instances have unilaterally developed their own initiatives, shifting the praxis of rights from participation in the institutions of the state, towards autonomous nation-building exercises. The Mushkegowuk Land Use Planning initiative is representative of this shift in rights praxis where Indigenous driven environmental governance and management processes potentially provide for more robust foundations to realize community goals, and for negotiating with state governments and other interests. The dissertation explores how a politics of resurgence might transcend the sphere of culture to support self-determination in the governance and management of Indigenous homelands. It does so by first developing a theory of resurgent rights praxis by examining Indigenist thinking on the subjects of self-determination and cultural resurgence. Second, the institutional development of land use planning in northern Ontario is tracked, with specific attention to the Far North Initiative and development of the Far North Act. Third, the Mushkegowuk Regional Land Use Planning initiative is examined, focusing on the process captured by documentation and meeting minutes. Lastly, interviews with several people involved with planning at the Mushkegowuk Council and First Nations’ community levels are analyzed to interrogate the goals, the role of cultural and political traditions in planning, and how Omushkego relationships with their lands are defined and made relevant to land use planning in the Mushkegowuk initiative. The study reveals how the politics of resurgence characterized the approach and goals for Mushkegowuk planning. However, Ontario was instead determined to reconcile Indigenous rights under its Far North Community Based Planning. The Ontario government’s breaking from a partnership approach with First Nations in crafting the Far North Act, and intrusive control of the funding and the process for regional planning, served to undermine Mushkegowuk Council’s nation building aspirations. The involvement of the province at early stages of regional planning also made it difficult to conceptually root LUP in Omushkegowuk traditions, and to be clear about their vision for land governance, planning process, and expectations. Given the challenges, Mushkegowuk Council was not able to meet its goal of a complete regional land use plan during the time of the case study, and fell short of the goal of reconfiguring relations with the province.
The land of whose father? The politics of indigenous peoples' claims
2009
How do the weak win political victories? The dissertation answers the question of how, why and when very weak groups are able to win concessions from the strong. Specifically, the research offers an understanding of how indigenous peoples have been able to gain recognition and extension of their land rights. Through comparative case study analysis, the first section explores why the governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States have begun to recognize and return rights to land for the same indigenous populations whose rights have been denied or ignored for centuries. The second section further tests the proposed explanations in relation to specific claims outcomes and land transfers in 17 American Indian land claims cases in the United States. The research finds that normative changes following World War II led to new attention to the rights of minority groups. Indigenous peoples were redefined as deserving of limited rights and protections by the state. Economic, demographic, and political trends meant that indigenous peoples were no longer perceived as threats to the dominance of those in power or the population that supported them. Indigenous peoples were encouraged by the success of other minority groups in gaining recognition of their rights. A growth in cohesion among indigenous peoples (domestically and internationally) also fostered the pursuit of claims for land rights against governments. Those in power were willing to recalculate the costs and benefits of responding to indigenous peoples' demands in consideration of international pressure, domestic normative changes, and the position of the weak indigenous claimants. These findings apply to both the extension of rights and recognition at a broad national level as well as to the outcomes of claims for the return of specific territories. Truly weak groups can win when the strong feel the normative compulsion to offer concessions and when the concessions are considered affordable.
Anthropologica
This article discusses the successes of the Crees of Eeyou Istchee in the continual negotiation and renegotiation of their treaty relationship with the Quebec and Canadian governments but also queries how arrangements reached during more than four decades of treaty relationship, charting a course of proliferating entanglements with resource-extractive capitalism and state administration, both express and diverge from the “community of life” relational ontology of Cree activity on the land. While the Crees of Eeyou Istchee have achieved important successes in negotiating economic equity and territorial self-government and have not allowed themselves to be trapped in a once-and-for-all “settlement” of their rights, their negotiations with the state and with corporate entities reward certain Cree interests and positions over others. Compromises have occurred and development pathways chosen that increasingly challenge those who maintain as political priorities the defence of ecological ...
The Canadian Geographer , 2016
Self-determination for Indigenous peoples across the globe continues to be a controversial and widely debated topic. In Canada, the language of recognition has been increasingly utilized to frame Indigenous claims for self-determination resulting in policies and initiatives that have often been deemed progressive and empowering. In response, an increasing number of scholars and activists have argued that land claims, self-government models, and economic development initiatives implemented by the Crown under the guise of recognition continue to reproduce colonial Indigenous-state relations in Canada. In this article, I juxtaposition the spatiality of colonial governance reproduced through recognition-based strategies with the relational geographies lived through everyday practices of self-determination that are rooted in place-based Indigenous ontologies. Specifically, I examine Omushkegowuk Cree ontologies of self-determination expressed through the law of awawanenitakik and lived through the process of ceremonial regeneration. In doing so, I aim to cultivate further dialogue in geography on the diverse ways Indigenous peoples think about and live self-determination outside and/or alongside formal state and intergovernmental structures, while simultaneously complicating the way we think about place, land, and responsibility.
(Re)Negotiating Treaties: Navigating within and between settler-Anishinaabe legal landscapes
Canada Watch, 2023
is a PhD candidate in history at York University with research interests in Canadian cultural and sport history in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His dissertation focuses on how sport and fitness were used as tools by the Canadian federal government to unify the country. Aqeel Ihsan is a PhD candidate in history at York University, specializing in migration and food history. His research interests focus on the South Asian diaspora currently residing in Canada. 2 CANADA WATCH • SPRING 2023
2020
dpa.bellschool.anu.edu.au and goals. Using tools from different disciplines (public law, Indigenous rights law and different branches of political science), and drawing on various forms of evidence (the media, militant press, academic articles, videos, interviews, lectures and personal interviews with current pro-independence and pro-Indigenous rights leaders), this paper compares the strategies of Indigenous rights proponents as well as proindependence leaders in order to determine their levels of concordance and dissonance, and to consider areas where they can be complementary. These issues are specifically examined in the context of the period since the 1988 Matignon-Oudinot Agreements. The first part of the paper reviews the different visions and strategies undertaken in New Caledonia in efforts to reclaim sovereignty. The second part exposes the mistrust that can be witnessed between the actors involved. The third part explores possible points of convergence between the approac...
2015
This article explores the geopolitical importance of the word “land ” to the field of Indigenous studies. Rather than simply take the word “land ” as a given and natural element of the world around us, in this article I suggest a closer interrogation of the multiple social and geopolitical meanings that make land a key concept in indigenous political struggle. The processes of colonialism and neo-colonialism resulted in abstracting land as part of making nations that are recognized by the liberal settler nation-states. How have concepts of land changed in this process? How do we make Indigenous spaces that are not based on abstracting land and Indigenous bodies into state spaces, while maintaining political vitality? How are the lived realities of Indigenous peoples impacted by concepts of borders and territories that support the power of the nation-state? I draw on the narrative dimensions of land in the work of Indigenous writers in order to intercede in limiting the meanings of l...