Bearing Witness: Creating the Conditions of Justice for First Nations Children

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-133
Author(s):  
Rachel Ariss
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Nations Child ◽  
The Common ◽  
Bear Witness

AbstractIn 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found that Canada’s management of child welfare discriminates against First Nations children. The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, one of the complainants, maintains a web-based campaign called “I Am A Witness,” providing details on the hearings and legal materials and asking visitors to act towards ending discrimination against First Nations children. What does it mean to bear witness to such discrimination? The concept of “witnessing” circulates through Indigenous oral traditions, communication and media theories, and the common law. This article explores the I Am A Witness campaign, arguing that as it evokes various theories of witnessing and builds public awareness of legal processes, it shifts spaces of and perspectives on legality beyond Western categories, creating a public that is enabled to bear witness to, and respond to, ongoing injustices against Indigenous peoples.

scholarly journals Jordan’s Principle: Reconciliation and the First Nations Child

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Colleen Sheppard
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Residential Schools ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Child Welfare Services ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Nations Child ◽  
The Individual

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was mandated to “document the individual and collective harms” of residential schools and to “guide and inspire a process of truth and healing, leading toward reconciliation.”  The stories of survivors revealed the intergenerational and egregious harms of taking children from their families and communities. In seeking to redress the legacy of the residential schools era, the TRC Calls to Action include greater recognition of self-governance of Indigenous Peoples, as well as numerous recommendations for equitable funding of health, educational, and child welfare services.

Part I Foundations, Ch.2 Settlement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Waugh John
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
High Court ◽  
Native Title ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Indigenous Land

This chapter explores the law of Australian colonization and its relationship with the laws of Australia's Indigenous peoples. A line of legal continuity links the Australian Constitution to the imposition of British law made during the colonization of Australia and to the decisions of colonial courts that treated the Australian colonies as colonies of settlement. Those decisions, after some initial doubts, displaced the diverse and intricate laws of Australia’s Indigenous peoples, who have occupied the continent for tens of thousands of years. Only in relation to native title to land have later courts made a major reassessment of the status of Indigenous laws. There, the High Court has challenged the factual assumptions of earlier decisions and found accommodation for Indigenous land ownership within the common law, but left the legal framework of colonization otherwise intact.

Freedom of Testation and Family Claims in Canada

2020 ◽  
pp. 507-533
Author(s):  
Alexandra Popovici ◽  
Lionel Smith
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Deceased Person ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Law Of Succession

The province of Quebec has a civilian law of succession, while the common law governs in the other provinces and in the territories. At the dawn of the twentieth century, an unbridled freedom of testation prevailed in most of Canada. In the decades that followed, the law evolved to temper this principle in favour of protecting the family of a deceased person, so that obligations of support did not simply vanish upon death. The shape and structure of provision for the family is, however, diverse across the country. There is a great deal of variation even among the statutory regimes in the common law provinces, under which courts have the discretion to grant an allowance; some require a claimant to show need, an inter vivos obligation of support, or both, while others allow claims even by adult independent children. In relation to those members of First Nations to whom it applies, federal law grants a wide power to intervene in the distribution of an estate, in this case not to the courts but to the relevant minister. Quebec law, by contrast, aims to convert legal obligations of support that existed at the moment of death into claims against the estate, rejecting any wide discretion and preserving freedom of testation as much as possible. In a broadly comparative context, the unexpected conclusion is that in Canada, it is not the common law but the civil law of Quebec that offers the most freedom to a testator.

scholarly journals Historical Indigenous Peoples' Land Claims: A Comparative and International Approach to the Common Law Doctrine on Indigenous Title

2007 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 583-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérémie Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Potential Model ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
Patterns Of Use ◽  
The Common

AbstractWithin common law systems a body of jurisprudence has developed according to which indigenous peoples' land rights have been recognized based upon historical patterns of use and occupancy and corresponding traditional land tenure. Looking at the emerging common law doctrine on aboriginal or native title, this article examines how legal institutions are building a theory on historical land claims through the recognition of indigenous laws deriving from prior occupation. The article analyses how the common law doctrine builds a bridge between past events and contemporary land claims. The aim of this article is to examine to what extent the common law doctrine proposes a potential model for the development of a legal theory on the issue of indigenous peoples' historical land claims. In doing so the article analyses how the common law doctrine compares with international law when dealing with historical arguments by focusing on issues of intertemporal law and extinguishment.

Australian Legal Histories in Context

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 607-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Hunter
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Twentieth Anniversary ◽  
And Gender

Australian legal history has only emerged as a field of scholarship in its own right in the last twenty years. Prior to that, Australian legal history tended to be written and taught as a footnote to the great sweep of English legal history—the history of the king's courts, the common law and equity, and major nineteenth-century statutory reforms, with a chapter at the end about the classification of the Australian colonies as “settled” colonies, and the consequent reception of English law. This year (2002) sees the twentieth anniversary of Alex Castles's groundbreaking work An Australian Legal History, the first book to take Australian laws and legal institutions as its entire subject matter. It is also the twentieth anniversary of the first Australian Law and History Conference. The years since 1982 have seen the advent of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society, increasing attendances at its annual conferences, the establishment of the Australian Journal of Legal History, the completion of a number of Ph.D.theses in the field, and the publication of further influential texts and edited collections by (among others) the authors of the two articles featured in this forum. Two of the most productive strands in this developing literature have concerned the history of colonization and the dispossession of indigenous peoples and histories of women and gender relations in law, although these are by no means that only areas that have been explored. Running through much of this literature, too, are themes of imperial-colonial relations, and relations between law and colonial economies and societies, particularly prior to federation in 1901.

scholarly journals Toward a Bijural Interpretation of the Principle of Respect in Aboriginal Law

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 939-977
Author(s):  
Kirsten Manley-Casimir
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Space ◽  
The Common ◽  
Aboriginal Law

Aboriginal law disputes are disputes that arise in the spaces between Indigenous and non-Indigenous societies. To date, the Supreme Court of Canada has resolved Aboriginal law disputes under section 35 by relying heavily on the common law to the exclusion of Indigenous legal traditions and principles. In this article, the author argues that applying a bijural interpretation of the principle of respect provides a promising pathway forward in resolving Aboriginal law disputes in a way that supports the grand purpose of section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982—reconciliation. The author discusses the principle of respect by considering both non-Indigenous and Indigenous theories to propose a robust conception of respect to guide Aboriginal law jurisprudence. She then suggests three ways to implement the principle of respect in the intercultural relationship: (1) making interdependence and relationships primary; (2) rejecting colonial attitudes and stereotypes of Indigenous peoples; and (3) creating political and legal space for the expression and flourishing of cultural difference.

A Precarious Confluence: Neoliberalism, Race, and Water Insecurity

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mascarenhas
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
First Century ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Water Insecurity ◽  
The Core ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Racial Projects ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Cities

Three very different field sites—First Nations communities in Canada, water charities in the Global South, and the US cities of Flint and Detroit, Michigan—point to the increasing precariousness of water access for historically marginalized groups, including Indigenous peoples, African Americans, and people of color around the globe. This multi-sited ethnography underscores a common theme: power and racism lie deep in the core of today’s global water crisis. These cases reveal the concrete mechanisms, strategies, and interconnections that are galvanized by the economic, political, and racial projects of neoliberalism. In this sense neoliberalism is not only downsizing democracy but also creating both the material and ideological forces for a new form of discrimination in the provision of drinking water around the globe. These cases suggest that contemporary notions of environmental and social justice will largely hinge on how we come to think about water in the twenty-first century.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document