Aboriginal Law Snippet

In his text, Walker alludes to the "fact" that race relations in Canada have not created many stories to which historians can listen... This ... made me think about the role of historians, anthropologists, and legal scholars in interpreting the stories of those impacted by the law. Maybe we, as impacted peope, do not have to tell the stories in a format that they can hear - maybe they need to learn other ways of listening. Those stories certainly exist. It is knowing how to respectfully listen and discuss that is required to travel the terrain of oral stoytelling and the literature of people traditionally exclude from historians' telling of history.

- Tracey Lindberg*, Essential Readings on Race and Law


* incidentally, that's my prof for this course

quoting quoting quoting, keep those wagons quoting, rawhide...

The message that television sends then is that the problem of racism lies with black people - that it exists in our minds and imaginations. On a recent episode of Law & Order, a white lawyer directs anger at a black woman and tells her, "If you want to see the cause of racism, look in the mirror."

- bell hooks, Killing Rage

Name that ep, people. You know you want to :)

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It is not as though the Treaty 8 First Nations did not pay dearly for their entitlement to honourable conduct on the part of the Crown; surrender of the aboriginal interest in an area larger than France is a hefty purchase price.

...

The Crown's second broad answer to the Mikisew claim is that whatever had to be done was done in 1899. The Minister contends:

While the government should consider the impact on the treaty right, there is no duty to accommodate in this context. The treaty itself constitutes the accommodation of the aboriginal interest; taking up lands, as defined above, leaves intact the essential ability of the Indians to continue to hunt, fish and trap. As long as that promise is honoured, the treaty is not breached and no separate duty to accommodate arises. [Emphasis added.]

This is not correct. Consultation that excludes from the outset any form of accommodation would be meaningless. The contemplated process is not simply one of giving the Mikisew an opportunity to blow off steam before the Minister proceeds to do what she intended to do all along.

- Mikisew Cree First Nation v. Canada (Minister of Canadian Heritage)[2005] S.C.J. No. 71

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I'll probably post some quotes from another case I just read... later. When I'm feeling slightly less horrified/nauseated about it. Like, maybe next year.