A shot in the dark - or rather, in the ether

[ciroccoj]

So, I've got my term paper for AbLaw due on Monday, and I'm kinda beating my head against the wall. Because my topic is "Sovereignty and Indigenous Peoples", and my outline is

1. Introduction
   
2. Dueling Meanings: Who is “Indigenous” and Who are “Peoples”
   
   1. As defined by International Law
      
   2. As defined by Indigneous People(s)
   
   
3. What is the meaning of “Peoples”?
   
4. What is the meaning of “Sovereignty”?
   
   
   1. International context
      
   2. Indigenous context
      
   3. Canadian context
   
   
5. Indigenous Sovereignty: Moving from Imagining to Actuality, Three Models
   
   1. Indigenous Sovereignty in the United States
      
   2. Indigenous Sovereignty in Australia
      
   3. Indigenous Sovereignty in Canada
   
   
6. Part V: Critical Analysis
   
   1. What does international law acknowledge/not acknowledge and what understandings must be addressed?
      
   2. How does domestic application accord with / not accord with domestic application of law in an Indigenous context?
      
   3. Can International Law address Indigenous sovereignty meaningfully? Can domestic law?
   4. Can Indigenous law? How?
   
   
7. Part VI: Conclusion

What's the problem here? I have 20-25 double-spaced pages to do this.

Doh.

So, here's a forlorn plea: any Australians or Americans (or Canadians) who have any kind of familiarity/knowledge/vague ideas on how your country deals with the issue of indigenous sovereignty... help? I've done lots of readings, but there are conflicting bits here and there and since I'm not familiar with the countries in question, it's hard to tell which articles/books are putting forward well-reasoned, realistic points of view, and which are spouting gibberish that would leave most Australians/Americans perplexed and wondering if they're talking about the same country. And since I've only got a couple pages to spend on each country, I don't want to fritter it away reproducing said gibberish.

Any ideas? Attitudes, articles, judgments, websites, general feel for indigenous sovereignty in your country? Anything that, if I don't write about it, would make an Australian/American slapping their forehead and saying How could you MISS that??!!

Comments

[leaper182.livejournal.com]

Indigenous sovereignty?

Um, is that like Puerto Rico sorta-semi-having sovereignty, even if they're a territory of the US?

*blinks rapidly and is very sorry that you got surprised with this*

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Indigenous sovereignty?

Um, is that like Puerto Rico sorta-semi-having sovereignty, even if they're a territory of the US?
Um... I guess it could be kinda the same thing... it's kinda complicated, because the definitions of "sovereignty" don't really translate well from one culture/language to another, so even if both sides are willing to cooperate and live up to their promises (which isn't usually a given with most governments) they get mucked up from the beginning over what it is that they're asking for and promising.

Like, one of the definitions of sovereignty, to us, is the whole idea of "this is our land, we do what we want with it, no other country can come in and tell us how to handle our own land." Which is incomprehensible to many indigenous groups, because the idea of owning land is bizarre to them - it's like saying that you "own" air, or love. And the idea of not being answearable to anybody over what you do to your land, even when it impacts on somebody else, is also incomprehensible to them. It's like somebody saying "I can burn my house down if I want, and my neighbour can't sue me if my fire makes his house catch fire too." B'zuh?

And then there's agreements like "tribal courts have jurisdiction over tribe members and crimes committed on tribal land". Then a tribe member commits a crime on-reserve, but the crime is a State crime, so the State police go into the reservation and search his house. The tribal court gets cheesed off. "Hey! Our guy, actions on our land, premises on our land - what part of 'tribal court has jurisdiction' don't you get?" they ask.

"The part where he hasn't committed break and enter into a fellow tribemember's house: he's running a tiny little unlicensed gambling hall and that's a State offence."

"But it's legal to run gambling halls on reserve. We have control over what's considered a crime and what's not."

"Not unless we say you do, and we say gambling is still illegal here."

"Then what's the point of 'giving' us control if you still get to veto our decisions?"

"That if we say it's OK for you to declare gambling legal, then you can do it. But we haven't said that yet. So it's not."

[nonniemous.livejournal.com]

Technically the reservations in the US are sovereign nations, with their own laws and police forces and so on. But the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has an incredible amount of power, too. So for issues within their own "borders" supposedly they're free to adjudicate as they see fit, but the greater truth is that they are governed by US cultural norms more than any other.

National Congress of American Indians (http://www.ncai.org/) is recommended by mininsinoo as the place to go to learn about US Native Americans issues. (She's Ojibway, I think. But I could be way off on that.)

[nonniemous.livejournal.com]

Argh, sorry, that's minisinoo. Urgh. But the website is still a place to start.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Thank you so much! This probably saved me hours of work, especially after I found the Tribal Sovereignty Protection Initiative part of their website and its supporting documents. Yaaaay!!

Thank you!

[sangerin.livejournal.com]

The cynical Australian position would be "sovereignty? What sovereignty?"

Having only a few pages to work with, it might be difficult to really cover things like the transition from Mabo to Wik to the Ten Point Plan, to the Yorta Yorta case which pretty much knocked the legs out from under what was left (and there are two more cases in there, and I'm ashamed that I can't remember the names of them, but they're the "bundle of rights" cases)...

If you've got a specific focus I could maybe help a little: recent developments like the mining agreements, or the Native Title Tribunal, things like that. But mostly it is summed up by "sovereignty? What sovereignty?"

[sangerin.livejournal.com]

For the critical analysis section on "Can International Law help", the Mabo case in Australia (Mabo No 2, in the High Court) used a lot of International Law, specifically the Western Sahara case. It's one of the right-wing criticisms of the case, that they went to International Law. But I honestly don't think that any sane person would try to say Mabo isn't good law any more. Of course, they've managed to undermine it all with legislation by now, anyway, so they don't need to say that it wasn't good law...

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

OMG, well, I think you've just saved me a couple days floudering research. I'd done a bit on Mabo and glanced at Wik, but now I've got oodles of material on both of them, the Native Title Act, the 1998 amendment (BTW, could Howard be more of a prick? Every time you point me in his direction I understand your... antipathy towards him a bit more), Yorta Yorta, plus I discovered a slew of nifty websites dealing with all the above.

Whew! You have no idea how incredible grateful I am! It feels like now I've got a base to write from.

[sangerin.livejournal.com]

Glad I could help!

Yes, Howard is a Grand Champion Git. I just hope we can boot him at the next election, which will be sometime after August this year (thank God)...

[bandgeek.livejournal.com]

calendae is, if I'm not mistaken, an Alaska Native, and she knows a lot about this sort of thing. I'm sure she'd be willing to talk to you. :)

[sidravitale]

Hey, I know I'm late to the game here, but you might want to check out my profs here at NESL, who write on the area:

http://www.nesl.edu/faculty/DUSSIAS.CFM
http://www.nesl.edu/faculty/MANUS.CFM

(includes list of works).

Prof. Manus published a really interesting overview of evolving law in Australia, Canada, and the US that you may find useful. (Indigenous Peoples' Environmental Rights: Evolving Common Law Perspectives in Canada, Australia and the United States, 33 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 1 (2006).)

Plus, they're working on a book together in this area, right this second. Prof. Dussias taught the Indigenous People's Rights course I took last year, and we surveyed Canadian, US, Aussie and NZ law. I just can't find the syllabus with all the readings. Oh, and here's why, there wasn't a single syllabus with all the readings on it. Here's some of the readings that I found:

Siegfried Wiessner, Rights and Status of Indigenous Peoples: A Global Comparative and International Legal Analysis, 12 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 57 (1999);

Alison M. Dussias, Geographically-Based and Membership-Based Views of Indian Tribal Sovereignty: The Supreme Court's Changing Vision, 55 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 1;

Mireya Maritza Pena Guzman, The Emerging System of International Protection of Indigenous Peoples' Rights, 9 St. Thomas L. Rev. 251 (1996);

Stuart Banner, Why Terra Nullius? Anthropology and Property Law in Early Australia, 23 Law & History Rev. 95 (2005).

Anyway, if you find yourself flailing and want to talk, either one of them will at least read an email from you, if you say "Sidra Vitale sent me". Or, email me (see my LJ profile), especially if you have difficulty laying hands on any of these articles.