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

[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)...