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

[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."