Challenges to the liberal democratic state: challenges from

within, Aboriginal Sovereignty

• Differing ideas of sovereignty
– Rule of law and sovereignty in the liberal democratic state
• Sovereign authority (crown land), exclusive property rights, market value
• individual rights
• division of powers: provincial authority over natural resources; federal authority over aboriginal affairs
• Section 25: Aboriginal rights

– Aboriginal sovereignty
• collective rights to land
• trusteeship: individual control and responsibility
• cultural, spiritual connection to the land
• sovereignty was never given up because it cannot be given up

• Differing ideas of justice

– Rule of law in liberal democratic state
• Rational, hierarchical, adversarial
• Focuses on individual perpetrator
• Retributive justice: focuses on punishment
– Aboriginal justice
• Non-hierarchical, relational, consensual
• Focuses on community, violated relationship
• Restorative justice: focuses on restoration and healing of relationships

• Demands for change in public policy

– Collective rights
– Control over resources
– Politically accountable to Aboriginal peoples, not parliament
– Institutional equivalent to provinces
– Powers independent of Canadian sovereignty

• Getting to a solution
– Attitudinal challenge on part of Canadian governments
• Accept aspirations
• Treat as equals, end paternalism
• Change Department of Indian and Northern Affairs
– Attitudinal challenges for non-Aboriginal Canadians
• Understand history of relationship
• Change in attitudes of racism and paternalism

• Attitudinal challenges for aboriginal peoples

– Accept responsibility to revive culture. Politics
– Bring about accountability, development

1
 – Must deal with rule of law, institutions of the state (Kymlicka’s constraint), find compromise
• Challenges in changing public policy: example of Northern Quebec Agreement of
1975

• The Charter of Rights and Freedoms

– Individual rights
– Multi-culturalism
• Other challenges
– Quebec’s rival claim: two founding peoples vs. First Peoples
– Ambiguities in claims
– No unified land base
– Status, non-status
– Urban and reserve populations
– Restoring women’s authority in politics

• Who will be the mediators?

– Word warriors
– Western academics
– Without deep history, shallow politics
• Challenges from Without
– Globalization and the state
– Public policy and globalization
• State cannot regulate, must accept global imperative of the market
• States have set policies for restructuring and so are the authors of it
– Will the state survive?