Aboriginal Law and Indigenous Laws

The only publication which addresses procedural issues of Aboriginal and treaty rights litigation. A necessity for anyone litigating Aboriginal cases, Aboriginal & Treaty Rights Practice consolidates, in one place, Canadian Aboriginal and treaty rights procedural and evidentiary law. It contains essential information necessary for identifying the procedural and evidentiary issues unique to this subject area, and reviews how Canadian courts have applied the law. Also available online through ProView.

Written by a leading Aboriginal law practitioner and acclaimed author, Aboriginal Law, Fifth Edition, is a comprehensive, authoritative resource that highlights the most important aspects of Canadian law, its impact on Aboriginal people, and their relationship with the wider Canadian society.

This book is a practical, unique reference work to the law as it affects Aboriginal peoples and organizations, for both lawyers and non-lawyers. Every chapter contains a brief summary of key issues to remember, as well as a bibliography of secondary sources for further research. It also features an in-depth analysis of a number of legal and policy issues affecting Aboriginal people.

This seminal text is a comprehensive summation of the entire field of Aboriginal law. It offers a wide-ranging breadth of coverage across every subject area relevant to the First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples of Canada, including Aboriginal title and rights, treaty rights, First Nations governance and land management, criminal and family law matters, and the Indian Act. This book is a very reliable source for practitioners working in the subject areas related to Indigenous laws. It comprises 22 chapters that are categorized into two volumes. Jack Woodward, Q.C., an active practitioner and former law professor, adds authoritative commentary which is frequently relied upon by Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada. Aboriginal law is a rapidly evolving field and therefore, the book is updated six times per year. It is a trusted key resource for every law library or law office dealing with issues in this area of law. Also available online.

With the Supreme Court of Canada's 1997 seminal decision in Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, the complexity, nature and substance of Canadian jurisprudence on Aboriginal law continues to rapidly evolve. This text analyzes the major legal developments since Delgamuukw and provides practical guidance for those who work in this quickly changing legal landscape. Under the editorial direction of Maria Morellato, Q.C., leading practitioners and academics from across Canada provide insightful and authoritative comment in four critical areas: Foundational Legal Principles and Outstanding Issues: The Path Before Us; Addressing Aboriginal and Métis Rights on the Ground: Legal and Pragmatic Considerations; Aboriginal Governance: Legal Rights; and Customary Law: Treaty Making and Specific Claims.

This comprehensive casebook surveys the most important issues in Canadian law concerning Aboriginal peoples, contextualizing them within their larger cultural, political, and sociological framework. Extensively updated, this edition covers new pertinent Aboriginal case law from the Supreme Court of Canada, information about the development and passsage of the Indigenous Languages Act proposed by the federal Trudeau government, the change in judical approach towards Aboriginal treaty interpretation, and a section about spirituality and development of the duty to consult and accommodate Aboriginal rights. This edition also contains questions relating to the material to encourage academic discourse and engage the reader.

Can Canada claim to be a just society for Indigenous peoples? To answer the question, and as part of the process of reconciliation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission urged a better understanding of Aboriginal law for all Canadians. Aboriginal Peoples and the Law responds to that call, introducing readers with or without a legal background to modern Aboriginal law and outlining significant cases and decisions in straightforward, non-technical language. Jim Reynolds provides the historical context needed to understand relations between Indigenous peoples and settlers and explains key topics such as sovereignty, fiduciary duties, the honour of the Crown, Aboriginal rights and title, treaties, the duty to consult, and Indigenous law. He also discusses key international developments such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He concludes by considering major questions that need to be resolved, including balancing Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal rights and interests and the benefits and drawbacks of using either litigation or negotiation to resolve Indigenous issues.

Written by experienced Aboriginal law practitioners at First Peoples Law. Shin Imai, Osgoode Hall Law School, is the founding author. It features the Indian Act and selected regulations, accompanied by hundreds of annotations and section-by-section summaries of all significant court decisions interpreting or applying the legislation. It also includes annotations of case law under section 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867 (division of powers), sections 2, 15 and 25 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (fundamental freedoms, equality rights and Aboriginal rights and freedoms not affected by the Charter), and section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 (Aboriginal and Treaty rights). It also includes essays on the top issues in Indigenous rights law in 2021.

For centuries, Canadian sovereignty has existed uneasily alongside forms of Indigenous legal and political authority. Canadian Law and Indigenous Self-Determination demonstrates how, over the last few decades, Canadian law has attempted to remove Indigenous sovereignty from the Canadian legal and social landscape. Adopting a naturalist analysis, Gordon Christie responds to questions about how to theorize this legal phenomenon, and how the study of law should accommodate the presence of diverse perspectives. Exploring the socially-constructed nature of Canadian law, Christie reveals how legal meaning, understood to be the outcome of a specific society, is being reworked to devalue the capacities of Indigenous societies. Addressing liberal positivism and critical postcolonial theory, Canadian Law and Indigenous Self-Determination considers the way in which Canadian jurists, working within a world circumscribed by liberal thought, have deployed the law in such a way as to attempt to remove Indigenous meaning-generating capacity.

In recent years numerous important books have appeared which deal with the history of aboriginal populations in early Canada. Although these studies add enormously to our understanding of the role played by native peoples in the British North American and Canadian communities, there has been to date no significant study of the dynamic and at times tragic relationship between Euro-Canadian law and the legal traditions of aboriginal populations. Professor Sidney L. Harring now addresses that lacuna in this sweeping re-investigation of Canadian legal history. In the nineteenth century, many Canadians commented proudly on what they regarded as this country’s liberal treatment of Indians. In challenging that conception, Professor Harring draws on scores of nineteenth-century legal cases. His study demonstrates that colonial and early Canadian judges were sublimely ignorant of British policy concerning Indians and their lands and arrogantly indifferent to native rights and traditions. A great strength of the study is its account of the remarkable tenacity of First Nations in continuing their own legal traditions despite obstruction by the settler society that came to dominate them. Today legal decisions respecting native rights and land claims reverberate throughout our society, affecting the rights and obligations of all Canadians. This study helps us to understand and come to terms with how we arrived at our present condition. It leaves no doubt that Canadian native legal culture requires further study by scholars and that aboriginal history demands more serious attention by courts in rendering decisions.