Creating Indigenous Property

Creating Indigenous Property identifies how contemporary Indigenous conceptions of property are rooted in and informed by their societally specific norms, meanings, and ethics.

While colonial imposition of the Canadian legal order has undermined Indigenous law, creating gaps and sometimes distortions, Indigenous peoples have taken up the challenge of rebuilding their laws, governance, and economies. Indigenous conceptions of land and property are central to this project. Creating Indigenous Property identifies how contemporary Indigenous conceptions of property are rooted in and informed by their societally specific norms, meanings, and ethics. Through detailed analysis, the authors illustrate that unexamined and unresolved contradictions between the historic and the present have created powerful competing versions of Indigenous law, legal authorities, and practices that reverberate through Indigenous communities. They have identified the contradictions and conflicts within Indigenous communities about relationships to land and non-human life forms, about responsibilities to one another, about environmental decisions, and about wealth distribution. Creating Indigenous Property contributes to identifying the way that Indigenous discourses, processes, and institutions can empower the use of Indigenous law. The book explores different questions generated by these dynamics, including: Where is the public/private divide in Indigenous and Canadian law, and why should it matter? How do land and property shape local economies? Whose voices are heard in debates over property and why are certain voices missing? How does gender matter to the conceptualization of property and the Indigenous legal imagination? What is the role and promise of Indigenous law in negotiating new relationships between Indigenous peoples and Canada? In grappling with these questions, readers will join the authors in exploring the conditions under which Canadian and Indigenous legal orders can productively co-exist.

This work offers an analysis of the Western formal system of private property and its moral justification and explains the relevance of the institution to particular current issues that face aboriginal peoples and the developing world. The subjects under study include broadly: aboriginal land claims; third world development; intellectual property rights and the relatively recent TRIPs agreement (Trade related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights). Within these broad areas we highlight the following concerns: the maintenance of cultural integrity; group autonomy; economic benefit; access to health care; biodiversity; biopiracy and even the independence of the recently emerged third world nation states. Despite certain apparent advantages from embracing the Western institution of private ownership, the text explains that the Western institution of private property is undergoing a fundamental redefinition through the expansion.

This book provides a strikingly original explanation of the Britain's treatment of sovereignty and native title in its Australasian colonies.

The essays in this book present important perspectives on the role of Indigenous legal traditions in reclaiming and preserving the autonomy of Aboriginal communities and in reconciling the relationship between these communities and Canadian governments. Although Indigenous peoples had their own systems of law based on their social, political, and spiritual traditions, under colonialism their legal systems have often been ignored or overruled by non-Indigenous laws. Today, however, these legal traditions are being reinvigorated and recognized as vital for the preservation of the political autonomy of Aboriginal nations and the development of healthy communities.

Inalienable Properties explores contrasting approaches to property rights by four Indigenous communities to illustrate how inalienability – restrictions on the ability to buy and sell land – is linked to community leadership and decision-making structures that have long-lasting consequences for communities. Drawing on new research about institutional change in organizational settings, Jamie Baxter explores when and how community leaders have sustained inalienable land rights without turning to either persuasion or coercive force – the two levers of power normally associated with political leadership. He also challenges the view that liberalized land markets are the inevitable result of legal and economic change.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach unmatched by any other book on this topic, this thoughtful Handbook considers the international struggle to provide for proper and just protection of Indigenous intellectual property (IP). In light of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007, expert contributors assess the legal and policy controversies over Indigenous knowledge in the fields of international law, copyright law, trademark law, patent law, trade secrets law, and cultural heritage. The overarching discussion examines national developments in Indigenous IP in the United States, Canada, South Africa, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia. The Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the historical origins of conflict over Indigenous knowledge, and examines new challenges to Indigenous IP from emerging developments in information technology, biotechnology, and climate change. Practitioners and scholars in the field of IP will learn a great deal from this Handbook about the issues and challenges that surround just protection of a variety of forms of IP for Indigenous communities.

Law’s Indigenous Ethics examines the revitalization of Indigenous peoples’ relationship to their own laws and, in so doing, attempts to enrich Canadian constitutional law more generally. Organized around the seven Anishinaabe grandmother and grandfather teachings of love, truth, bravery, humility, wisdom, honesty, and respect, this book explores ethics in relation to Aboriginal issues including title, treaties, legal education, and residential schools. With characteristic depth and sensitivity, John Borrows brings insights drawn from philosophy, law, and political science to bear on some of the most pressing issues that arise in contemplating the interaction between Canadian state law and Indigenous legal traditions. In the course of a wide-ranging but accessible inquiry, he discusses such topics as Indigenous agency, self-determination, legal pluralism, and power. In its use of Anishinaabe stories and methodologies drawn from the emerging field of Indigenous studies, Law’s Indigenous Ethics makes a significant contribution to scholarly debate and is an essential resource for readers seeking a deeper understanding of Indigenous rights, societies, and cultures.