Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the articulation of State and indigenous political and cultural projects that are mobilized and expressed in the Comprehensive land claims process in which the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok (Haute-Mauricie, Québec) are engaged with federal and provincial governments for more than 35 years.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the power relations between the Canadian state and indigenous institutions within a comprehensive land claims context. Particular attention is given to the power mechanisms maintained by the Canadian government in its comprehensive land claims policy reaching to establish legal certainty with respect to indigenous ancestral territories and with a First Nation which has never surrendered its aboriginal title by means of a treaty. Without disregarding the unequal power relations, I also present the motivations and aspirations expressed by the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok (Haute-Mauricie, Quebec) in this negotiation process in which they have been engaged for more than 35 years. I explain how those engagements are expressed and mobilized into a larger and deeper political and cultural project (nehirowisiw orocowewin) concerning the affirmation of an indigenous way of life and the living well (nehirowisiw miro pimatisiwin) which are related to the maintenance of a creative and open-ended coexistence between humans and non-humans, including ancestors and future living beings, in the practices of everyday life.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation examines different forms of land management claimed by Algonquin communities, where in some instances, land management at the family hunting territory level is viewed as part of customary law and where in other instances, land management at the band level is proposed.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation addresses the problem of territoriality and representation in the context of modern negotiations about land. In northern Algonquian societies, the issue of the type of land management practised in pre-contact times remains unresolved. Thus the debate is framed as to whether northern Algonquian peoples held their territory communally at the band level or rather in family hunting territories, managed at the extended family level. In practice, in the recent past, land management remained vested in the hands of extended families. This system had different levels of recognition by governmental agencies in the course of the 20th century. In certain places, northern Algonquian family hunting territories were recognized by state institutions and the system remains alive today and part of customary law. In other places, it was not recognized. In these instances, when substantial land encroachment occurred, family hunting territories became difficult to maintain and fell into at least partial disuse. Different land management solutions are now being contemplated by these communities for future comprehensive claims. This presentation will examine these two outcomes of land management solutions exemplified by Algonquin communities in Quebec who are currently not under treaty. In some instances, family hunting territories remain a defining method of land management, whereas in the others land management at the band level is claimed. In both cases, discourses about land are shrouded in questions about what traditional territoriality would be.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents the results of a collaborative research conducted among the Pekuakamiulnuatsh ("the humans of the flat lake") from 2014-2016 and aiming at a current and intergenerational overview of their connection to their ancestral territory by focussing on the participants' discourse.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents the results of a collaborative research conducted among the Pekuakamiulnuatsh ("the humans of the flat lake") from 2014-2016 aiming at a current and intergenerational overview of their connection to their ancestral territory. Located in an industrialized and urbanized area, the Mashteuiatsh First Nation is involved in a comprehensive land claim since 1979 with the Quebec and federal governments and actively works on the revitalization of their local dialect called nehlueun.

By following an emic approach based on the participants' words and perspectives, this research reveals how the concept of territory is put into words among the different generations of Pekuakamiulnuatsh and to which extent the territorial bond also becomes an asset in the affirmation of political and cultural identity.

Indigenous place names constitute a linguistic expression of the connection to land and represent written records of an orally transmitted tradition, thus recognized as proofs of occupation in the context of a land claim process. Toponyms in the innu language, systematically collected through local research projects over the last years, helped to document and disseminate the cultural heritage of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh. Above all, these toponyms strongly supported the comprehensive land claim negotiations leading to the signature of the Agreement-in-Principle of General Nature in 2004, agreement that defines the rights and interests of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh with regard to land and natural resources and sets the basis for a modern treaty potentially to be implemented in the near future.

Paper short abstract:

I contrast the logics of petition and treaty, informed by episodes in the history of the Abenaki and Maliseet peoples in the settler colony of Lower Canada. I consider how the logic of petitioning continues to frame the possibilities for indigenous-settler negotiation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper contrasts the logics of petition and treaty in order to consider the ways in which possibilities for First Nations self-determination are structured and foreclosed by the Canadian settler state. I also consider the fate of two historic First Nations communities, each of whom petitioned the government of Lower Canada for reserved lands: the Abenaki of Sartigan, along the Chaudière River, in 1809; and a group of Maliseet and Abenaki at Rawdon, north of Montreal, in 1842. That neither of these petitions was successful is indicative of imaginative impossibilities that were consolidated in Lower Canada in the early 19th century and that continue to exist today. Treaties were never an option, indigenous authority was believed to have been eclipsed by the settler state, and rights to land were restricted to Indian villages.

Petitions (and their contemporary equivalent, proposals) may be an important means of seeking assistance, but the logic of petition is also one of subjection. This paper argues that attention to petitioning alongside treaty-making is necessary to understand the naturalization of the indigenous-settler landscape of southern Quebec today and helps to explain the possibilities and impossibilities of settler-First Nations relations in the future.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores ways that relationships to water are expressed between treaty partners, Maori of Ngapuhi iwi and Crown in Right of New Zealand, including the willingness of one party to share with the other what is essential for the continued life of all.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores ways that relationships to water are expressed between treaty partners, including the willingness of one party to share with the other what is essential for continued life. Water is not explicitly addressed in the Articles of Te Tiriti O Waitangi, as signed in February 1840 by a representative of the British Crown and Maori in northern Aotearoa New Zealand, but is nonetheless considered by rangatira (leaders) of the Ngapuhi iwi, as descendants of signatories to the treaty, as part of their continued relationship with their treaty partners. The sharing of water is considered as part of customary law, which links particular Maori responsibilities based on descent and home territory to specific waterways. The active protection of waters includes both restrictions on the manner in which they may be used, and the capacity to bestow water on those in need through embedded principles of aroha (compassion), whanaungatanga (kinship) and tikanga (law), and the concomitant acknowledgement of a life force, or mauri, imbued in both land and people. These principles in action have benefited a wider New Zealand citizenry in ways that frequently go unrecognized, or at least unacknowledged, 175 years after the signing of the treaty. Actions around a key drinking water source during a recent drought are examined for the ways they make apparent the underlying principles which inform the treaty relationship, and the steadfast ways that Ngapuhi sovereignty is upheld by Maori signatories.

Paper short abstract:

Treaty Eight, concluded circa 1899, is somewhat distinct from other historical treaties in the Canadian Northwest. Its implementation was incomplete, particularly in terms of the oral, but also the written, accounts of its negotiation. Treaty fulfillment continues to challenge contemporary politics.

Paper long abstract:

Treaty Eight, concluded between 1899 and 1901 between representatives of Canada and those of Cree and Dene, is somewhat distinct from other historical treaties in the Canadian Northwest, both in its terms and its process. Hunting was identified as the principal concern by First Nations; however, acquiring reserve lands and band membership under the terms of the treaty eventually became a key issue in some areas. Owing in part to the mobility of regional populations, treaty implementation was incomplete, particularly in terms of the oral, but also the written, accounts of its negotiation. This has been particularly the case north of Lesser Slave Lake, where several hundred individuals living in organized bands were not contacted by the Treaty Commission or its counterpart, the Métis Scrip Commission. Subsequently these communities and individuals were treated in highly arbitrary ways regarding their rights.

Treaty fulfillment continues to challenge contemporary politics. While First Nations have successfully concluded several specific claims and lawsuits to fulfill and clarify the terms of the treaty, areas of disagreement remain. Bilateral discussion processes to define the treaty relationship have largely faltered; the prominent struggles of the Lubicon community remain unresolved and divisive; implementation of specific claims is challenged by industrial land tenure; industrial impacts on the land are perhaps the largest challenge to fulfilling the treaty relationship. While focusing mainly on First Nations issues, I also address in passing Métis rights and politics in northern Alberta, since Métis people are also part of the communities I discuss.

Paper short abstract:

A review of four decades of treaty-making by Eeyou Istchee Crees pursuant to their original James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (1975) suggests important lessons about the interplay of organization-building, legal agreement and the exercize of power on a northern resource extractive frontier.

Paper long abstract:

The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA; 1975) is remarkable, less for being the first comprehensive claims settlement of late 20th century Canada, than for the series of many subsequent treaties to which it seems to have opened doors for the Crees of Eeyou Istchee. Notwithstanding JBNQA terms ostensibly committing Crees to "cede, release, surrender and convey all their Native claims, rights, titles and interests… in Quebec," the Grand Council of the Crees has gone on to sign numerous 'complementary' treaties, consolidating greater and greater recognition of proprietary and governmental rights throughout their traditional territory, including rights to share revenues from 'natural resources' flowing from their territory. Meanwhile, most of the Crees' indigenous neighbours on adjacent territories, including some nations with unextinguished aboriginal title and others with 'historical' treaties dating to the early 20th century, struggle with conditions of relative poverty and disempowerment. What accounts for such dramatic differences among groups occupying theoretically similar legal and constitutional spaces? Is the JBNQA a model to be emulated, to be avoided, or too anomalous to be reproduced? To what factors are owed both the transformative and the disabling potentialities of treaties as instruments of empowerment or disempowerment?

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines government to government rights and title negotiations in the context of British Columbian energy development projects.

Paper long abstract:

British Columbia is, for the most part, unceded traditional Indigenous territory. The Crown (as the province of British Columbia) asserts sovereignty of all lands and oceans. From an Indigenous perspective the Crown has no legal standing. This paper explores the Indigenous concept of authority and jurisdiction (as opposed to a notion of the right of the Crown). This exploration is accomplished by drawing upon the author's direct experience in negotiations and discussions with the province of British Columbia.