Paper short abstract:

With intensive economic development in north western Canada Aboriginal forms of governance and customary legal regimes experience internal contradictions as they confront corporate practices of consultation and shifting state polices meant to accommodate corporate economic aims.

Paper long abstract:

Canada relies extensively on a resource economy. Central to development of new Asian markets for raw resources is the export of crude oil and natural gas from the province of Alberta through British Columbia to ports on the Pacific Coast by means of pipelines that run through traditional aboriginal territories. Aboriginal resistance to these developments, simultaneously with decades-old resistance to intense logging of forests and hydro electric development, has brought new discourses of identity and governance resulting in the splintering of community Aboriginal governance on the one hand and state-sponsored growth of central political organizations on the other.

In this paper we trace the implications of these political developments and their underlying discourses of identity and governance by addressing the case of the First Nations of Dakelh (Carrier) political affiliations as they confront shifting state policies and practices with regard to aboriginal title and constitutionally protected rights. We address questions of customary law and governance within small communities who are caught in a conflict between what the Supreme Court of Canada defines as proof of aboriginal title and rights and socio-political practices of corporations and the state as they seek to redefine advocacy organizations as political entities holding governing authority while dismissing traditional governance practices as being unwieldy and lacking authority.