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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/11375/23937
Title: Aboriginal Rights in Canada: Indigenous Strategies for Relative Autonomy Within the Canadian State.
Authors: Feit, Harvey A.
Department: Anthropology
Keywords: Indigenous Peoples;Political Power;Law in History;Aboriginal Rights;Political Culture;Public Acquiescence;Legitimacy;Liberal Democratic States
Publication Date: 1985
Publisher: Canadian Studies in Wales Group
Citation: Feit, Harvey A. 1985. “Aboriginal Rights in Canada: Indigenous Strategies for Relative Autonomy Within the Canadian State.” In The Canadian Constitution: Civil and Minority Rights. Cardiff: Canadian Studies in Wales Group. Pp. 40-65.
Abstract: The aboriginal rights developments in Canada over the two decades from the mid-1960s to today constitute one of the most sustained attempts to date to redefine the place of distinct minority native peoples within the structures of an existing nation state. These developments have important implications for the efforts in other developed capitalist liberal democratic nation states, suggesting the potentialities and limitations of redefinition within the constraints of an encapsulating state established under the laws and structures of a dominant immigrant majority population. This report is a brief survey and a partial analysis of these developments. A central question is the types of leverage and sources of power available to indigenous minorities within the state. This paper demonstrates a range of such sources, each providing limited but not insignificant opportunities, as well as constraints, for political action. These include, the multiplicity of state institutions and interests that often do not have coherent goals nor exercise coherent power; the historical residue of ambiguities and contradictions inherent in a legal system developed over 300 years of dealing with Native peoples under significantly varying conditions; the needs and processes of state political legitimation; the complementary development of necessarily multi-vocal and ambiguous public political cultures within the populaces; and the need of the state for the support or at least the acquiescence of always incompletely governed and administered populations.
Description: This paper draws extensively from the works of several anthropologists, historians and lawyers, and on conversations I have had with many of the same individuals. I want to thank those whose published materials I have used so freely. The paper was prepared for seminar and conference lectures and it has infrequent citations, but the references used are cited at the end.
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11375/23937
Appears in Collections:Anthropology Publications

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