Protecting Indigenous Hunters: The Social and Environmental Protection Regime in the James Bay and Northern Quebec Land Claims Agreement.

Abstract

Cree and Inuit Peoples in northern Quebec recently negotiated the creation of a regional environmental and social protection regime as a part of their aboriginal rights agreement. This is an important first test of this way of giving local land-based Indigenous communities more effective voice in the regulation of development activities in their regions. In this chapter I briefly outline the context in which the James Bay and Northern Quebec negotiations took place and describe the form and logic of the social and environmental regime which was negotiated. I then evaluate the initial experiences with the regime. The question of how to design effective regimes has received considerably less attention than how to use legislation that already exists. This analysis addresses the former. I emphasize the need for: recourse against government abuses or omissions of laws and their application; ongoing monitoring of government policy and legislation; special means for Native participation; means of making inputs to decision-making effective; and the integration of social-environmental regimes with other protections for Native interests. In particular, I highlight the close link that must exist between the legal recognition of specific Native rights and any effective indigenous participation in the structures and processes for regulating regional development activities. I emphasize possible types of rights, structures and procedures which could be effective in the frequent cases where leverage is insufficient to gain recognition of an absolute Indigenous right to unilaterally regulate development activity in a region.