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A Colonial Reading Of Recent Jurisprudence: Sparrow, Delgamuukw And Haida Nation, Gordon Christie

All Faculty Publications

Throughout Canada's long colonial relationship with Aboriginal nations, the Crown and the judiciary have worked in tandem. Historically, executive and legislative arms of government developed and implemented dispossessive and oppressive colonial policies and legal regimes, while the courts consciously developed conceptual frameworks meant to justify the taking of lands and the denial of Aboriginal sovereignty. This essay explores judicial attempts to justify the taking of lands and the denial of Aboriginal sovereignty, with the focus on how doctrinal law has conceived the transition from a world in which collective understandings of Aboriginal nations define the nature of their land interests …