Event Description
This talk explores the nature of contemporary Canadian jurisprudence on Crown/settler-Indigenous relations and on Indigenous legal authority, and in particular on Indigenous authority over Indigenous territory. There are two major elements to my discussion. On the one hand, there is the basic task of digging deeply into Canadian law – principally that laid out by the Supreme Court of Canada – while on the other hand there is the matter of working out how to go about this analysis.
The business of working out how to carry out analysis in this context is challenging, as one needs to step back and engage with various existing forms of critique and analysis, searching for and explicating a defensible way to move us toward a true sense of what has been going on with the actions of the high court. The goal in the part of the talk where this larger task is undertaken is to work through why I pursue a form of analysis that builds on contemporary forms of legal realism, where that realist analysis carries along Indigenous forms of self-determination, all the while maintaining a critical gaze.
A form of critical Indigenous analysis in hand, thoughts are then offered as to why the SCC has been acting as it has in the post section-35 era, and what this bodes for Indigenous nations asserting legal authority over their territories.
For Zoom link, please email: eventassistant@allard.ubc.ca and the link will be provided the morning of the event.
Speaker
Professor (Emeritus) Gordon Christie has a LL.B. from the University of Victoria, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has taught in universities in Canada and the United States, in Faculties of Law, and Departments of Philosophy and Indigenous Studies. He was an Assistant Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School (1998 - 2004), where he also acted as Director of the Intensive Program in Aboriginal Lands, Resources and Governments.
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