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Jurisdiction and Settler Colonialism: Where Do Laws Meet?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Shiri Pasternak
Shiri Pasternak*
Affiliation:
Postdoctoral Fellow Columbia University New York City
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Abstract

To engage in the question of what it means to decolonize law, we must ask by what authority a law has the authority to be invoked and to govern. In this paper, I describe the conditions necessary for the exercise of Canadian law as being the work of jurisdiction, and I call into question Canada’s legality and legitimacy in making jurisdictional claims. Decolonizing law means deconstructing the state’s grounds to inaugurate law on lands acquired through colonial settlement. By critically examining law’s geography and scope I call into question the modern definition of territory itself. Further, I draw attention to jurisdiction as a conceptual framework for understanding the specificities of settler colonialism; illustrate jurisdiction as a historical concept, distinct from territory and sovereignty; and show some of the ways in which jurisdiction is enacted to govern across multiple scales and issues.

Résumé

Si l’on se penche sur la question de ce que signifie la décolonisation du droit, on doit se questionner sur l’autorité d’une loi d’être invoquée et de gouverner. Dans cet article, je décris comment le travail des juridictions amorce l’exercice du pouvoir législatif au Canada, et je remets en cause la légalité et la légitimité du Canada à l’égard des revendications juridictionnelles. L’acte de décoloniser le droit signifie que l’on doit déconstruire les motifs de l’État afin d’introduire des lois sur les terres acquises par le peuplement colonial. En examinant de manière critique la géographie ainsi que la portée de la juridiction, je remets en cause la définition moderne du « territoire ». Dans cet article, j’attire l’attention sur comment la juridiction représente un cadre conceptuel permettant de comprendre les spécificités du colonialisme de peuplement ; d’illustrer la juridiction en tant que concept historique distinct du territoire ou de la souveraineté ; et de démontrer certaines formes à travers lesquelles la juridiction est adoptée pour gouverner les diverses échelles et pour régir les diverses questions.

Keywords

jurisdictionsettler colonialismIndigenousauthorityspacejuridictioncolonialisme de peuplementautochtoneautoritéespace
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 29 , Issue 2: Law and Decolonization / Droit et décolonisation , August 2014 , pp. 145 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association / Association Canadienne Droit et Société 2014 

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References

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11 I owe credit to Dr. Kim Stanton for this image.

12 This commentary on how a picture holds us captive is a paraphrase of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan Company, 1965), at 115.

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16 This idea of the “authority to have authority” comes from an insightful comment on this work by Dr. Deborah Cowen.

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31 Ford, Settler Sovereignty, 129.

32 Ibid., 56.

33 Shaunnagh Dorsett and Shaun McVeigh, Jurisdiction (New York: Routledge, 2012), 39.

34 Ibid., 4.

35 Dorsett and McVeigh, “Questions of Jurisdiction,” 5.

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39 Ibid..Here, Valverde is offering her interpretation of de Sousa Santos.

40 Valverde, “Jurisdiction as Scale,” 141.

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44 The authoritative text on this matter is the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), which recommends that Aboriginal nations be seen and treated as a third order of government (Canada, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, People to People, Nation to Nation: Highlights from the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996), accessed online April 8, 2013, http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100014597/1100100014637#chp7.

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47 Ibid., 854.

48 Ibid. But Ford’s use of the term is restricted to its meanings within political liberalism. For example, his statement, “No particular set of rights and responsibilities naturally comes with residence in a given territory, and the boundaries of the territory itself are not natural,” excludes the criteria of Indigenous territorial jurisdiction from consideration (“Law’s Territory,” 900).

49 James Tully describes how “the so-called ‘Westphalian’ system is actually an imperial system of hegemonic and subaltern states constructed in the course of ‘interactions’ between imperial actors and imperialised collaborators and resisters. It is the foundation of contemporary imperialism, laid in the colonial period and strengthened during decolonisation. Informal imperialism would scarcely work at all if these colonial foundations did not provide a historically sedimented background structure of institutions and relations of domination within which the more flexible relations of informal imperialism are exercised in the foreground” (Public Philosophy in a New Key, vol. 2, Imperialism and Civic Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 140–41).

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53 Royal Proclamation, 1763 (UK), reprinted RSC 1985, App II, No 1 [hereafter Royal Proclamation].

54 Walter Echo-Hawk, “Johnson v. M’Intosh & the Doctrine of Discovery in the United States: Impacts upon Federal Indian Law; and the Future of the Doctrine under the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” (presentation, International Seminar on the Doctrine of Discovery, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC, Secwepemcúl’ecw, September 20–21, 2012). Also, for a detailed discussion of the genealogy of the doctrine of discovery, see Miller, Robert J., Ruru, Jacinta, Behrendt, Larissa, and Lindberg, Tracey, Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 1–25.Google Scholar

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59 Miller et al., Discovering Indigenous Lands, 107.

60 Culhane argues that this exercise of preemption power is actually rooted in the doctrine of conquest and not in the doctrine of discovery (Pleasure of the Crown, 48). This seems logical, given that the king could hardly make assurances to Indian nations if the land was uninhabited. But in 1763, given the strong military alliances with Indigenous nations so desperately sought by the colonizers, the doctrine of conquest was hardly likely. However, the doctrine of discovery could accommodate the paradox of an inhabited land and the concept of terra nullius—vacant lands—so long as the British discovered a land of non-Christian strangers, whose forms of landholding did not conform to the cultivated enclosures of the British motherland.

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63 Miller et al., Discovering Indigenous Lands, 3.

64 Johnson. See also, Williams, Robert A. Jr., Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights, and the Legal History of Racism in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 51.Google Scholar

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70 Calder at 26.

71 Justice Hall, citing Regina v White and Bob, [1964] BCJ No 212, 50 DLR (2d) 613, called the Royal Proclamation a “charter of Indian rights” (Ibid. at ¶ 138, Hall J, dissenting). As for Johnson v McIntosh, Justice Hall called the case “the locus classicus of the principles governing aboriginal title” (Ibid. at ¶ 121) (cited in Reid, “The Doctrine of Discovery” at 347).

72 Guerin v R, [1984] 2 SCR 335 [hereafter Guerin].

73 Guerin at 93.

74 Delgamuukw v British Columbia, [1997] 3 SCR 1010 [hereafter Delgamuukw].

75 Tsilhqot’in Nation v British Columbia, 2007 BCSC 1700 [hereafter Tsilhqot’in].

76 Quoted in J. R. Miller, “Great White Father Knows Best: Oka and the Land Claims Process, Native Studies Review 7, no. 1 (1991): 38.

77 In Delgamuukw v British Columbia, [1997] 3 SCR 1010, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized Aboriginal title as the collective proprietary interests of Aboriginal peoples in their traditional territories.

R v Marshall; R v Bernard 2005 SCC 43 at first recognized, then reversed recognition of, Miq’mak treaty rights to pursue commercial fishing rights. Haida Nation v British Columbia (Minister of Forests), [2004] 3 SCR 511 set an important precedent around the “duty to consult and accommodate” First Nations on lands where Aboriginal title has been asserted though not necessarily recognized by the courts.

78 Asch, Michael and Zlotkin, Norman, “Affirming Aboriginal Title: A New Basis for Comprehensive Claims Negotiations,” in Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada, ed. Asch, Michael (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997), 213.Google Scholar

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