Traditional Governance and Settler States
These resources address what happens when a community's traditional laws and governance structure interact with a settler state.
- For numbered treaties, see the Treaties research guide.
- For legal cases and self-government agreements, see other sections in this guide.
- For Indigenous grassroots activist movements and resources, see the Indigenous Land-Based Activism guide.
Highlighted materials
Red Scare: the State's Indigenous Terrorist
Indigenous criticisms of state policy, resource extraction and contamination, intense surveillance, and neoliberal values are met with outsized and shocking measures of militarized policing, environmental harm, and sexual violence.
Red Scare explores these movements and relevant alternatives we can find in Indigenous forms of governance and relationality.
Red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition
Coulthard questions the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and Indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment.
Policing Indigenous movements : dissent and the security state
This book details how the state surveils and polices Indigenous movements, which often stem from nation's inherent right to self-governance and traditional governance structures clashing with the settler state of Canada.
The 500 years of Indigenous resistance comic book
Events depicted include the Spanish conquest of the Aztec, Mayan and Inca empires; the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico; the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890; the resistance of the Great Plains peoples in the 19th century; and more recently, the Idle No More protests supporting Indigenous sovereignty and rights in 2012 and 2013, and the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. Canadian events depicted include the Oka crisis in 1990, the Grand River land dispute between Six Nations and the Government of Canada in 2006, and the Wet'suwet'en anti-pipeline protests in 2020.
Books
Native claims : indigenous law against empire, 1500-1920 by Call Number: K3248.L36 N38 2012 (Law Library)ISBN: 9780199794850Publication Date: 2012Chapters about Indigenous nations bringing their laws to colonizers throughout history, including Maori, Wabanaki, Powhatan, West African and Native American nations.- Canadian law and indigenous self-determination : a naturalist analysis byCall Number: KE7722.C5 C47 2019Publication Date: 2019For centuries, Canadian sovereignty has existed uneasily alongside forms of Indigenous legal and political authority. Canadian Law and Indigenous Self-Determination demonstrates how, over the last few decades, Canadian law has attempted to remove Indigenous sovereignty from the Canadian legal and social landscape.
- Between Indigenous and Settler Governance byCall Number: K3248.J87 B48 2013Publication Date: 2013addresses the history, current development and future of Indigenous self-governance in four settler-colonial nations: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
Conflicts and resistances upholding traditional law
- Settler governmentality in Canada and the Algonquins of Barriere Lake byPublication Date: 2012"This article uses Canada’s Access to Information Act to examine how mechanisms of security are mobilized against members of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake (ABL), whose persistent calls for sovereign control of their land and customary governance system have been translated by Canadian authorities into a security threat to settler society."
Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake against the State by Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781452954684Publication Date: 2017
Debriefing Elsipogtog: the Anatomy of a Struggle by Call Number: NB H69 D43 2015ISBN: 9781552667446Publication Date: 2015In 2009, the New Brunswick provincial government provided a licence to search over a million hectares of land to Texas-based Southwestern Energy for the purposes of natural gas extraction. n the spring of 2013, Elsipogtog First Nation, the largest Indigenous community in New Brunswick, became the focal point of this resistance.
- Manufacturing Wet'suwet'en ConsentBy Jerome Turner, in Briarpatch magazine. Article explaining Wet'suwet'en governance and the conflict with CGL.
- Understanding Conflicting Legal Traditions: The Wet'suwet'en Land Struggle and Resolving Land Claims on Unceded TerritoryBy Abigail Isaac. This paper argues that the settler-state imposition of energy infrastructure on unceded land is not only a violation of Indigenous sovereignty and inherent rights, but also, a testament to the incompatibility of state priorities and Indigenous communities’ right to land and life.
- First People's Law: The Wet'suwet'en, Aboriginal Title, and Rule of Law: an explainer"The RCMP’s enforcement of the Coastal GasLink injunction against the Wet’suwet’en has ignited a national debate about the law and the rights of Indigenous people. Unfortunately, misconceptions and conflicting information threaten to derail this important conversation. Below, we attempt to provide clear, straightforward answers to address some of these fundamental misunderstandings."
- Yintah Access: History and TimelineWebsite to learn about the Wet'suwet'en land defense, traditional governance, and history of the CGL project.
- Unsettling British Columbia : interventions in a neocolonial politics byCall Number: MBC S65 U57 1997Publication Date: 1997This thesis considers both the recent upsurge of settler opposition to Aboriginal land claims and treaty negotiations in British Columbia, and the militarization of state responses to Aboriginal protest exemplified by the Gustafsen Lake Standoff of 1995.
- What has no place, remains : the challenges for Indigenous religious freedom in Canada today byPublication Date: 2019This book is particularly concerned with legal cases, such as Ktunaxa Nation v. British Columbia (2017), but also draws on political negotiations, such as those at Voisey's Bay, and standoffs such as the one at Gustafsen Lake, to generate a more comprehensive picture of the challenges for Indigenous religious freedom beyond Canada's courts
- Stories of Oka: land, film, and literature byPublication Date: 2018
- Ipperwash: the tragic failure of Canada's Aboriginal policy byCall Number: MCE H43 P64 2013Publication Date: 2013Hedican investigates how racism and government practices have affected Aboriginal resistance to policies, especially those that have resulted in the loss of Aboriginal lands and led to persistent socio-economic problems in Native communities.
Athlii Gwaii : upholding Haida law at Lyell Island by Call Number: NB C655 A84 2018ISBN: 9780995994669Publication Date: 2018"A first-hand account of the Haida Nation's battle to protect Lyell Island from logging in 1985, in which more than a dozen Elders were arrested. The landmark court case that followed was a watershed in Canadian history and resulted in the ultimate protection of half of the islands of Haida Gwaii, in a unique partnership with the Haida Nation and Parks Canada. Includes the testimony of more than 40 participants, including Haida Elders and activists and David Suzuki.
- Nova Scotia’s Lobster War: How Ottawa Set the FireThe Tyee, 2020.
Contested waters : the struggle for rights and reconciliation in the Atlantic fishery by Call Number: Xwi7xwa - in processISBN: 9781774711149Publication Date: 2023A timely anthology featuring diverse perspectives - Indigenous and non-Indigenous - on the right to fish in the Atlantic, with the goal of creating dialogue and solutions.
- Protectors of the Future, Not Protestors of the Past: Indigenous Pacific Activism and Mauna a Wākea byPublication Date: 2017This essay explores ways Native Pacific activists enact Indigenous futurities and broaden the conditions of possibility for unmaking settler colonial relations. It highlights two instances of “blockades”—the Pacific Climate Warriors at Newcastle Harbor in Australia and the protectors on Mauna a Wākea in Hawai‘i.
Journal Articles
- Daniels v. Canada : Racialized Legacies, Settler Self-Indigenization and the Denial of Indigenous Peoplehood byPublication Date: 2016"In this commentary on Daniels v. Canada, we discuss the cultural power of legal discourse, and more specifically, we argue that the logics that various actors have drawn from Daniels work to marginalize, if not gut completely, policy logics that are based on a respect for Métis peoplehood."
- Settler governmentality in Canada and the Algonquins of Barriere Lake byPublication Date: 2012"This article uses Canada’s Access to Information Act to examine how mechanisms of security are mobilized against members of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake (ABL), whose persistent calls for sovereign control of their land and customary governance system have been translated by Canadian authorities into a security threat to settler society."
- Framing Land Governance Issues in Indigenous and Settler Media within Canada byPublication Date: 2022"This comparative study examines how the framing of Indigenous land governance issues—such as resource extraction activities on Indigenous territory and treaty negotiation—in Indigenous media differs from that in corporate news."
Films and videos
"Covering a vast swath of northern Ontario, Treaty No. 9 reflects the often contradictory interpretations of treaties between First Nations and the Crown. To the Canadian government, this treaty represents a surrendering of Indigenous sovereignty, while the descendants of the Cree signatories contend its original purpose to share the land and its resources has been misunderstood and not upheld. Enlightening as it is entertaining, Trick or Treaty? succinctly and powerfully portrays one community’s attempts to enforce their treaty rights and protect their lands, while also revealing the complexities of contemporary treaty agreements. Trick or Treaty? made history as the first film by an Indigenous filmmaker to be part of the Masters section at TIFF when it screened there in 2014."
"Dancing Around the Table: Part One provides a fascinating look at the crucial role Indigenous people played in shaping the Canadian Constitution. The 1984 Federal Provincial Conference of First Ministers on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters was a tumultuous and antagonistic process that pitted Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau and the First Ministers—who refused to include Indigenous inherent rights to self-government in the Constitution—against First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders, who would not back down from this historic opportunity to enshrine Indigenous rights."
"Director Bulbulian captures the pride and determination of Indigenous leaders and community members who refuse to back down on this historic opportunity to enshrine their rights, and the arrogance of the First Ministers who are fighting to keep power within the federal and provincial governments. The film takes us to Indigenous communities, where ceremony and traditional practices affirm the connection to the earth and its animals, and are the source of the strength and resilience shown by the Indigenous people around the table."
Other resources
- Indigenous Justice: Clearing Space and Place for Indigenous EpistemologiesBy Wenona Victor, for Research Paper for the National Centre for First Nations Governance December, 2007