Aboriginal Land Claims

Throughout history, the Native people of North America and the Europeans have continually had arguments and disputes over land. To this day there are still issues trying to be resolved. Twenty years ago, the beginning of one of the most violent and intense land disputes in present day Canada occurred. This event is now referred to as the Oka Crisis, named after the town Oka in Quebec. This crisis caused a confrontation involving the Quebec provincial police, the Canadian armed forces and the Mohawk people.1 The stand that the Mohawk people took in the town of Oka became a major revelation for the aboriginal people spreading awareness of aboriginal rights across Canada.

Within the Aboriginal ways of knowing it is suggested that “land is the heart of Creation, a realm where humans are among a vast array of creatures” (Belanger, 2014, p. 7). In essence, the Aboriginal people have looked upon the earth as a source of resources that may be utilized but must be honored. This is further substantiated by Belanger when he states that “human beings began to measure their existence in terms of how well they ensured the land’s health and safety, as opposed to how well they acquired wealth and personal gain” (Belanger, 2014, p. 8). As a result of this deeply ingrained relationship between the Aboriginal person and Creation, it comes as no surprise to learn that the Aboriginal people of Canada have decided to revolt

Aboriginal Land Rights Aboriginal Australians have always had an eternal bond with the land. For the 50,000 years or more, they have occupied the continent; the land provided not only the basic needs, but also the spiritual beliefs. In the Dreaming, the forms of the land, mountains, rivers, landscapes and animals took shape and the spirit of ancestors resided in places that became sacred sites to the Aboriginal people. The land to these people were their most precious commodity. When white settlement began in Australia in 1788, the concept of terra nullius {the land belonging to no-one} was adopted by the British.

Aboriginal land use practices centred on the sustainable use of the land. Aboriginal Australians practiced a form of agriculture known as ‘fire stick agriculture’. This involved utilizing fire to hunt animals, by setting fire to vegetation to draw prey into the open. Doing this also increased the availability of new grass and vegetation to feed animals. Minerals from the burnt vegetation are absorbed into the soil, increasing its fertility and therefore the abundance of vegetation in the area. Ensuring that there was enough feed for animals in the wild allowed Indigenous Australians to maintain population levels of the species they hunted in a sustainable manner for thousands of years.

With globalization and colonization taking over almost the entire known world, native tribes who are indigenous to their lands are losing control of the lands that their people have lived in for ages to the hands of foreign colonizers who claim the land as their own. Now, indigenous people all around the world are struggling to reclaim the lands and rights that were taken away from them through non-violent social relations with national governments and large corporations. Anthropologists have recorded how indigenous people across the globe attempt to create relations with national governments to reclaim rights and lands that they once had before the colonization of their ancestral homeland.

Aboriginal law had lasted for hundreds of years before white settlement of Australia in 1788. The laws were based from the Dreamtime and were formed by ancestors, spirits and Aboriginal beliefs. These laws were passed down by a word-of-mouth tradition and as there were many different tribes consisting of many clans spread out over a large area, separate laws were adapted to specific tribes and areas. Aboriginal customary laws were developed and based on the aboriginal relationship to the land as well as the view that property (land) and individual belongings were owned by the community as a whole. All items were collectively used and land was not owned by a particular tribe.

Traditional systems of government had been dismantled by the Indian Act 1876 and other forms of control had been established (Aboriginal Self Government, n.d). After an increase in effective political organizations and activism, as well as well-covered conflicts over development in the north, Canada finally began to slightly acknowledge and enable forms of self-government; this was not until the late 60’s and early 70’s (Aboriginal Self Government, n.d). The idea of self government attained momentum during the late 20th and the early 21st centuries, and Aboriginal people began to see and understand their rights to self government asserted in the Constitution Act 1982 (Aboriginal Self Government, n.d). However, the right for Aboriginals to a self-government is far from being entrenched in law. This can be clearly proven by the slow progress and the ongoing negotiations that are taking place.

A “two-track” approach to obtain self-government was adopted by the Federal government in 1985. One path was through constitutional negotiations, while the other was through “community-based negotiations with Indian bands, and a tripartite process between the federal government, provincial government and Metis and Non-Status Indians” (Wherret & Allain, 1999, 3). This approach led to a new policy on Community-Based Self-Government Negotiations by the federal government which helped extend the control and the ability for bands to facilitate legislative self-governments contracts. Self-government for aboriginal people was also being attainted through the negotiations of comprehensive lands claim agreements. These agreements based on unextinguished Aboriginal title where not constitutional protected as “the government preferred to negotiate self-government arrangements separately from other matter in order to avoid entrenchment under s.35(3) of the Constitutional Act, 1982 (Wherret & Allain, 1999,

The Canadian government has always found loopholes and ways around subjects that they do not want to deal with or talk about. When they were approached by the Nisga’a way back in 1890 they brushed them off and told them that as long as they did not get in the way of development, their communities would go unharmed. “Aboriginal people maintained only certain hunting and trapping rights on the land.” The people of this group wanted to have a self-governed community and felt that they should have the authority to make decisions that would better their standards of living. Their first attempt at approaching the provincial government in 1927 was declined due to the fact that a law was in place prohibiting Indians to advance land claims. Finally in 1973 the Canadian government overruled the laws that were set and began to negotiate with the First Nation’s people in 1976. “Aboriginal peoples argued that their right to self-government existed because their societies historically had been organized and self-ruling.” The Aboriginals were given the freedom that they

Aboriginal Integration Policy – 1965 – introduced to give Aboriginal people more control of their lives and society

The Indigenous groups in Canada have been inhabitants on these lands long before any other group arrived. Yet, these groups have been and are still disadvantaged in the political sphere, continuing to be severely underrepresented in Canadian governmental institutions. The government of Canada needs to implement governmental arrangements that will meet the unique needs of Indigenous groups, with responsiveness to their particular political, historical, and social circumstances (Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development Canada, 2010). With section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982, the definition of Aboriginal rights has become a focus as the constitution recognizes existing rights but does not define them. There has also become a specific

Aboriginal governance and its relationship with Canadian federalism has been a long debated issue and continuing process. Aboriginal peoples refers to the collective groups of people alive today who are descendants from the original tribes and societies of North America. These groups are scattered over provinces and territories in Canada. Although the Aboriginal peoples have longed to established self-governance, the Canadian government has yet to form any significant contributions and treaties to help, it has taken steps towards improving Aboriginal self-determination and self-governance. This paper argues that no single form of emerging Aboriginal self-government is the most practical, effective, or legitimate. It does by analyzing the effectiveness and criticisms of the different existing possible forms as well as any existing examples of such forms towards Aboriginal self-government.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people occupied Australia before the British arrived in 1788. The United Kingdom depended on this principle to claim possession of the Australian continent. It was declared that before the arrival of Europeans Australia was Terra Nullius, a Latin term meaning “land belonging to nobody”, they deemed the continent as a tract of territory unoccupied, lacking settled inhabitants and settled law. Under the British colonial law, Aboriginal Australians did not obtain a recognisable legal system which included fundamental concepts about property rights. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are two distinct Indigenous Australian cultural groups, they obtain definite rights as Australia’s First Inhabitants. This

Over the past years, Canadian courts have repeatedly urged that aboriginal title conflicts should be resolved through negotiation, rather than litigation. The primary reason being that litigation is costly and time-consuming. For example, the decision for the Delgamuukw case took a duration of thirteen years. Furthermore, litigations that deal with the issue of aboriginal rights and title are “generally narrowly focused” and “ultimately leaves the question [posed about] how aboriginal rights and title apply unwarned.” For instance, the courts of Canada repeatedly failed to come up with a clear definition on the legal scope of Aboriginal rights despite the fact that they have several opportunities to do so. The Delgamuuku case clearly illustrates this when the Court “did not define how aboriginal title applied for the First Nations involved.” Instead, the Court came to the conclusion that a new trial was required, which ultimately will be more expensive and take longer.

In the 1980s, the struggle for indigenous people land rights began. In 1981, Indigenous people of South Australia were handed back 10% of the State’s land. They were given full rights to claim royalties from mining companies operating on their land. Soon after this had happened, other States such as Queensland and NSW quickly followed. This sparked front- man of the band Goanna, Shane Howard, to write the iconic song about c. On October 26th 1985, the Commonwealth Government Granted land rights over Uluru and Ayers Rock, back to the Aboriginal owners.