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This chapter explores how we might, by our practice, give more vigor to the democratic aspiration that a people should rule themselves. It does so in two steps. First, it examines the form of governance of the Gitxsan people, a First Nation of northern British Columbia. The traditional governance of the Gitxsan, like that of most Indigenous peoples, is not organized in the manner of a state. The nature of Gitxsan members’ attachment to their legal and political order is not masked, then, by the heavy institutionalization of a state, and the characteristics of their adherence can be perceived and weighed more easily. Second, the chapter reflects upon how a similar quality of adherence might be achieved within state-structured polities. In short, this chapter uses the Gitxsan comparison to seek more precision in how we ought to understand citizens’ attachment to – their “consent” to – their legal and political order, and it suggests practical steps that might promote that end in contemporary states.
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