Pretendianism is a problem in academia (and of whiteness). Its long-standing existence is well researched and analyzed in the academic record, and it has been brought to wider audiences through news and social media. In response, task forces, committees and advisory councils are being created in universities to determine stronger identity validation policies, with emphasis on engaging relationships with local Indigenous nations, communities, elders, and knowledge holders. Policy making, including processes and procedures of identity validation, will be a powerful apparatus going forward to administer indigeneity in universities. This approach will also lead to the intensification of Indigenous definition and regulation by predominantly non-Indigenous institutions. This article proposes a set of complementary extrapolicy practices addressing pretendianism worth exploring and that emerge from the everyday embodied vantage points of Indigenous academics. We must (continue to) name whiteness, model Indigenous relationality and learn from Indigenous women's leadership.

In December 2022, the Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments in a reference case about the constitutionality of An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families (the Act). At issue is whether the Act infringes on provincial jurisdiction and changes the constitutional architecture by giving First Nations law governing child welfare the force of federal law. In this short Currents article, we argue that the Supreme Court's consideration of the Act marks a critical juncture in the ongoing relationship between Canadian and Indigenous law. Through an examination of the arguments made before the Supreme Court, we assert that it is essential that the Court move beyond its historical commitments to protecting the Constitution and umpiring jurisdictional disputes and toward a recognition of the failures of the constitutional framework to account for an expansive understanding of inherent rights and inherent jurisdiction, including child welfare.

In Canada, the relationship between Indigenous Nations and mining corporations is characterized by asymmetrical power dynamics. To address this situation, several Indigenous Nations who see mining as an opportunity to realize their financial autonomy have developed mechanisms to enhance their capacity to regulate how their traditional territories are exploited. Drawing on collaborative research conducted with the Cree of Eeyou Istchee, we show how these initiatives can allow Indigenous peoples to reconcile mining with ways of life seemingly at odds with extractive development. From local perspectives, the Eeyouch have managed to persuade the developers of the mine operating on their territory to meaningfully engage with Iiyiyiuituwin—the “Eeyou way of life,” fundamentally anchored in respect for and reciprocity with the land. While numerous Indigenous Nations exercise their sovereignty by opposing extractive development, others realize it through building relationship with corporations in ways that sustain their enduring political philosophy.

This article examines the Wet'suwet’en people's struggle for territorial control over their traditional homeland from the normative perspective of collective self-determination. I focus on two interlocking philosophical questions that arise in examination of the case: the justification for a group's right to control territory and the justification for the right of political institutions and officials within those institutions to make and enforce law for the occupants of the territory. I argue that, pursuant to the collective self-determination theory of territorial rights, the legitimate representatives of the Wet'suwet’en people must reflect the people's shared will. After describing the traditional governance system of the Wet'suwet’en people, I argue that there is nothing in principle preventing the hereditary chiefs from reflecting the shared will of the Wet'suwet’en people (as I argue electoral democracy is not always necessary for collective self-determination). I illustrate several reasons why hereditary leaders could reflect the shared will of Wet'suwet’en people better than alternative political authorities, while demonstrating that the political authority of any Wet'suwet’en governance system depends upon the actual endorsement of Wet'suwet’en people themselves.

This article addresses the historical justice dilemma: although critical memory is indispensable for accountability, efforts to use it are often hampered by the unjust relations and systems that caused the wrongs to which historical justice is compelled to respond in the first place. Contemporary authors tackle this problem by focusing on collective responsibility for structural injustice. This article takes a different tack. Studying closely the 2009–2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) report, it argues that the structural turn may come at the expense of a focus on agency and may thus provide unwitting anonymity for wrongdoers while crimping our thinking about leadership and responsibility. Although this article strongly criticizes the TRC report, it tries to work constructively with it, developing an analysis that compensates for the report's unwitting invisibilization of perpetrators. Distilling portraits and analyses of wrongdoer agency that are latent in the TRC's postwar history volume, this article shows how we can develop the report as a resource of what I call retributive social accountability.

La politique actuelle de réconciliation qui guide les rapports que l’État canadien entretient avec les peuples autochtones affiche une certaine discontinuité en matière de reconnaissance de leurs droits religieux. D’une part, les gouvernements accordent aux Autochtones certains privilèges à des fins de valorisation de leurs particularismes religieux dans l’espace public, d’une manière qui ne s’étend pas nécessairement à d’autres segments de la société. Parallèlement, par l’entremise de lois et d’ententes politiques, des nations autochtones se sont vu reconnaître des droits et privilèges en lien avec leur sphère religieuse, lesquels demeurent toutefois largement assujettis au cadre normatif établi par la majorité. Enfin, les tribunaux peinent jusqu’à présent à considérer les particularismes religieux des nations autochtones en tant que motif décisionnel. Cette reconnaissance à géométrie variable laisse transparaître un relent de colonialisme suivant lequel la dimension symbolique est valorisée, au détriment des avenues susceptibles de mener à une réelle autonomie des nations autochtones en matière d’expression religieuse.

Cities around the world are responding to aging populations and equity concerns for older people by developing age-friendly communities plans, following the World Health Organization’s guidelines. Such plans, however, often fail to account for the wide diversity of older people in cities, with the result that some older people, including Indigenous older people, do not see their needs reflected in age-friendly planning and policies. This article reports on a study involving 10 older First Nations and Métis women in the city of Prince George, Canada, comparing the expressed needs of these women with two age-friendly action plans: that of the city of Prince George, and that of the Northern Health Authority. Four main categories were raised in a group discussion and interview with these women at the Prince George Native Friendship Centre: availability of health care services, accessibility and affordability of programs and services, special roles of Indigenous Elders, and experiences of racism and discrimination. There are many areas of synergy between the needs expressed by the women and the two action plans; however, certain key areas are missing from the action plans; in particular, specific strategies for attending to the needs of Indigenous and other older populations who often feel marginalized in health care and in age-friendly planning.

En se basant sur les travaux de Sally Engle Merry, cet article étudie le parcours du droit au consentement préalable, libre et éclairé des peuples autochtones en droit interaméricain, et met en lumière les dynamiques de glissement, d’effacement et de confusion qui opèrent entre cette norme et le droit à la consultation active. En prenant en considération le contexte d’intervention des instances interaméricaines, l’article met en lumière la vulnérabilité des juges interaméricains dans leur rôle de « traducteurs » et identifie des pistes de réflexion quant aux répercussions de ces glissements discursifs sur les relations entre les peuples autochtones et les États.

La Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada (CVRC) réitérait en 2015 la volonté des Peuples Autochtones de renouveler leur relation avec l’État canadien. Cet article présente une réflexion théorique sur les possibilités offertes par le fédéralisme afin de renouveler cette relation entre les Autochtones et l’État. L'article confronte les arguments des tenants du fédéralisme comme cadre des relations entre les Autochtones et l’État et ceux des critiques de l’établissement d'un rapport fédéral de nation à nation entre les Peuples Autochtones et le Canada. L'article présente donc une proposition pour le renouvellement de la relation entre les Autochtones et l’État à travers un modèle de fédéralisme basé autour de régions autochtones autonomes.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada on Indian Residential Schools provides us with the opportunity to observe the process through which victims reconsider their place in the history of the state. The statements offered in this context put into relief the suffering and memories of assault and torture of children, to the detriment of a more complete and varied view of the origins, modes of operation, and consequences of these residential schools. By favoring the expression of a certain type of testimony, Canada’s TRC shapes many narratives of trauma, institutional crime, and national history. This essentialization of testimony leads us to question the ability of the TRC to effectively reveal the diversity and dynamics of the residential schools, the reasons for their establishment, the causes of the corruption of their goals, and the common features they might have with ongoing, enduring forms of abuse and institutional power.

In a context where cultural difference is for many a source of apprehension, often leading to discrimination against minority groups, culture and cultural rights are particularly important for Indigenous peoples. However, compared with the promotion and protection of other human rights, the marginalization of cultural rights is readily apparent. This article explores one of the sources of this marginalization by asking the following question: to what extent does the concept of culture within the field of international law influence the promotion and protection of cultural rights of minority groups? The author claims that ambiguity around the notion of culture and the absence of a binding definition in the international human rights field yield a reductionist conception of culture. By failing to do justice to minority cultural rights, this conception impacts the realization of those rights and exacerbates certain exclusions. A re-conceptualization of the notion of culture, one that accounts for anthropological ideas and concepts, is therefore needed.

Questions about the ways in which colonial subjects were acquired and maintained, and how it was that multiple and often contradictory sovereignties came to overlap in history, may not be purely academic. We raise them today because they spring from issues that remain unresolved, concerning rights to land, resources, and self-determination. Following recent scholarship on the English East India Company, the author redefines the Hudson's Bay Company, during the period before widespread settler colonialism, as a state (or “company-state”), and in this way argues that the HBC-state possessed its own kind of sovereignty. The article make three main arguments: that it was up to the HBC, not the Crown, to found Rupert's Land, defend its establishments, make alliances with locals, and challenge intruders; that HBC rule extended to cover not only the company's employees but, eventually, an indigenous “home guard” population; and that the HBC welfare regime transformed the relationship between ruler and ruled.

The Aboriginal population in Canada, much younger than the general population, has experienced a trend towards aging over the past decade. Using data from the 2001 Aboriginal Peoples Survey (APS) and the 2000/2001 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS), this article examines differences in health status and the determinants of health and health care use between the 55-and-older Aboriginal population and non-Aboriginal population. The results show that the older Aboriginal population is unhealthier than the non-Aboriginal population across all age groups; differences in health status, however, appear to converge as age increases. Among those aged 55 to 64, 7 per cent of the Aboriginal population report three or more chronic conditions compared with 2 per cent of the non-Aboriginal population. Yet, among those aged 75 and older, 51 per cent of the Aboriginal population report three or more chronic conditions in comparison with 23 per cent of the non-Aboriginal population.