Buried within the everyday deployment of business vehicles by Indigenous governments as a seemingly neutral way to pursue economic development are also legal notions of corporate personhood and representation. While it is occasionally suggested that corporate law is itself part of the problem of colonialism, the idiomatic notions of “representation,” “legal personhood,” and “business as neutral” form an opaque curtain that hides colonizing tendencies within the legal structures used by Indigenous peoples. This article explores these colonial tendencies at play in Canadian corporate law, showing how corporate law’s deployment of the “legal person” sits at odds with Indigenous juridical orders.

This article addresses past and present bioarchaeological practices and human remains management in Quebec; it focuses on the challenges of creating a bioarchaeological database during a two-phase project initiated in 2018–2019 by the Kahnawake Mohawk Council. Its goal was to help Indigenous communities engaged in repatriation and rematriation procedures. Key information regarding human remains’ current location from the 2018 database served as the basis for a second phase in 2021. Of a total of 345 archaeological sites, storage location could only be confirmed for 35% of 228 Indigenous sites compared to 70% of 77 Euro-Canadian sites. Because Ancestors are the legal property of the finder, the landowner, or both, this missing information poses additional challenges to those wishing to initiate repatriation and rematriation claims. Years of non-Indigenous legal and scientific control created layers of colonial assessments. Current populations must rely on archaeological finds to assess whether they are Ancestors’ “legitimate next-of-kin.” In the meantime, Ancestors remain stored. We show how these problems stem from Quebec's colonial archaeological practices and legal frameworks. We then draw on reciprocity-based archaeology to suggest new ways of taking care of Ancestors that respect Indigenous communities’ beliefs and that involve Indigenous communities in caring for their Ancestors.

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.

There is little scholarship on museums and heritage sites that memorialize courts, judges, and law. Engaging with literatures on penal history and law and culture, we explore representations of law and power in court museums across Canada. Based on observations and interviews, we examine the meanings of the artifacts curated at court museum sites. In a post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission context, where heritage sites have been called upon to account for the atrocities experienced by Indigenous peoples in colonial institutions, we show how court museums in Canada continue to be curated in ways that naturalize the Canadian state and law, deny colonialism, and reproduce myths regarding the Canadian penal system. In our discussion, we reflect on the implications of our findings for literatures on representations of penality and law. We contend penal history museums must learn from critical, decolonizing trends in museological studies.

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.

This article, grounded within the argument that liberal citizenship and recognition-based approaches to decolonization are inappropriate responses to Indigenous calls to decolonize, proposes an alternative approach premised on re-evaluating non-Indigenous understandings of invitation, belonging and rights within the Canadian settler state. I suggest that non-Indigenous peoples consider themselves “foreigners” in need of invitation onto Indigenous lands and that, as colonial denizens, non-Indigenous Canadians take up an ethos that encourages them to re-evaluate their lives and relations with Indigenous peoples, Indigenous lands and the settler state. Such re-evaluations would encourage settlers to question the sovereignty of the state and their daily relations, as well as encourage them to place responsibilities to others above inwardly focused rights. I contend that identifying and acting upon such an ethos can provide a way through which non-Indigenous peoples can appropriately and seriously meet Indigenous peoples’ calls for change.

In R v Gladue, the Supreme Court of Canada famously remarked that the incarceration of Indigenous people represents a “crisis.” Since Gladue’s release, the language of “crisis” has been used with frequency in Canadian legal discourse. In this article, I analyze how this language has shaped the broader legal understanding of Indigenous mass imprisonment. My focus is not on specific iterations or uses, but on the cumulative impact of the language of “crisis” over the last twenty years. I suggest that however well-meaning these representations may be, their cumulative impact is harmful. In the face of the relentless intensification of Indigenous mass imprisonment, the language of “crisis” has operated to subtly entrench the colonial structures it purports to disrupt. Urging a shift away from its use, I argue that the language of “crisis” is not only ill suited to address the problem, but is part of the problem.

Nationalism in the modern world began in European metropoles but spread throughout the world system in the form of anticolonial nationalism. While many studies have explored the former, this essay systematically examines the latter. Based upon an original database of 124 cases, we test multiple theories that might account for the origins and spread of anticolonial nationalism. We adjudicate between cultural-cognitive approaches emphasizing the discursive bases for national imaginings on the one hand and, on the other, theories that emphasize political-economic dynamics and elite conflict. Our time-series regression analysis suggests that while cultural-cognitive approaches best account for the initial wave of anticolonial nationalism, from 1700 to 1878, theories stressing political-economic dynamics and elite conflict explain anticolonial nationalism in the later wave, from 1879 to 1990. The analysis suggests that theories of nationalism need to be attentive to the historical specificity of their claims.

Against the historical backdrop of the sinking of the Canadian rum-running schooner the I’m Alone by the US Coast Guard in 1929, this paper examines the re-crafting of maritime jurisdictional practices in the 2000s through the Canada-US Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement Program known as Shiprider. Thinking jurisdictionally and taking seriously the materiality of the water, we explore the significance of Shiprider’s patrols in the local context of Kaniatarowano’on:we (St. Lawrence River) which flows through Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, an indigenous border nation cleaved by the Canada-US international border where local communities contend with and continue to refuse imposed colonial settler boundaries.

The paper explores governmental perceptions and reactions to “social questions” in British colonial Africa, c. 1880-1950. By comparing three different political entities, Egypt, South Africa and Uganda, we find that authorities across cases have been acutely aware of potentially destabilising social change. Some social problems actually resulted from colonial projects themselves, giving rise to rather contradictory interpretations and policies. However, the intensity of political reactions to social questions varied widely, ranging from a largely passive approach in Egypt to the introduction of modern welfare in South Africa. We argue that perceptions and responses to social dislocation had a long-term impact on patterns of state formation and social policy development.

Postmedieval protestant missionaries working in exotic locations used objects both as a marker of their own ‘civilisation’ in contrast to that of the local populations and as a means of engaging these communities with Christianity. European things were displayed and conspicuously used to encourage a consumer mindset and interest in capitalism, thought to be crucial steps on the path to full conversion. Excavations at a Presbyterian mission house on Tanna Island, Vanuatu, recovered a remarkable assemblage of nineteenth-century British-made transfer-printed ceramics for such a remote location. These objects reflect multiple, complex meanings including performance of a ‘civilised’ British identity, romanticized ideals of pastoral landscapes, and conceptions of death and rebirth in the afterlife. These meanings were complicated by the context of cross-cultural interactions that were necessary to the missionary project.

Guaranteeing “certainty” (for governments, business development, society, etc.) is often the goal of state land rights settlements with Indigenous peoples in Canada. Certainty is also often seen as an unequivocally desirable and positive state of affairs. This paper explores how certainty and uncertainty intersect with the challenges of decolonization in North America. I explore how settler certainty and entitlement to Indigenous land has been constructed in past colonial and current national laws, land policies, and ideologies. Then, drawing on data from fieldwork among activists against land rights, I argue that their deep anger about their uncertainty regarding land and their futures helps to reveal how certainty and entitlement underpin “settler states of feeling” (Rifkin). If one persistent characteristic of settler colonialism is settler certainty and entitlement, then decolonization, both for settlers and for jurisprudence, may therefore mean embracing uncertainty. I conclude by discussing the relationship between certainty, uncertainty, and decolonization.

The archaeological study of recent periods in Malta is in its infancy. Despite the high potential for an historical archaeology of Malta contributing to broader issues, such as an understanding of Mediterranean trade and colonialism, as well as the cultural history of Malta, the archaeological resource has remained under-explored. The aim of this article is to address the situation and offer an initial classification and interpretation of local and imported red earthenware ceramics. It will demonstrate the need for such work in relation to answering questions relating to local production, international trade, and foodways.

Drawing on unpublished material on the history of the Culbertson Tract, records obtained through access to information requests, and firsthand knowledge from the community, we trace Mohawk legal and extralegal strategies aimed at reclaiming the Tract to show how Canada legitimizes and manages the continued dispossession of land from the Mohawks of Tyendinaga. Through the criminalization of community members opposing settlement terms under the land claims policy, we conclude that the policy of extinguishment contained in the land claims policy is furthered by policing resistance with the use of security forces on the ground.

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.