In much of Canada, Aboriginal rights – including land rights – were never extinguished by treaty, and presumptively continue to exist. Jurisprudence has established that in Aboriginal groups' traditional territories, they will have Aboriginal title – the right to exclusive use and occupation - in those areas where they can demonstrate both occupation and exclusivity at the date of the assertion of Crown sovereignty, and that they will have hunting and fishing rights in areas where they can demonstrate occupation but not exclusivity. This leaves open the question of what right they have in areas where they can demonstrate exclusivity but not occupation. This thesis argues for the existence in such areas of a right that has not previously been recognized in Canada, namely a right to prohibit resource use or extraction. This right – here termed “Aboriginal dominion” – is argued to be analogous to a negative easement in European property law systems. Even drawing such an analogy, however, requires a level of analysis that has been lacking with regard to Aboriginal property rights in Canada, since courts have insisted that such rights are sui generis, unique. This insistence is here called into question, and an approach that analyzes property rights as being responsive to the needs of human beings in particular times and places is urged instead. To the extent that such analysis results in the recognition of new Aboriginal rights, including Aboriginal dominion, it may help to bring Canada in line with international norms, as embodied in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other instruments, and may contribute to achievement of the ultimate goal of Canadian Aboriginal law: reconciliation.

In Canada, national ethnocultural advocacy groups are highly visible and are consulted by government officials in areas of multiculturalism policy as well as other areas of social policy and constitutional reform. Unlike local ‘ethnic’ associations that arise for a myriad of community specific purposes, national level ‘ethnic’ umbrella associations occupy a wholly different political space. One implication of this national level of representation is that who and what the group is becomes re-configured from a form of social organisation to a form of broad representation. At the national level, the organisation not only comes to represent the concrete aspirations of group members, but also becomes a guardian and advocate of a vision of ‘the group’. The process through which the ‘group’ boundaries are socially and politically constructed is the subject of this thesis. Writers tend to explain the proliferation of national ‘ethnic’ umbrella organisations through one of four therapies: interest group theory, social movement theory, theories of ethnic mobilisation, and state intervention. There is relative agreement that demographic changes resulting from the liberalisation of Canada’s immigration policy in 1967 led to larger and more politically active ethnocultural communities. Also, writers argue that the policy of Multiculturalism established in 1971 created opportunity for ethnocultural political participation as never before. There are strengths and weaknesses to each of these approaches, and they are analysed in the thesis. However, none of the existing theories explain how and why organisations formed at the national level at given periods of time, and how the substantive delineations of representation (i.e. in terms of ‘racial’ or ‘ethnic’ identities) were determined.