This dissertation analyzes tensions between Indigenous and Canadian authority over land and governance through a critical inquiry into jurisdiction. I examine jurisdiction in the context of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake’s territory, located about three hours north of Ottawa in the northernmost boreal region of Quebec. To undertake this study of overlapping jurisdiction, I analyze the struggle over resource management across the past thirty years on the territory and their struggle against the federal land claims policy. I map the ways in which space is differentiated under competing legal orders, where on the one hand, jurisdiction is produced by the sovereign territorial state through operations of economic and political calculation, and on the other, by the Algonquin nation through a kinship nexus of allocated hunting and trapping grounds, and by the daily caretaking practices associated with Anishnabe life on the territory. I raise questions as to how simultaneous operations of law may take place in a single area, across distinctive epistemological and ontological frameworks, and how jurisdictions are produced in this context. My dissertation examines how the Algonquins of Barriere Lake have contested the socio-spatial production of state sovereignty claims through the exercise of jurisdiction over their lands.
My focus on jurisdiction in this dissertation turns our attention to the practices of settler colonial sovereignty in Canada, and especially to the role Indigenous law plays in resisting intervention on their lands. I examine the role Indigenous law plays in shaping the political economy of this country, seeking to identify whether a “distinct form of accumulation” emerges in the dialectic of settler colonialism and Canada’s staple state economy. The interpretive framework of jurisdiction allows us to examine the overlapping authority claims between Indigenous, state, regional, and private interests, and to parse out the ways in which these jurisdictional claims produce different kinds of political space.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/43701 |
| Date | 14 January 2014 |
| Creators | Pasternak, Shiri |
| Contributors | Prudham, W. Scott, Cowen, Deborah |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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