First Nations, Citizenship and Animals, or Why Northern Indigenous People Might Not Want to Live in Zoopolis

Abstract Recent northern First Nation land claim agreements have created a new category of First Nation citizenship. Although many embrace the category as an essential aspect of First Nation sovereignty, others reject it as a colonial imposition that constrains the possibilities for indigenous polit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Canadian Journal of Political Science
Main Author: Nadasdy, Paul
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008423915001079
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0008423915001079
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Summary:Abstract Recent northern First Nation land claim agreements have created a new category of First Nation citizenship. Although many embrace the category as an essential aspect of First Nation sovereignty, others reject it as a colonial imposition that constrains the possibilities for indigenous politics. There does indeed appear to be a gap between the legal category of First Nation citizenship and northern indigenous peoples’ ideas about political society. For one thing, the latter includes animals, while the former does not. In their recent book, Zoopolis , Donaldson and Kymlicka develop a model of animal citizenship. Although not primarily concerned with First Nation citizenship, they do assert the universality of their model, including its compatibility with indigenous ideas about proper human-animal relations. In this article, I assess those claims and show that, to the contrary, their model is in many ways antithetical to the knowledge and practices of northern indigenous peoples.