Indigenous-crown relations in Canada and the Yukon: the Peel Watershed case, 2017

• Main Author: Baranik, Lauren Alexandra
• Other Authors: Ehrlander, Mary F., McCartney, Leslie, Castillo, Victoria, Hirsch, Alexander
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: indigenous peoples; land tenure; Canada; Yukon; government relations; Fairbanks; Indian; Arctic; First Nations; inuit; Metis; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11122/10609

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2019 The history of Indigenous-Crown relations in Canada has varied regionally and temporally. With the Constitution Act of 1982, however, Canada entered a new era. Section 35 of the Constitution recognized Indigenous treaty and land rights, and the Supreme Court of Canada has consistently interpreted this section liberally in favor of Canada's Indigenous Peoples. The Court has upheld the honour of the Crown in emphasizing the national and subnational governments' duty to consult diligently when engaging in development on the traditional territories of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit. The "citizens-plus" model of asserting and protecting Indigenous rights, first coined in the Hawthorn Report of 1966, has proved effective in these court cases, most recently in the Yukon's Peel Watershed case from 2014 to 2017. Yet, engaging with the state to pursue and to invoke treaty rights has forced socioeconomic and political changes among Yukon First Nations that some scholars have argued are harmful to the spiritual and physical wellbeing of Indigenous communities, mainly through alienation from their homelands. The Peel Watershed case demonstrates the unique historical development of Yukon First Nations rights and the costs and benefits of treaty negotiations and asserting Indigenous rights. Introduction -- Chapter One: Literature Review and Methods -- Literature review -- Historical analysis -- Indigenous rights in Canada -- Literature review synthesis and conclusion -- Methods. Chapter Two: History of Indigenous-Crown relations in Canada to the modern land claims era -- French Crown-Indigenous relations -- British Crown-Indigenous relations -- the department of indian affairs as a branch of the military (1755-1830) -- The Department of Indian Affairs under civil jurisdiction (1830-1867) -- Canadian Crown-Indigenous affairs -- Northwestward expansion (1870-1920s) -- The Department of Indian Affairs in the Northwest (the 1920s to 1944) -- The rise of Indigenous rights ...