Sentenced to sovereignty: sentencing, sovereignty, and identity in the Nunavut Court of Justice.

• Main Author: Gevikoglu, Jeanette
• Other Authors: Berger, Benjamin L.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: Sentencing; Criminal Law; Nunavut; Indigenous; Inuit; Aboriginal; Identity; Sovereignty; Canada; inuit
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/3588

In Canada, sentencing has been the target of reforming the criminal justice system with a view to alleviating the over-representation of indigenous people in the criminal justice system and the historic injustice perpetuated against indigenous communities through colonialism. My thesis explores how sentencing decisions from the Nunavut Court of Justice construct and shape Inuit identity in Nunavut. My research analyzes the sentencing decisions of the Nunavut Court of Justice since its creation in 1999. Using selected sentencing decisions as case studies, I interrogate how the Court uses notions of “Inuit”, “Inuit culture”, and “Nunavut”, both implicitly and explicitly. I show how rather than a tool for alleviating the historic injustice perpetuated against indigenous people through colonialism and systemic racism, the sentencing process perpetuates historic injustice through constructing binary, essentialized notions of Inuit identity. The consequences affect both the criminal justice system and the realization of indigenous self-determination. I conclude that as a result the Nunavut Court of Justice exemplifies an intractable dilemma facing the criminal justice system for indigenous people that sentencing reforms cannot solve. I suggest new ways of imagining criminal justice and indigenous self-determination that provide hope for a way out of the intractable dilemma. Graduate