Welcome to Political Science 311: Aboriginal Politics and Governments, a three-credit senior-level university course that examines the complex issues associated with Aboriginal peoples and their politics. The central issues of this course include the history and context of Aboriginal government and political movements, and the political goals of Aboriginal peoples today. Political Science 311 will help you recognize the efforts of Aboriginal peoples to create and recreate their governing institutions, which is essential for understanding Aboriginal politics. This course will also help you understand the policies of the various levels of government in Canada, particularly the federal government, concerning the circumstances, rights, and self-determination of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples.

The governments of Aboriginal peoples have been the subject of attention by the media, academics, and policy makers in recent years. First Ministers conferences to deal specifically with Aboriginal rights were held in 1983, 1984, 1985, and 1987. Issues concerning Aboriginal peoples were also a significant aspect of debates concerning the Charlottetown Accord. They were the focus, from 1991 to 1996, of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the largest Royal Commission in Canadian history. In 1995, the Government of Canada formally recognized the inherent right of Aboriginal self-government, although it set conditions for its implementation. The creation of Nunavut in 1999 attracted world-wide attention to this unique approach to Aboriginal self-determination. In recent years, the Supreme Court of Canada has delivered several controversial landmark decisions on the subject of Aboriginal rights, although not on issues related directly to self-government.

Aboriginal issues have come under scrutiny partly as a result of troubling incidents that have demanded the attention of people throughout the country. Since the late 1980s, for example, Aboriginal people have organized a number of roadblocks and demonstrations. In 1999, the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Marshall case led to violence involving Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal fishers and federal government fisheries officers in New Brunswick. Reports on the devastating statistics of high rates of suicide and death from other causes among Aboriginal youth, and accounts of abuse at residential schools have also added to the public’s concern.

Public attention has also mirrored the growing demand by Aboriginal peoples that issues of importance to them be given adequate attention. These issues include the increasing political activity of Aboriginal governments; concerns over land issues; the introduction of new initiatives, such as the federal government’s efforts to change the Indian Act as it relates to First Nations’ governance; and the Aboriginal peoples’ desire that Canada respond in a more substantial way than it has to date to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and that it move more quickly to implement its recognition of the inherent right of Aboriginal peoples to self-government by facilitating the creation of Aboriginal governments based on this principle.

The first principle [of cultural accommodation] is knowledge of the other. . . . I believe it is the most fundamental principle in any human relationship, . . . and that so long as there is a lack of knowledge of the other, any prospect for re-establishing the . . . relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal may be illusory, if not utopian.

François Trudel (cited in Report of The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 1993, 9)

Aboriginal movements for change and future developments in Aboriginal governments will have a dramatic impact on Aboriginal peoples in Canada. If the right of Aboriginal peoples to govern themselves and to make decisions about issues that affect them is recognized more fully, their future situations may be entirely different from their present ones.

Efforts to establish a new relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples of this country will also greatly affect all of society. Many non-Aboriginal Canadians find the prospect of Aboriginal self-government to be threatening. This reaction may be partly based on a misperception of the meaning of the term “self-government” and of the stated goals of Aboriginal political movements, as well as on a lack of understanding of Aboriginal peoples in general. It may also reflect the tendency of the media to over-generalize its coverage of cases of apparent financial irresponsibility on the part of a minority of Aboriginal leaders.

Aboriginal organizations and governments have established relationships with non-Aboriginal individuals and organizations in recent years. Yet the association between Aboriginal governments and the Canadian governing system has not been fully realized. Political Science 311 examines the efforts to define this association, the challenges thus raised, and the answers being offered to these challenges.