Uncertain Accommodation
Aboriginal Identity and Group Rights in the Supreme Court of Canada
A bold analysis of what happened when Canada attempted to extend group rights to Aboriginal people in the early 1980s and why it went wrong.
Description
In 1982, Canada formally recognized Aboriginal rights within its Constitution. The move reflected a consensus that states should and could use group rights to protect and accommodate subnational groups within their borders. Decades later, however, no one is happy. This state of affairs, Panagos argues, is rooted in a failure to define what aboriginality means, which has led to the promotion and protection of a single vision of aboriginality – that of the justices of the Supreme Court. He concludes that there can be no justice so long as the state continues to safeguard a set of values and interests defined by non-Aboriginal people.
Reviews
This book is highly recommended for professionals, scholars, and graduate students or simply for those interested in understanding how the state handles identity and group-related rights.
- E. Acevedo, California State University, Los Angeles
…Panagos succeeds in giving the intricate and controversial topic of aboriginality thorough treatment in a concise manner. Uncertain Accommodation generates interesting discussion that accommodates all readers, regardless of legal expertise … [This book] adds to the literature by providing a balanced and sophisticated analysis of where Canadian jurisprudence went wrong regarding the definition of Aboriginal rights, and what can be done to improve the situation.
- Braeden Pivnick