FIRST NATIONS’ SELF-GOVERNMENT, INDIGENOUS SELF-DETERMINATION: ON THE TRANSFORMATIVE ROLE OF AGONISTIC INDIGENEITY IN CHALLENGING THE CONCEPTUAL LIMITS OF SOVEREIGNTY A Thesis Submitted to the College of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Arts in the Department of Political Studies University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon By Tanya Andrusieczko © Copyright Tanya Andrusieczko, April 2012. All rights reserved. Permission to Use In presenting this thesis/dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis/dissertation in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis/dissertation work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis/dissertation or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis/dissertation. Requests for permission to copy or to make other uses of materials in this thesis/dissertation in whole or part should be addressed to: Head of the Department of Political Studies University of Saskatchewan 9 Campus Drive Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada S7N 5A5 OR Dean College of Graduate Studies and Research University of Saskatchewan 107 Administration Place Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada S7N 5A2 i Abstract This thesis explores the possibilities of decolonizing the Euro-American political traditions of sovereignty in an effort to re-craft the social contract between the Canadian state and Indigenous peoples. It argues that the Canadian state embodies a particularly narrow conception of sovereignty that limits the possibility of actors representing claims to Aboriginal self-government to challenge the paramountcy of the state. Claims to Aboriginal self-government are truncated because most meaningful manifestations of self-government that challenges the principles of sovereignty are largely rejected by the Canadian state. There are models of Aboriginal self-government that are permissible, proving that the state is willing to negotiate to some extent and to stretch its understanding of sovereignty to accommodate Aboriginal rights, but important models recognizing Indigenous nationhood are squeezed out by the limited political imagination that positions the state in its hierarchical apex, to the exclusion of Indigenous self-determination. This thesis will first delineate how Canadian sovereignty is legitimized and established, and will proceed to argue that the models of Aboriginal self-government that are permissible are those that do not challenge the paramountcy of the state and therefore allow only for a constrained model of self-determination. Through a critical theoretical lens of Indigeneity, this thesis will examine the underlying assumptions that curtail the discourse on self-government. A new social discourse framework called agonistic Indigeneity will be presented as an avenue for challenging colonial state sovereignty and for asserting political imaginations that privilege Indigenous understandings of sovereignty. ii Acknowledgements Thank you to my supervisor, Dr. Joe Garcea, for asking the probing questions that were crucial to the formative articulation of my ideas. Thank you also to Dr. Neil Hibbert, for his open door and his invitations to discuss Big Ideas, and to Dr. Greg Poelzer for being tough enough on me to make me a more accountable scholar. Thank you to Dr. Rob Innes, whose openness and generosity gave me immense confidence to pursue my questions. I wish to send an enormous thank you to my incredible partner, Dylan Chartier, for the daily support and the unbending enthusiasm for listening to me “talk it out,” and for the love that permeated his patience for listening to my defense of agonism. Thank you, most of all, to my parents, Arko and Daria, for being proud of me and letting me know it. iii Table of Contents Permission to Use ................................................................................................................. i Abstract................................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................... 1 1.1. Departure point and research question .................................................................... 2 1.2. Terminology .............................................................................................................. 3 1.2.1. Sovereignty .......................................................................................................... 4 1.2.2. Self-government ................................................................................................. 5 1.2.3. Self-determination ............................................................................................. 6 1.2.4. Limitations of translation .................................................................................. 7 1.3. The historical context of self-government ................................................................ 9 1.3.1. The 1960s and 1970s ......................................................................................... 10 1.3.2. Constitution days .............................................................................................. 12 1.3.3. Change through courts and modern treaties ................................................... 18 1.4. Theoretical perspective of thesis ............................................................................ 20 1.5. Organization of thesis ............................................................................................. 22 CHAPTER 2: THE SELF-GOVERNMENT CONTINUUM ............................................... 24 2.1. Sources of legitimacy of right to self-government .................................................. 25 2.1.1. Creator .............................................................................................................. 25 2.1.2. International recognition ................................................................................. 26 2.1.3. Royal Proclamation of 1763 ............................................................................. 27 2.1.4. Canadian law .................................................................................................... 28 2.2. Government of Canada’s Policy on Self-Government ........................................... 29 2.2.1. Nisga’a Self-Government Agreement .............................................................. 31 2.2.2. James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement ................................................. 35 2.2.2. The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement ............................................................ 39 2.3. Models of Aboriginal Self-government .................................................................. 43 2.3.1. Mini-municipalities .......................................................................................... 46 2.3.2. Adapted federalism .......................................................................................... 49 iv 2.3.4. Nationhood ...................................................................................................... 53 2.4. Accounting for variations in models ...................................................................... 56 2.5. Gaps in the continuum ........................................................................................... 57 2.5.1. Factors stunting the continuum ....................................................................... 59 2.5.2. State-centered vs. Indigenous-centered models of self-determination .......... 62 CHAPTER 3: GENEALOGY OF SOVEREIGNTY AND IMPLICATIONS ON INDIGENOUS SELF-DETERMINATION ....................................................................... 64 3.1. Importance of genealogical study ........................................................................... 65 3.2. Sovereignty in theory .............................................................................................. 67 3.3. Brief genealogy of main themes of sovereignty ...................................................... 71 3.3.1. Jean Bodin ........................................................................................................ 72 3.3.2. Thomas Hobbes ............................................................................................... 74 3.3.3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau ................................................................................... 77 3.3.4. Common themes .............................................................................................. 79 3.4. Sovereignty as power .............................................................................................. 81 3.5. Canadian state’s exertion of power .......................................................................