Abstract: The Supreme Court of Canada has created a narrow framework for recognizing Aboriginal and treaty rights in Canada’s Constitution by reference to historic moments of contact, assertions of sovereignty, and negotiated agreements. This approach has placed historical inquiries that search for “original” understandings at the centre of the court’s jurisprudence. This article argues that law should not […]

Abstract: This article considers Indigenous people as political actors in their quest for sovereignty within the liberal democracies of Canada, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the USA (the CANZUS nations). I aim to show that, despite the structures of settler colonialism that both resist and then co-opt dissent, seeking sovereignty is, as political philosopher Jacques Ranciѐre […]

Abstract: At many Canadian universities it is now common to publicly acknowledge Indigenous lands, treaties, and peoples. Yet, this practice has yet to be considered as a subject of scholarly inquiry. How does this practice vary and why? In this paper we describe the content and practice of acknowledgment, linking this content to treaty relationships (or […]

Abstract: For the Métis Nation in Canada, self-government remains the ‘essence of the struggle’ for which their political leader, Louis Riel, sacrificed his life in 1885. As one of Canada’s founding peoples, the Métis have sought to reclaim their Indigenous right to self-government by establishing democratic governance bodies, enhancing their economic capacity and pursuing state recognition […]

Abstract: This chapter considers Trollope’s examination of the tensions between indigenous and introduced species in his travelogue Australia and New Zealand (1873). Examining his engagement with “ecological imperialism,” it discusses his representation of Australian native animals, which Trollope frequently depicts as lacking in vigor, and the difficulties that they often faced when confronted with predatory species […]

Description: This book provides a new reading of the biblical book of Numbers in a commentary form. Mainstream readings have tended to see the book as a haphazard junkyard of material that connects Genesis-Leviticus with Deuteronomy (and Joshua) and that has been composed at a late stage in the history of ancient Israel. In contrast, this […]

Abstract: In settler-colonies such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, the historical impacts of colonisation on the health, social, economic and cultural experiences of Indigenous peoples are well documented. However, despite being a commonly deployed trope, there has been scant attention paid to precisely how colonial processes contribute to contemporary disparities in health […]

The paper is available here.

Description: Beyond the Amur describes the distinctive frontier society that emerged in the Amur, a river region that shifted between Qing China and imperial Russia as the two empires competed for resources. Official histories depict the Amur as a distant battleground caught between rival empires. Zatsepine, by contrast, views it as a unified natural economy populated […]

Description: Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world’s leading incarcerator. Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez unmasks how histories of […]