Abstract: At the end of 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government agreed to state that Quebec is a nation within a nation. Additionally, in the 2015 federal election, questions surrounding the Clarity Act and the New Democratic Party’s Sherbrooke Declaration rekindled questions and debates surrounding not only Quebec’s unique place in the Canadian federation but also the potential and concerns surrounding the idea of Quebec’s right to separate. However, an important segment to Quebec’s right to separate was not only missing from recent discussions but has traditionally been left to the peripheries of the debate: the rights, self-determination, and territorial integrity of Indigenous nations. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to assess Quebec sovereignty and Indigenous nationhoods since 1960: first assessing French and English colonization of present-day Quebec, the Quiet Revolution and ‘Quebec’s Awakening,’ and, lastly, the place of Indigenous rights, self-determination and territorial rights in relation to Quebec’s right to separate. Research will primarily reflect government documents, federal and provincial party documents, as well as primary sources on Quebec and Indigenous sovereignties. This paper concludes that Quebec’s right to separate with territory that is still, to this day, inherently Indigenous lands perpetuates the continued colonization and degradation of Indigenous nations if they are not properly included in the discussion and process of Quebec becoming a separate state in the twenty-first century.

Abstract: Participation is a crucial dimension for the legitimacy of democratic regimes. Yet, all the citizens are not equal when it comes to political participation. Aboriginals in Canada systematically vote less than other Canadians during Canadian elections; this leads to a representation deficit. The main goal of this paper is to understand the processes that lead to a mobilisation (or to an absence of mobilisation) of urban Aboriginals at Canadian elections. Political participation is a classic theme in political science. Yet, it has mainly been studied based on individual-level or system-level explanations.This paper adopts an original meso-level analysis and aims to observe this phenomenon from a new angle, analysing the possible influence of the urban Aboriginal organisations on the mobilisation of their members, during Canadian electoral cycles. Its focus on urban Aboriginals is also innovative: most research focuses on Aboriginals on reserve despite the fact that urban Aboriginals constitute a growing population (nowadays, in Canada, more than 50% of Aboriginals are living in urban centres). Considering the social capital theory of Putnam and the civic voluntarism model of Brady, Schlozman and Verba, we analyse if these organisations develop bridging actions, political recruitment actions and actions of information, likely to favour the electoral mobilisation of their members. This qualitative research relies on interviews conducted in nine Aboriginal organisations, located in four Albertan cities.

Paper / Communication

Abstract: Treaty federalists have largely represented treaty federalism as a “nation-to-nation” system of duality and parallelism, in which First Nations are entitled to the same institutions of self rule as other sovereign entities like the provinces and the Canadian state. Critics suggest that the privileging of these interpretations of treaty federalism has reinforced the “living apart” dimension rather than the “living together” dimension that federalism, writ large, equally requires. The theoretical tension underpinning this debate rests on competing conceptualizations of legitimate Indigenous-state relations: on the one hand, separateness and duality, while on the other, co-operation and shared governance. Seeking to bridge the divide, this paper will consider whether and how the theory of treaty federalism conceives of shared rule and, in particular, what concepts structure how shared rule might be institutionalized within the treaty federalism framework. Undertaking a thorough theoretical analysis of treaty federalism, this paper will assess the extent to which shared rule, as conceived generally by federal scholars, is built into the theory as it currently stands. This paper concludes that the theory of treaty federalism is incomplete with regard to shared rule because the dualism that it privileges will neither create nor sustain the kinds of shared institutions that foster an effective federal arrangement. However, in adapting the theory to give equal weight to the elements of treaties that recognize the necessity of collaborative and shared institutions, treaty federalism can then evolve into a viable model for Indigenous intergovernmental relations in Canada.

Abstract: This paper interrogates the recent development in anti-colonial activism of advancing relationships between First Nations' groups and other activists as between accomplices in contrast to allies. What does this mean and how does it impact on building coalitions between social movements and/or within a social movement like the environmental movement? This is examined in the context of the protests against hydrolic-fracking for shale gas in New Brunswick with particular attention given to the 2013 blockades by the Mi'kmaq nation in Elsipotog, NB, which resulted in violent clashes between protesters and the police.