First Nations Self-Government and the Borders of the Canadian Legal Imagination‪.‬

Self-government has become a major policy objective for First Nations in Canada. The common law of aboriginal title, the law relating to treaty rights and treaty interpretation, the distribution of legislative authority over native people, and emergent jurisprudence under s. 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, currently resist native aspirations for greater control over their individual and collective destinies by imposing Anglo-Canadian categories of legal understanding onto native reality. The imposition of Anglo-Canadian norms is effected in law by a rhetoric of justification that simultaneously views native people as similar to and different than nonnative people, and establishes and maintains legal relationships of dependence and hierarchy between First Nations and the Canadian state. Each area of the law, however, contains moments of transformative possibility that could assist in the realization of First Nations self-government. The author argues for specific reconceptualizations of Anglo-Canadian conceptions of property, contract, sovereignty, and constitutional right to permit the construction of legal spaces in which First Nations self-government can take root and flourish and to enable native people to participate in the formation of laws that shape and govern their lives. L'autonomie gouvernementale est aujourd'hui un des principaux objectifs des peuples autochtones au Canada. Ce desir de controler leurs destins collectifs et individuels est confronte a l'etat actuel du droit canadien. En effet, l'imposition de concepts juridiques anglocanadiens lors de l'analyse de la propriete des terres ancestrales, des traites, du partage des competences legislatives sur les autochtones, et dans l'interpretation judiciaire de l'article 35(1) de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1982, demontre une resistance soutenue aux aspirations autochtones. Le droit se justifie par le biais d'une rhetorique qui, selon le cas, distingue ou assimile les autochtones aux personnes non-autochtones. Ce meme systeme etablit et perpetue une relation hierarchique de dependance entre les autochtones et l'Etat canadien. Chaque domaine du droit relatif aux autochtones contient pourtant les elements d'une reforme qui pourraient servir au developpement de l'autonomie gouvernementale des autochtones. L'auteur suggere qu'une remise en question des notions anglocanadiennes de propriete, de contrat, de souverainete et de droits constitutionnels s'impose afin que le droit soit en mesure de satisfaire les demandes legitimes des autochtones et ainsi leur permettre de participer activement au developpements legislatifs qui affectent directement leurs vies.