Indigenous Peoples' Right to Self-Determination

The early history of indigenous peoples vis-à-vis settlers in Canada is the chronicle of extermination and assimilation. The followed decades of historic disenfranchise ingrained into the souls and minds of indigenous communities a feeling of skepticism towards the legislative bodies that formulated discriminatory laws against them. In the contemporary world, how to overcome this feeling of distrust and enable the indigenous political input into government operations? In the era of human rights and indigenous upsurge, how to achieve a thriving coexistence of indigenous and non-indigenous communities? Indigenous Peoples' Right to Self-Determination: the Relational Model of Self-Determination in Canada speaks about the interdependence of both communities and provides insights into a new model of their coexistence based on mutual recognition. A separate indigenous parliament appears to be such an amalgam model, an institutional arrangement that reinstates autonomy and ensures political representation of indigenous peoples at the federal level while upholding the system of checks and balances, the cornerstone of a Western-style democracy.

Auteur

Elvira Nurieva holds her Master s degree in Political Science from Central European University. Her research focuses on federalism, governance, self-determination and the rights of indigenous peoples. Nurieva was a Fulbright Fellow in the United States in 2008-2009 and received the Ernest Hemingway Research Grant in 2005.