In March of 2018 Fulbright Canada, the Center for the Study of Canada at the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh, and the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa convened the third annual Canada Colloquium, entitled “Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Peoples: Sovereignty, Sustainability, and Reconciliation.” The meeting featured exceptional scholars (both indigenous and non-indigenous), community leaders, youth representatives, and university administrators.
The 2018 Canada Colloquium addressed issues of critical importance to our two countries. More specifically, the program was designed to explore significant and complex issues related to indigenous persons in Hawai`i, the United States more broadly, and Canada. In addition to an impressive group of scholars from Canada and the United States, we were pleased that distinct indigenous communities were represented and that indigenous leaders from Hawai`i were able to participate, allowing for a full and constructive discussion.
Youth engagement also played a critical role in the 2018 colloquium. Working with the Kohala Institute, the program included a youth leadership forum, where a number of young (mostly indigenous) leaders representing a variety of youth and student programs spent four days on an historic taro patch favored by King Kamehameha I. In this classroom, students learned about the mo’olelo (history) of the land and engaged in cultural traditions and practices related to agriculture and water management while also undertaking group projects that helped participants deepen their relationships with each other. This exercise fostered a sense of place and the spirit of aloha while enabling a connection to the environment, self, and others. On the last day, the students hosted colloquium participants in a place-based experience and panel discussion. This part of the program was made possible by the generous support of the US Department of State, the Kohala Foundation, and the Killam Fellowships Program.
In accordance with Hawaiian cultural tradition, the Colloquium started with a protocol to welcome attendees to the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel located in the moku (district) of Kohala on the island of Hawai`i. The opening introduced people to the ʻāina and prepared them for a spiritual and intellectual week of aloha ʻāina (love of the land or one’s country), mālama ʻāina (care of the land or one’s country), kūpono (justice), and kākou (inclusivity), which underpinned this event.
At its core, the 2018 Canada Colloquium involved a series of academic panels that focused on the following issues and themes: social inclusion, traditional knowledge and identity; rights, recognition and reconciliation; legal impediments to reconciliation; health policy and healthy communities; sustainability and economic challenges; and, storytelling. There were three special sessions. The first was a panel discussion entitled “Native Hawaiian Sovereignty—Views from Across the Pae ‘Āina,” which raised many interesting issues and provided a critical context for our broader discussions. The panel featured Davianna Pomaikai McGregor from the University of Hawai`i Manoa; Jonathon Osorio from the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai`i Manoa; Larry Kimura, the University of Hawai`i at Hilo; and D. Noelani Kalipi, Executive Director, Kohala Institute. A second panel, entitled “Indigenous Collaborations through the Gallery,” included Julia Nagam, Winnipeg Art Gallery; Jarita Greyeyes, University of Winnipeg; Heather Igloliorte, Concordia University; and Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter, University of Winnipeg/Winnipeg Art Gallery. The third special session was a discussion of Indigenous programming at Canadian universities, led by University of Vancouver Island president Ralph Nilson. Each of these elements was critical to the success of the program; each was part of the underlying logic of the colloquium.
This special issue of the American Review of Canadian Studies includes papers from the Colloquium that focus mainly on legal and political issues. They represent only a portion of the extraordinary scholarly output, and the colloquium partners are currently working on broader collection to appear in the future as an edited volume. Each article in this journal addresses a key political and legal challenge that directly reflects the relationship between indigenous peoples and communities on the one hand and the national, state, and provincial governments on the other.
The first article is by Kathleen Mahoney, a University of Calgary law professor and the Chief Negotiator representing the Assembly of First Nations in recent Residential School Settlement Agreement negotiations in Canada. It presents a compelling and nuanced argument—in her words: “when reconciliation is the desired goal of the parties, as it was in the Indian Residential School case, the procedures and principles required to achieve it require solutions far beyond those rooted in traditional legal methods and principles inherited from Canada’s colonial masters.” The article identifies the inadequacies of the traditional justice system and the lawyers that operate within that system. Her conclusions focus on the need to explore different theories (and sometimes competing perspectives) if the system is ever to achieve genuine reconciliation.
The second article by Professor Sam Halibi, a law professor and Fulbright scholar, focuses on the role of the provinces, states, and territories in shaping federal policies for the health of indigenous peoples. Halibi makes a compelling argument about the origins and direction of indigenous health care delivery (especially in Canada). His analysis is fresh and meaningful, and his approach unique, especially in its comparison of Ontario and Hawaiian approaches. His article asks: are there significant differences between Canada and the United States, and among their provinces, states, and territories in the realm of health care for indigenous peoples? The author’s answer is yes, and he demonstrates well the nature of this “unevenness.”
The article authored by Courtney Jung, a University of Toronto political scientist, aims to critically assess the 1999 Framework Agreement (FA), a government-to-government accord that allows First Nations to opt out of provisions of Canada’s Indian Act that deal with land and resource management, as a strategy for self-determination and reconciliation. Working from a dataset of 76 of the 78 operational land codes, she concludes that most First Nations employing the FA have approved land codes that do not significantly diverge from the terms of the Indian Act, while others have developed innovations that enhance their capacity for economic development and autonomy.
Adrienne Davidson, another political scientist, explores in her article how the origins of federal land claim agreements (in both Canada and the United States) were a first step toward recognition of indigenous goals for self-determination. She notes that these early actions led to a steady expansion of indigenous rights and a willingness to accommodate indigenous goals for political self-determination. In the end, even though both countries demonstrated good intentions, and even though both countries began implementing broadly similar policies at approximately the same time, the degree to which indigenous political and economic self-determination has been realized varies considerably both within and between the two countries.
Stephen Cornell and Miriam Jorgensen, both senior scholars and members of the leadership team at the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona, examine the relationship between social inclusion as a policy (and a public relations project) and indigenous self-governance in their article. As indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States reclaim rights of self-determination and work to put those rights into practice, their actions test the limits of social inclusion. Their article offers clear insight into what social inclusion means and, at the same time, provides a stark contrast with plans for self-determination. Their conclusions, which offer a positive look at the road ahead, suggest that priority should be driven by the task of nation-building and not by a goal of assimilation, and that there are countless success stories in this area.
The last two articles in this issue touch on two interesting vectors of discussion: the relationship of the state to indigenous persons in the North; and place of indigenous peoples in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—recently reinvented as the USMCA—as the Government of Canada sought a separate section in the pact on nation-to-nation-to-nation issues. The article by Victoria Herrmann, the president and managing director of The Arctic Institute, a Washington-based think tank dedicated to Arctic security research, is a detailed account of how the discovery of oil in Alaska directly affected both the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and, more broadly, the relationship between the state and indigenous persons. Her article focuses considerable attention on media-generated images and on the use of multi-modal discourse as a theoretical lens to examine these issues. Her concluding section, which analyzes news images from 1974 to the completion of the pipeline in 1977, deconstructs both environmentalism and self-sufficiency.
The final article, by Leah Sarson, an assistant professor of political science at Dalhousie University, analyzes the effect of indigenous peoples and governance in the Canada-US trade relationship. It specifically considers how indigenous engagement in the global economy affects the bilateral trade regime, foreign direct investment, and cross-border trade. The driver for this analysis centers on demands for the inclusion of an “indigenous chapter” in the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiations in 2017 and 2018.
Taken together, these articles provide fresh perspectives on a dynamic subject. It will be up to the reader to determine their value and the contributions that they will make to their respective disciplines and, perhaps more importantly, to the broader discussions on how indigenous issues, land claims, self-determination, resource allocation, and related matters impact the process of reconciliation and self-government.
In addition to significant support from Fulbright Canada, the Center for the Study of Canada at SUNY Plattsburgh, and the Social Science Faculty at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa, we are especially grateful to Global Affairs Canada, the Canadian Consulate in San Francisco, the United States State Department, and the Kohala Institute for their generous support.