Indigenous peoples have, to varying degrees, turned to the courts to litigate their ongoing disputes with Canada's settler colonial governments. Scholars have examined well the ways courts are used for strategic political ends by a variety of Indigenous and non-Indigenous litigants and are laden with settler values and institutional logics that are foreign to Indigenous peoples. However, it is less clear what effect turning to the courts in pursuit of strategic goals has on specific relationships between Indigenous peoples. This gap is more pronounced in Métis scholarship where there have been few final appellate cases. This paper argues the interaction between the Manitoba Métis Federation and Treaty 1 peoples seeking leave to intervene at the Manitoba Court of Appeal in MMF v. Canada illuminates the way litigating Indigenous-settler disputes can advance divisive, exclusionary, zero-sum political relationships between Indigenous peoples. These fractious interactions serve to undermine the construction of a co-ordinated and related inter-Indigenous decolonizing politics.
The following seeks to advance relational research methods by providing more specificity in how relationality is defined, and by engaging commonly held refrains on relational research. Responding to concerns about Indigenous relationality being pan-Indigenous, we suggest a three-part framework that defines Indigenous relationality. First, relationality as a defining aspect of global Indigeneity; second, relational understandings that emerge from specific Indigenous nations and third, relationality as manifest within inter-Indigenous connections. Building on our definitional work, we argue that three common refrains within relational research methods should be extended. First, researchers should be able to balance a slippage between the particular context of Indigenous nations and the general context of Indigenous relationality. Second, we have to do more than simply value relationships, and consider how we use relationality for critical thinking. Finally, ensuring accountability within Indigenous research requires us to revisit how we analyze the concept of community.
This article explores the intense fight over land between the Métis Nation and the Treaty One peoples (interveners) as it played out in the landmark Manitoba Métis Federation v Canada and Manitoba hearing at the Supreme Court of Canada. The article argues that this battle demonstrates the way zero-sum understandings of land, as well as racialized derivative title logics, animate the Treaty One peoples’ court strategy. By examining the contexts and complexities of these logics, the author shows that Treaty One peoples’ arguments undermine their own interests while also serving to undermine the formation of a coordinated Métis/Treaty One court strategy. The work uses Vine Deloria Jr’s interventions on time and the choices that make future worlds to argue that Métis and Treaty One peoples are not well served by narrowly self-interested litigation strategies. The piece concludes that shifting to a coordinated strategy would help avoid the weaknesses of Treaty One’s position while also better addressing the shared struggles of Métis and Treaty One peoples.
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