Aboriginal Rights Are Not Human Rights: Essays on Law, Politics and Culture

by Peter Kluchyski

Overview

Aboriginal rights do not belong to the broader category of universal human rights because they are grounded in the particular practices of aboriginal people. So argues Peter Kulchyski in this provocative book from the front lines of indigenous people's struggles to defend their culture from the ongoing conquest of their traditional lands. Kulchyski shows that some differences are more different than others, and he draws a border between bush culture and mall culture, between indigenous people's mode of production and the totalizing push of state-led capitalism.

Aboriginal Rights Are Not Human Rights provides much needed conceptual and historical analysis of aboriginal and treaty rights in Canada, and offers concrete suggestions to transform the current policy paradigm into one that supports and invigorates indigenous cultures in a contemporary context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781894037761
Publisher:	Arbeiter Ring Publishing
Publication date:	11/30/2012
Series:	Semaphore Series , #11
Pages:	158
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Peter Kulchyski is a leading Canadian Native Studies scholar at the University of Manitoba. He has published numerous books on Aboriginal issues, including The Red Indians, and Like the Sound of a Drum: Aboriginal Cultural Politics in Denendeh and Nunavut, which won the 2005 Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction.

Table of Contents

Foreword: letters from the trenches 7

Part 1 Concerning aboriginal rights 17

i Aboriginal rights and human rights: some thoughts 17

ii Socialism and native americans: a theoretical parenthesis 25

iii Aboriginal rights are not human rights 37

iv The emperors old clothes 72

Part 2 50 years of struggle 79

i 50 years in indian country 80

ii Inuit country 97

iii The violence of the letter: land claims and the continuing colonial conquest 103

iv Towards a new policy paradigm for first peoples 112

v Turning the page on colonial oppression: defenders of the land and idle no more! 118

Part 3 Damned on this earth 127

i Flooded and forgotten: hydro development makes a battleground of northern manitoba 128

ii The wolf has begun to howl: a report on the camp at grand rapids 134

iii How to build a legacy of hatred 140

iv As long as the money flows 148

v Marginal comment on another new building in downtown Winnipeg 156

Postscript: bush culture for a bush country 157

Sources 171

Editorial Reviews

In Aboriginal Rights Are Not Human Rights, Peter Kulchyski argues that resolutions such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples produce a "conceptual confusion" between human rights and Aboriginal rights. Whereas human rights developed in conjunction with the Western state and protect purportedly universal human characteristics, Aboriginal rights originate in Aboriginal Peoples' struggles over land and to protect traditional cultural practices. When the United Nations or Amnesty International fail to distinguish between Aboriginal and human rights, they ignore the concerns of Aboriginal Peoples such as self-determination. The book addresses three distinct features of Aboriginal rights: cultural traditions; struggles with state over land; and rights in practice. - Peter Kulchyski

From the Publisher