Counter-institutionalizing First Nation–Crown relations in British Columbia

Anthony W. Persaud, Terre Satterfield and Eliana Macdonald
Additional contact information
Anthony W. Persaud: Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Canada
Terre Satterfield: Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Canada

Environment and Planning A, 2020, vol. 52, issue 8, 1602-1621

Abstract: In Canada, the advance of industrial resource extraction has been moderated by a series of key legal decisions that have found that development activities within the traditional territories of Indigenous Nations may infringe on Aboriginal and treaty rights, requiring a duty to consult and potentially accommodate those affected. In British Columbia this duty is primarily satisfied through the Crown referrals process, whereby affected First Nation groups are notified by the Crown regarding potential rights-affecting decisions and are given an opportunity to formulate a response. This form of institutionalized engagement presents an ongoing challenge for First Nation groups who struggle to manage the influx of Crown referrals, as well as a dilemma for those who question its fairness and inherent colonial structure. For others, it is seen as an opportunity to leverage the duty to consult and accommodate in order to strengthen territorial self-governance. In this paper we introduce the idea of counter-institutionalizing and explore the conditions under which the Crown referrals process is being redrawn to better address, and not, the ability of First Nation groups to improve territorial self-governance and the trade-offs involved.

Keywords: First Nations; duty to consult; Crown referrals; institutions; Indigenous relations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X20924027 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:52:y:2020:i:8:p:1602-1621

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X20924027

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().