Full Text

1
CHAPTER 12
Changing land tenure, defining subjects: Neoliberalism and property regimes on native reserves
Jessica Dempsey, Kevin Gould and Juanita Sundberg
Note: This may not be the final version of the chapter, as it is currently in process of publication.
These are contradictory times in Canada. The United Nations (UN) Development Index consistently ranks Canada among the top 10 states, yet First Nations in Canada would rank sixtyeighth (Assembly of First Nations n.d.). One out of four First Nations children live in poverty, whereas for non-First Nations Canadian children this ratio is one in six. These discrepancies are compounded by the fact that non-Aboriginal Canadians earn almost twice the annual income of
Aboriginal peoples. This situation led the UN Office of the High Commission on Human Rights’
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to overtly criticize the Canadian government for its deplorable record on First Nations’ poverty. In 1998, the committee called for an urgent national strategy on the issue and, in 2006, it expressed serious concern about
Canada’s lack of progress on First Nations poverty (CESCR 2006). At the same time, a number of recent Supreme Court verdicts have challenged the legacy of colonial history in Canada.
Through a stream of progressive rulings on Aboriginal rights and title (i.e., Supreme Court of
Canada decisions in Delgamuukw (1997) and Haida (2004), and the BC Supreme Court decision in December 2007 known as Xeni Gwet’in, or the Williams decision), the Supreme Court has made very clear the legal responsibilities the Canadian government has to First Nations.
Alongside such legal challenges is a broad international mobilization in favour of indigenous rights as demonstrated by the recent passage of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
People adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2007. Canada, however, was one of four countries to vote against the General

References: Anderson, K. 2007. Race and the crisis of humanism. New York, NY: Routledge. Anderson, T.L., B. Benson, and T. Flanagan, eds. 2006. Self-determination: The other path for Native Americans Assembly of First Nations. Undated fact sheet. http://www.afn.ca/cmslib/general/SR-FS.pdf (last accessed 15 January 2008). Anderson, T.L. 1995. Sovereign nations or reservations? An economic history of American Indians Ballantyne, B., M.Bristow, B. Davison, S. Harrington, and K. Khan. 2000. How can land Tenure 33 Binswanger, H., K. Deininger, and G. Feder. 1995. Power, distortions, revolt and reform in agricultural land relations T.N. Srinivasan, vol. 3, 2659-2772. Amsterdam: North Holland. Blomley, N. 2004. Unsettling the city. New York: Routledge. Brown, W. 2005. Edgework: critical essays on knowledge and politics. Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press. Chakrabarty, D. 2000. Provincializing Europe: postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. De Soto, H. 2000. The mystery of capital. New York: Basic Books Dean, M Feder, G. 1993. The economics of land and titling in Thailand. In The Economics of rural organization, eds Feder, G. and Nishio, A. 1998. The benefits of land titling and registration: Economic and social34 Ferguson, J. 1990. The anti-politics machine: “Development,” depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho Field, E. and M.Torero. 2002. Do property titles increase credit among the urban poor? Evidence from Peru Flanagan, T. 2007. A roadmap for Aboriginal self-reliance. Fraser Forum (September). Flanagan, T. and C. Alcantara. 2002. Individual property rights on Canadian Indian reserves. A Fraser Institute Occasional Paper, no Flanagan, T. and C. Alcantara. 2004. Individual property rights on Canadian Indian reserves. Queen’s Law Journal 29: 489-532. Flanagan, T. and C. Alcantara. 2005. Individual property rights on Canadian Indian reserves: A review of the jurisprudence Foucault, M. 1991. Governmentality. Trans. R. Braidotti and revised by C. Gordon. In The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality, eds Foucault, M. 1972. The archaeology of knowledge. Trans. A. M. Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications. Glassman, J. 2006. Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession, accumulation by “extra-economic” means Goldberg, D. T. 1993. Racist culture: Philosophy and the politics of meaning. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Gordon, C. 1991. Governmental rationality: an introduction. In The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality, eds Grandin, G. 2006. Empire’s workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the rise of the new imperialism Harris, C. 2002. Making native space: Colonialism, resistance, and reserves in British Columbia. Vancouver: UBC Press. Harvey, D. 2003. The new imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Helin, C. 2006. Dances with dependency. Orca Spirit Publishing & Communications, Inc. Hendrix, S. 1996. Testing the De Soto theory for property records modernization: An evaluation of the model and its applicability in El Salvador with lessons learned Heynen, N., McCarthy, J., Prudham, S., and Robbins, P. 2007. Neoliberal environments: False promises and unnatural consequences Hulme, P. 1990. The spontaneous hand of nature: Savagery, colonialism, and the enlightenment. In The Enlightenment and its shadows, eds Inda, J. X. 2006. Targeting immigrants: Government, technology, and ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Kelm, M.E. 1998. Colonizing bodies: Aboriginal health and healing in British Columbia. Vancouver: UBC Press. Klein, N. 2007. The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. Picador. Kobayashi, A. and L. Peake. 2000. Racism out of place: Thoughts on whiteness and an antiracist geography in the new millennium Larner, W. and W. Walters. 2004. Globalisation as governmentality. Alternatives 29(5): 495-415. Libin K. 2008a. Rethinking the reserve. National Post. 18 January, A1, A19-21. Libin K. 2008b. Shackled by red tape. National Post. 26 January, A1, A21. Libin, K and C. Strahl 2008. Interview: The lip service must end. National Post. http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/02/22/kevin-libinthe-lip-service-must-end.aspx (last accessed 6 April 2009). Mansfield, B. 2007. Privatization: Property and the remaking of nature-society relations. Antipode 39(3): 393-405. Manuel, A. 2005. Interview on CBC Radio, The Current. 24 November. Mawani, R. 2007. Legalities of nature: Law, empire, and wilderness landscapes in Canada. Social Identities 13(6): 715-734. Mitchell, T, 2005. The work of economics: How a discipline makes its world. European Journal of Sociology 46(2): 297-320. Mitchell, T. 2007. The properties of markets. In Do economists make markets?, eds. D. MacKenzie, F