Restructuring Relations: Indigenous

Self-Determination, Governance, and

Gender Rauna Kuokkanen
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Restructuring Relations
Restructuring Relations

INDIGENOUS SELF-D
​ E T E R M I N AT I O N , G O V E R N A N C E ,

AND GENDER

Rauna Kuokkanen

   

1
1
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for Elias and Matias and all future generations of Indigenous children
Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Indigenous Feminist Examination of Self-​determination 1

1. Self-​Determination: Foundational Value 22

2. Indigenous Self-​Government Structures in Canada, Greenland, and Sápmi 60

3. Implementing Indigenous Self-​Determination: Self-​Administration,

Rematriation, or Independence? 97

4. Gendering Indigenous Self-​Government 138

5. Self-​Determination and Violence against Indigenous Women 179

6. Indigenous Gender Justice as Restructuring Relations 217

Notes 237
Bibliography 307
Index 353

vii
Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to all who have supported me through the process that has made
this book possible. These people include colleagues, family, friends, and the research
participants and research assistants whom I acknowledge below. There are also general
and material factors that have enabled this book. One of the general factors is the emer-
gence and growth of sustained and strong Indigenous feminist theory and practice in the
past decade. This book would have not been possible without the critical interventions
of Indigenous feminist scholarship and activism not only in research, but also Indigenous
and mainstream societies. Whereas today we can say that Indigenous feminism exists
without apology, it was not the case when I was drafting my research proposal that be-
came this book and submitted my grant application in 2009 (although to my great sur-
prise, I received an SSHRC Standard Research Grant the first time I applied).
I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for this finan-
cial support, which enabled me to do the fieldwork for this book and employ excellent
research assistants to help collect and transcribe the research material. I am particularly
grateful to Sam Grey for her extensive and invaluable research assistance, which included
identifying research participants and conducting interviews in the Lower Mainland and
on Victoria Island (British Columbia). She also continuously flagged and provided me
with relevant literature and other sources. I also thank my other research assistants: Tuuli
Miettunen, who provided help with transcribing interviews conducted in the Sámi lan-
guage and doing extensive newspaper searches in Finland; Astrid Hägerdal, who helped
with transcribing interviews conducted in Swedish and translating certain expressions
into English; and mahsi cho to Kristen Yakeleya, who assisted me in organizing and coor-
dinating research and youth meetings and in contacting research participants in Tulít’a,
Northwest Territories.

ix
x Acknowledgments
I want to acknowledge and thank all the research participants who trusted and had
faith in me and my abilities to carry out this project. I want to thank particularly those
participants who saw the importance of my research project and shared that with me. In
the darkest moments of writing the book, it was that support and encouragement and
the responsibility the research participants had bestowed me that reminded me of the
importance of completing it. At times, I felt the responsibility weighing heavy on my
shoulders while at the same time, pushing me forward and preventing me from giving
up. Special thanks and mahsi cho goes to everyone in Tulít’a who welcomed me and my
family to their community for such an unforgettable stay by the mighty Mackenzie River
in the summer of 2014.
I am deeply saddened for the unexpected passing of one of the research participants
and my dear friend, Henriette Rasmussen, in 2017 during the last stages of writing this
book. Henriette’s warm spirit, support, and sharp insight provided me invaluable guid-
ance both before and during my stay in Nuuk, Greenland. Henriette welcomed me and
my family into her home and family for which I say qujanaq, ollu giitu, thank you. I also
thank Henriette’s family, with whom we spent a lovely Easter in 2013 in Nuuk. It saddens
me that Henriette was not able to see this book in its final form.
I thank Angela Chnapko at Oxford University Press for her interest and encourage-
ment from the start. Her support and advice kept me on track when I needed it most.
I am grateful to friends and colleagues for having taken the time to give me comments
on drafts or talk with me about the project. I would particularly like to thank Joyce
Green, Jennifer Nedelsky, Joseph Carens, Val Napoleon, Mary Eberts, Makere Stewart-​
Harawira, John Bernard Henriksen, Ulf Mörkenstam, Matt James, Melissa Williams,
Gudrun Eriksen Lindi, and other members of the Sámi Women’s Forum, especially the
participants of the 2015 gathering in Ubmeje/​Umeå, Sweden.
I express my special gratitude to Deborah Simmons for her thoughtful and extensive
engagement with my work. Deb’s generous support and help made my work possible in
Tulít’a, and her kind yet always sharp and grounded feedback sharpened my thinking
on several occasions. Not least, Deb’s continuous insistence on making my writing and
thinking more accessible to a broader audience was an invaluable learning experience for
me. She also helped me organize a number of community meetings and gatherings in
Tulít’a, including a workshop in May 2017 when I was able to return to Tulít’a to share
my research findings with community members. Deb helped to plan and facilitate the
very successful workshop we called “Strong People, Strong Communities.”
My biggest thanks and deepest gratitude is to my family, whose endless support, pa-
tience, and understanding have made my work and this book possible. Giitos eatnat to my
mother Kirste for her teachings, support, and stories that sustain our family in numerous
ways. She’s also a role model for having written way more books than I ever will. Giitos
eatnat to my sons Elias and Matias for their beautiful presence and joie de vivre that bal-
ances my life in ways that nothing else can. I remain most grateful of all to my partner
Philip, whose enduring and everlasting good spirit, love, and support in countless ways
 Acknowledgments xi
enabled me to do this work. You made things work out when I was about to despair and
were always up for a trip with infants and small children in tow, no matter how remote a
location. Without you this book simply would have not been possible, starting from the
pre-​kids brainstorming session in a rainy Toronto parking lot waiting for a ride in 2009.
What a journey it has been!
Restructuring Relations
 Why is it so difficult to write and speak as an
Indigenous woman, explicitly from an Indigenous
woman’s experience, about the broader political
issues of self-​determination, Indigenous legal orders
and law, self-​government, or aboriginal rights?1
Van Napoleon

Introduction

INDIGENOUS FEMINIST EXAMINATION OF

SELF-​DETERMINATION

This book seeks to answer the question posed by Val Napoleon, Cree feminist legal
scholar, by doing three things: conceptualizing Indigenous self-​determination as a foun-
dational value that seeks to restructure all relations of domination; examining gender
regimes of Indigenous self-​government institutions; and interrogating the relationship
between Indigenous self-​determination and gender violence, specifically violence against
Indigenous women. It is my contention that in order to answer Napoleon’s question, we
need to examine the broader political issues of self-​determination, Indigenous legal or-
ders and law, self-​government, and Indigenous rights specifically through the lens of gen-
dered violence at various levels, ranging from the structures of the state to interpersonal
physical and sexual violence.
Drawing on my fieldwork with mostly Indigenous women in Canada, Greenland, and
Sápmi,2 I argue that the difficulty for Indigenous women to speak and write about these
issues arises from the fact that despite their long and active involvement and participa-
tion in multiple ways, their views have been systematically brushed aside in formulating
Indigenous self-​determination and self-​government discourses that have been formalized
in international law and national legislation in the past couple of decades. Yet we need
to acknowledge that adding and stirring will not change much. Inserting Indigenous
women’s views into these discourses will not transform the discourses to reflect or repre-
sent what self-​determination and self-​government mean for these women.
What is required, rather, is an Indigenous feminist examination of self-​determination.
This book critically interrogates normative notions and predominant discourses of
Indigenous self-​determination, the structures of Indigenous self-​government institutions,

1
2 Restructuring Relations
and their ability to address violence, especially violence against Indigenous women.
Drawing particularly on Indigenous and feminist political and legal theory, I theorize
and analyze these new forms of self-​determination in light of the existing Indigenous po-
litical discourses and Indigenous self-​government arrangements. I argue that the rights
approach alone is too limited and is not able to fully grasp or adequately represent the
meaning of Indigenous self-​determination. I infer from interviews in the three regions
that Indigenous self-​determination is a foundational value that fosters the norm of in-
tegrity manifested in two central forms, integrity of the land and individual integrity,
including freedom from bodily harm and violence.
As a foundational value, I suggest that Indigenous self-​determination seeks to restruc-
ture all relations of domination premised on inequality and injustice. These relations
include relations of settler colonialism, neoliberal capitalism, paternalism, misogyny,
sexism, homophobia, and gender violence. Many of us are familiar with the principle
and practice of Indigenous self-​determination as a means of restructuring the funda-
mental structural relation of settler colonialism as violent dispossession that extends to
Indigenous lands and (women’s) bodies. Less known is the other central aspect of restruc-
turing that targets those relations of domination that prevent Indigenous women from
being legal and political actors and serve in their political and economic roles not only
in the mainstream political system (i.e., representation in political institutions), but also
according to their own governance practices.
As a foundational value that fosters the norm of integrity, self-​ determination
restructures the hierarchical relation between Indigenous politics and gender. This rela-
tion is characterized by the persistent division into self-​determination/​self-​government
issues and gender/​social issues, which, as the participants in this book forcefully argue,
stand in the way of implementing, realizing, and exercising Indigenous self-​determination.
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), adopted in
2007 by the General Assembly, establishes self-​determination as a foundational right
and principle that gives rise to other central Indigenous rights such as free, prior, and
informed consent stipulated in a number of articles vis-​à-​vis development of Indigenous
peoples’ lands, territories, and resources; forcible relocation; cultural and intellectual
property; and states’ legislative or administrative measures.
Consent is critical to the theory of Indigenous self-​determination I propose in this
book. Consent undergirds the two key dimensions of the norm of integrity discussed
here. The integrity of Indigenous territories is upheld through Indigenous people’s collec-
tive consent, whereas bodily integrity is secured and protected through individual con-
sent. Drawing on the participant interviews, the theory of Indigenous self-​determination
I propose maintains that like the two aspects of the norm of integrity, the two forms
of consent are inextricable. UNDRIP, however, only stipulates Indigenous people’s
collective consent in its provisions with an emphasis specifically on free, prior, and in-
formed consent in the context of development projects. Notwithstanding the critical
importance of collective consent over land and resource use to the integrity and indeed
 Introduction 3
survival of Indigenous peoples as distinct peoples, UNDRIP’s conceptualization of self-​
determination remains incomplete without the equally important individual consent.
I do not question UNDRIP’s significance or legitimacy, but I maintain that it has
considerable shortcomings. I have previously argued that UNDRIP fails in protecting
Indigenous women’s rights.3 In this book, I argue that considering Indigenous self-​
determination solely through international law and as a right is extremely limiting, as it
does not do justice to the depth and extent of the concept. In fact, focusing only on the
rights framework excludes a range of normative understandings of the concept that have
to do with Indigenous ontologies and philosophies. These shortcomings underline the
limitations of international law and its capacity to come to grips with the critical inter-
section of what Winona LaDuke termed already twenty years ago as “Our Bodies, Our
Communities and Our Self-​Determination.”4
Recent standoffs and Indigenous nationhood movements have thrown the limitations
of the current formulations and structures of Indigenous self-​government into sharp relief.
They have demonstrated how Indigenous self-​government institutions fail to protect us,
whether the logic and violence of settler colonialism or interpersonal sexual and physical
violence and coercion. The same goes with definitions of Indigenous self-​determination
as a collective human right and a normative principle now encoded in international law.
When the vital interests of the settler colonial state (which more than ever coincide and
collude with the global corporate interests) are threatened, human rights, both collective
and individual, of Indigenous people and international law such as UNDRIP with norms
such as the free, prior, and informed consent weigh very little, if at all.
Many of the frontline peaceful protesters at recent standoffs have been Indigenous
women—​which brings us back to the question by Napoleon in the epigraph at the begin-
ning of the chapter. Indigenous women have long been standing up, whether in the form
of a camp, movement, occupation, land reclamation, rally, or campaign. The problem
with the broader political issues of self-​determination, self-​government, Indigenous legal
orders, law, and Indigenous rights is that they typically are formulated in response to, or
in conversation with, settler colonialism, and as such they exclude Indigenous women
and their concerns. For that reason, the broader political issues of self-​determination typ-
ically conform and conciliate to the logic of settler colonialism. They rarely relate or have
relevance to Indigenous women’s conceptions and experiences of self-​determination. Yet
from the onset of the Indigenous rights movement, Indigenous women have been in-
volved in struggles for reclaiming and restoring self-​determination of their communities
and nations. Until recently, however, their roles and contributions have been systemat-
ically overlooked and sidelined by their male compatriots and non-​Indigenous actors
alike. In spite of the considerable strides Indigenous women have made over the past
several decades in terms of participation and expanding agendas of Indigenous politics,
there is still a long way to go.
Simultaneously, Indigenous women’s own self-​determination has been contested and
denied first by patriarchal colonial law, policies, and institutions, and later by Indigenous
4 Restructuring Relations
men, who have internalized and adopted the norms and values of patriarchal colonialism.
As a result, Indigenous women’s rights—​or perhaps more correctly, their responsibilities
to their territories and practices that go with those responsibilities—​have been erased.
Indigenous women’s participation, human rights, political status, and well-​being have
been radically curtailed. Indigenous women’s self-​determination has been set up as an
individual(istic) right against the a priori right of self-​determination of Indigenous na-
tions and communities.
Self-​determination (both individual and collective) and gendered violence are among
the most important and pressing issues for Indigenous women worldwide. Yet the con-
siderable body of scholarship on various aspects of Indigenous self-​determination, in-
cluding the scope and implementation of self-​determination, capacity-​building, and
different self-​government arrangements, rarely examines these issues from a gendered
perspective or applies a gender-​based analysis. Instead, this literature discusses processes
of Indigenous self-​determination as if they were phenomena outside of gendered political
structures and relations of power, or outside of processes of gendering in society in gen­
eral. As a result, conventional nongendered research on Indigenous self-​determination
conceals the patriarchal structures and relations of power, which not only create
hierarchies and differential access to resources, representation, and political influence in
Indigenous societies, but also ultimately prevent the realization of collective and indi-
vidual self-​determination.
While gender has been a focus of study in Indigenous studies and to a lesser extent,
in Indigenous politics, I am not aware of research on institutional gender structures of
Indigenous self-​government. Yet it is a critical component of Indigenous feminist analysis
interrogating Indigenous governance and the self-​government frameworks. Previous re-
search on self-​determination and Indigenous women has focused on two main issues: tra-
ditional political roles of women in Indigenous societies and the impact of colonization
on these roles;5 and women’s participation (or absence) in contemporary self-​governance
negotiations, agreements, and institutions.6
Part of Indigenous self-​determination as restructuring relations of domination is to
analyze and expose the gendered character and structures of Indigenous self-​government
institutions. Gendering refers to a range of interrelated processes formed by divisions
between conceptions and social constructions of male and female, masculine and fem-
inine, which privilege certain people over others. It constructs divisions along gender
lines, including labor, identity, approved behavior, and power, and establishes gendered
hierarchies through interpersonal interactions.7 At the institutional level, gendering
occurs through the construction of symbols, images, and ideologies that legitimize or-
ganizations generally conceived as gender-​neutral. Gender regimes refer to the pattern of
gender relations within a particular institution. They represent “the historically produced
state of play in gender relations” and manifest through three main structures: a gender di-
vision of labor, a structure of power, and the gender patterning of emotional attachments.8
 Introduction 5
The Concept of Gender

The concept of gender is complex, and has been long contested by Indigenous people.
Historically, for example, Haudenosaunee and Cherokee clanmothers repudiated
Western ideologies of womanhood and their employment to justify the dispossession
of Indigenous lands.9 A central tool of this dispossession was the institution of a rigid,
hierarchical, and heteropatriarchal gender binary, particularly through the church and
residential schools. Prior to the imposition of the gender binary, multiplicity and fluidity
of genders and gender roles was common among many Indigenous peoples.10 As an ex-
ample, one research participant pointed out how gender is essentially a reflection of an
individual’s spirit more than anything else:

This whole gender-​sex thing, we had it down a long time ago, right? We didn’t
need, you know, second stage feminism to teach us that. We, I think Indigenous
communities have long, for a long time understood the difference, and so the fem-
inine and the masculine are more spirit concepts as opposed to, about your body
parts. And therefore we had more gender fluidity in our communities because it’s
an understanding of spirit as opposed to, you know, it’s about spirit and roles re-
lated to spirit as opposed to, like, what parts you were born with.11

Greenlandic scholar Karla Jessen Williamson goes as far to suggest that the egalitarian
Inuit society was in fact genderless, reflected in the absence of gender in personal pronouns
and traditional Inuit naming practices in which infants are given names of ancestors
and relatives regardless of their gender.12 The division of labor and responsibilities did
exist in traditional Inuit society but it was flexible, allowing reversal when needed or
appropriate.13
These examples do not suggest that the gender fluidity prevails as the norm in con-
temporary Indigenous communities. Aware of the current prevalent patriarchal gender
norms on Indigenous communities and political structures, the participant above instead
insists on the need to critically and honestly examine the effects of the imposed colo-
nial gender structures, including the benefits they have endowed for some (especially the
Indigenous male elite). The imposed colonial gender binary has served as an effective tool
in political, popular, and military discourses of constructing Indigenous peoples as a de-
viation from the (also constructed) hegemonic heteronormativity of Euro-​American so-
ciety in order to legitimize their dispossession and assimilation policies.14 Some scholars
refer to this gendered colonial process as “straight making” in the context of US settler
colonialism: a systematic effort to “make Native Americans straight” by forcing them
into the gender binary and Anglo-​American norms of identity, family, kinship, and gov-
ernance.15 One such example, the transformation of the traditional governance structure
of the Seneca Nation, is considered in c­ hapter 3 in relation to participant discussions
6 Restructuring Relations
for rematriating Indigenous governance, or reclaiming Indigenous women’s political au-
thority and roles in Indigenous social and political orders and structures.
The effects of the deeply damaging structure of colonial binary in Indigenous societies
have been far-​reaching, including “a near erasure of queer genders and sexualities, the
confinement of women to the domestic sphere of the home, the ongoing criminalization
of Indigenous women who trade or sell sex,” as well as “the confinement of men to the
role of white patriarchal husbands and fathers.”16 In short, the colonial gender binary has
instituted patriarchal relations of gender and domination as a norm in many Indigenous
communities. Today, these relations of domination typically characterize contemporary
Indigenous political institutions that have been largely created in the image of Western
parliamentary systems.
The analysis in this book shows that existing Indigenous self-​governing institutions
in Canada, Greenland, and Scandinavia are characterized by gender regimes similar
to Western political institutions such as national legislatures. As scholars have noted,
institutions tend to be path-​dependent, meaning that once established, they typically
follow a certain, persistent trajectory in decision-​making and daily operations that can
be hard to alter. Their foundational structures remain relatively unchanged even in reor-
ganization. Given the institutional path dependency, it is particularly important to pay
close attention to the gender regimes at the initial stages of conceiving and establishing
Indigenous governance structures. If gender regimes are not taken into account when
Indigenous political orders are being created, there is a great danger of entrenching
them as a foundational part of the institutional structure. Recognizing gender regimes
and acknowledging their existence is critical in transforming masculine, androcentric
Indigenous political institutions and their sometimes subtly exclusionary and sexist
practices and patterns. If Indigenous self-​governing institutions are informed by the same
hierarchical opposition that categorically separates self-​determination issues from social
issues, they cannot but fail in addressing gender violence and specifically, violence against
Indigenous women.

Methodology and Case Selection

While there is a growing body of comparative research on Indigenous politics and self-​
determination in the Anglophone settler colonial states of Canada, the United States,
Australia, and New Zealand, comparative scholarship in Indigenous politics is next
to nonexistent in other Western liberal welfare states. Comparing Indigenous self-​
determination past and present in the English-​speaking settler colonial states makes
sense due to similar histories of colonization and treaty-​making, varying degrees to which
the pre-​existing sovereignty of Indigenous peoples is recognized as well as similarities
pertaining to Aboriginal title legislation and land claims processes (whether through ne-
gotiation and litigation). Shared legal and political heritage, as well as similar colonial
 Introduction 7
histories of “organized, sustained efforts to eliminate Indigenous populations” in these
settler states,17 makes comparison more straightforward than in many other contexts.
Comparisons of Indigenous self-​determination in different English-​speaking settler
colonial states are important in providing in-​depth analysis of the character of Indigenous
sovereignty, self-​determination, and Indigenous–​state relations in the Anglophone set-
tler countries. These countries also often look to one another in formulating policies and
legislation regarding Indigenous peoples, including the establishment of a semiformal
coalition to negotiate and lobby together and finally vote against UNDRIP in 2007.18
While significant, considerations of Indigenous self-​determination and Indigenous–​
state relations in the Anglophone settler countries has become a hegemonic way of
thinking and structuring Indigenous self-​determination. Focusing only on Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, and the United States provides an important yet limited and
partial understanding of the nature of Indigenous self-​determination and Indigenous–​
state relations. In order to comprehend and appreciate the complexity and diversity
of Indigenous political autonomy and self-​determination, it is necessary to transcend
discourses, approaches, and models created in the Anglo-​settler democracies. Given the
current state-​driven self-​government frameworks, we are at a juncture where new com-
parative Indigenous scholarship is needed, particularly from the critical perspective of
Indigenous women who in recent years have been at the vanguard of reformulating ideas
and conceptions of Indigenous governance. As a Sámi scholar who has lived in Canada
for a number of years with extensive knowledge and personal experience of the global
Indigenous movement and Sámi politics,19 and as a fluent speaker of the Sámi and Nordic
languages, I have been uniquely positioned to conduct this research with access to a
range of data in Sámi, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish not available to average
English-​speaking scholars.
While the original research in this book focuses on Canada, Greenland, and
Scandinavia, the book participates and contributes to the broader scholarly, policy, and
activist conversations on Indigenous self-​determination especially in the United States,
Australia, and New Zealand by making connections to similarities and differences in those
countries. The book’s central arguments and analysis have parallels in the Indigenous
world and are relevant to the global discussion of Indigenous self-​determination beyond
the jurisdictions where the research was conducted.
This comparative study is among the first efforts to compare and examine self-​
determination from an Indigenous feminist perspective. There are no prior compar-
ative studies of Indigenous self-​government in Canada, Greenland, and Scandinavia
or self-​determination and gendered violence involving these regions. Until recently,
studies examining whether and how violence against Indigenous women relates to
Indigenous self-​determination have been next to nonexistent. Notably, in addition to
a structural analysis of the gendered nature of self-​government institutions, this project
takes a bottom-​up approach involving contextual comparisons of Indigenous women’s
perspectives at the grassroots and political levels. Thus far, comparative analyses of
8 Restructuring Relations
Indigenous self-​determination have focused on conducting interviews with local and
regional leaders, politicians, and administrators. Existing comparisons of governance
structures and institutions between the Inuit of Greenland and the Sámi of Scandinavia
are cursory, and from a top-​down perspective.
As an Indigenous feminist examination of self-​ determination, the objective of
this book is not to merely represent or add Indigenous women’s perspectives on self-​
determination, even though comparative research on Indigenous women’s views on and
participation in politics is also thin.20 In this book Indigenous feminist political analysis
is not limited to supplementing already existing accounts of self-​determination, govern-
ance, and nationhood with “a women’s point of view.” Instead, it interrogates the taken-​
for-​granted political categories of nation, sovereignty, and state.21 More specifically, it
examines the nation-​state as the appropriate form of governance for the world as well as
the legitimacy of settler colonial sovereignty forged by the dispossession and elimination
of Indigenous peoples, and calls for transformation centered on reorientation to the land.
Further, Indigenous feminist political analysis demonstrates how the patriarchal set-
tler state has come into existence through gender violence against Indigenous peoples,
and how violence against Indigenous women and Indigenous self-​determination (or
sovereignty) are often closely connected. In short, Indigenous feminist political anal-
ysis deconstructs the normativity of the nation-​state and also addresses heteronorma-
tivity and heteropatriarchy within many Indigenous nationalisms. To date, Indigenous
feminist political analysis has focused on the North American context, particularly the
United States. My book contributes to growing Indigenous feminist political analysis
from a comparative perspective.
Indigenous peoples in Canada, the Inuit in Greenland, and the Sámi in the Nordic
countries were in the vanguard of the global Indigenous rights movement in the early
1970s and since have been actively shaping Indigenous self-​determination agendas locally,
nationally, and internationally. As the result of their advocacy and activism, Indigenous
peoples and their rights are recognized today in the constitutions of Canada, Norway,
and Finland, while Greenland has achieved the most extensive of political autonomy of
all Indigenous peoples in the world.
Yet in terms of history, demographics, and political and social context, the three case
studies vary greatly. Colonial histories of Sámi and Inuit Greenlanders differ from those
of North America in that colonial processes were typically more insidious, gradual, and
less physically violent in Scandinavia and Greenland. There were no “Indian wars” like in
the United States, or specific segregationist legislation like the Indian Act in Canada. Yet
other forms of violence—​the structural violence of the state—​have been arguably equally
effective in dispossessing the Inuit Greenlanders and the Sámi from their territories, from
governance, political, social, and legal orders, and spirituality.
Demographically, the Sámi are a small numerical minority in all three Scandinavian
states, numbering around 100,000 people. Approximately half live in Norway, 10,000 in
Finland, and 35,000 in Sweden. In addition, about 5,000 Sámi live in the Kola Peninsula,
 Introduction 9
Russia. Even in Norway, with the largest Sámi population, the percentage of Sámi of the
total population is about 1 percent. In Greenland, the Inuit comprise of nearly 90 percent
of the population of 56,000. In Canada, the Aboriginal (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis)
population is about 1.4 million (4.3% of the total Canadian population). The focus of
this study, First Nations, consist of 850,000 people in Canada.22
Existing self-​government arrangements also differ considerably between the three re-
gions. In Canada, First Nations self-​government agreements and modern-​day treaties
have taken several forms, ranging from comprehensive land claims and self-​government
agreements to public governments. Greenland, characterized as de facto (although not
de jure) Indigenous overseas autonomy, has achieved the most extensive form of self-​
government through its 2009 Self-​Government Act, which provides the country the
sole authority for thirty-​three areas of jurisdiction. In the Nordic countries, Sámi self-​
government is to be implemented through centralized, elected political institutions of
the Sámi Parliaments (Sámediggis) in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Chapter 2 will dis-
cuss the different structures and models in detail.
Some may argue that comparisons between radically different self-​ government
processes and arrangements are problematic, for example, because of the distinctive
processes and legal, political, and normative objectives involved in them.23 I argue, how-
ever, that in spite of the distinct processes or different legal purposes, the ultimate vi-
sion of self-​determination and exercising self-​government is similar not only in the three
regions studied here but generally among the world’s Indigenous peoples—​that is, an
increased autonomous authority, control, and decision-​making powers of their own af-
fairs. Comparing self-​government arrangements internationally provides important
insights into the complexities of implementing Indigenous self-​determination often
presented as a uniform, more or less unvaried endeavor. Comparative analysis is further
supported by the argument according to which self-​determination for Indigenous peo-
ples is a “process right” without a predetermined outcome, as the practical application
and meaning of self-​determination for each Indigenous people is negotiated and decided
on the ground within their own communities and in dialogue with the states.24
Contrary to some arguments, comparative Indigenous scholarship in the field of pol-
itics does not equal maintaining colonial binaries.25 To put it simply, comparison for de-
colonization takes place always when the analysis of an Indigenous political process other
than our own helps us to deepen the understanding of our own colonial circumstances in
the present. Comparisons may not always represent lessons learned or best practices that
could be directly applied to another context, but at the very least, a better understanding
of how other Indigenous peoples have framed their self-​government institutions and the
broader context they operate in can sharpen and refocus our own short-​and long-​term
visions and objectives. Greenland’s arrangement of a parliamentary system run by an
Indigenous people may not be attainable for the large majority of the world’s Indigenous
peoples, who form numerical minorities in the countries in which they reside. Yet al-
though Greenland’s aspiration for modern nationhood may not be widely shared by most
10 Restructuring Relations
Indigenous peoples, it sheds light in very concrete terms to the limits of the concept of
Indigenous self-​determination as well as the enormous challenges and existing rifts that
an endeavor for independence poses. Greenland’s ambitions for independence also serve
as a reminder that secession and statehood indeed preoccupies some Indigenous people.
The three Sámi Parliaments in Scandinavia, on the other hand, are on the other end of
the spectrum, demonstrating that institution-​building, symbolic significance, and nom-
inal constitutional protection do not necessarily translate into real political power and
authority.
A comparative analysis of the gendered processes of self-​determination beyond
the standard comparative research within the Anglo settler states demonstrates that
Indigenous self-​determination is a more varied and multilayered concept than often
conceived in political and legal scholarship. The differences are shaped by different co-
lonial histories and current institutional and political arrangements. In addition to
discussing the commonalities between the regions, it is important to recognize and an-
alyze the differences in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of Indigenous
self-​determination.
The empirical component of the book consists of extensive fieldwork in five countries—​
Canada, Greenland, Finland, Sweden, and Norway. The fieldwork was conducted during
a period between June 2011 and September 2014.26 A total of seventy-​six semistructured
interviews were completed and transcribed.27 They covered three dimensions of
Indigenous self-​determination: the concept of self-​determination, current status of im-
plementation, and its relationship with violence against women. The interviews also
explored existing self-​government institutions and their capacity to reflect and integrate
women’s concerns and self-​determination’s connection to participants’ everyday life. The
interviewing emphasized practices and experiences, not just participant attitudes. Most
interviews lasted between sixty and ninety minutes. With permission of the participants,
nearly all interviews were tape-​recorded. Some participants requested to remain anony-
mous, while others gave the permission to use their names.
A typical Indigenous understanding of research is that knowledge is expressed in
and through relationships. This understanding emphasizes a commitment to respectful
relationships with Indigenous peoples and their communities. It is premised on re-
search by and with, rather than on and for, Indigenous peoples.28 This understanding
informed the selection of research participants, who were determined using what I call
an Indigenous research method of relationality: building sustained relationships with
individuals and communities as well as drawing on existing relationships.
As Indigenous scholars conducting research in Indigenous communities, we enter the
field with our multiple, overlapping networks on the ground and in the academy. We
draw on these networks as we plan our research. Many of us know our home communities
inside and out, which helps us decide who might be the key informants. As community
members also know us, they are often keen to assist us further in terms of identifying and
suggesting other relevant participants that we may have not considered. This was how
 Introduction 11
Sámi participants were determined in my present study. In other Indigenous settings,
those individuals who considered my research timely and important willingly suggested
other participants, often without prompting.
The majority of research participants were Indigenous women not involved in the
formal Indigenous political institutions. Many were members of women’s and grassroots
networks or women who were otherwise active in their communities in various ways.
In addition, some female politicians and male leaders were interviewed. Three female
members of the parliament (Inatsisartut) were interviewed in Greenland, and one former
member who also had been previously a minister in the government. Three female
members of the Sámi Parliament (Sámediggi) and two former members were interviewed
in Scandinavia. Given the considerably different political organization and structure in
Indigenous Canada—​there is no centralized Indigenous parliament or other elected, rep-
resentative body—​no equivalent female politicians were interviewed in Canada. Female
members of Inatsisartut in Greenland and Sámediggi in Scandinavia were interviewed
due to the central role of these institutions in shaping the discourse of self-​determination
and the limited public discussion pertaining to the topic. Either senior politicians or
individuals who held leadership positions in organizations, male participants were
interviewed for their knowledge on specific topics relevant to the research questions.
Three interviews in Greenland and two interviews in Sápmi were with male participants
(one of whom was a former president of the Sámi Parliament in Sweden). In Canada,
only interviews in Tulít’a, Northwest Territories (NWT), consisted of male participants
(six in total).29 The participant pool reflected a broad age range; the youngest was in her
early twenties and the oldest in her early eighties.
In addition to the interviews, I undertook textual analysis of relevant published and
unpublished documents related to the case studies and the broader theoretical questions
posed by the research, including reports, strategic planning documents, policy, public
and media statements, minutes of meetings, press releases, newspaper articles, speeches,
and research papers. These documents were particularly relevant for considering the im-
plementation of self-​determination and engagement with the problem of gender violence
by existing self-​government institutions, as well as assessing the gender structures of those
institutions.

Framing and Contributions

Restructuring relations implies a process of understanding and transforming the

interlocking, multilayered relations of violence and inequality. It involves transforma-
tion of a complex array of state and nonstate practices, structures of relations, ideas, and
beliefs that undermine our core values. The idea of restructuring relations draws on fem-
inist legal scholar Jennifer Nedelsky’s theory of relational autonomy that challenges the
prevailing theory of autonomy as independence, and instead considers it a capacity that
12 Restructuring Relations
can be either fostered or undermined through our relationships. She further suggests
that rights are best understood in terms of relationships. Addressing persisting problems
such as intimate partner violence thus requires restructuring those relations that under-
mine individual’s autonomy and rights, including the right to be free from bodily harm.
Relations that need to be restructured include relations of gender and sexuality.30
The process of restructuring relations begins with a relational analysis emphasizing the
importance of understanding the nature of relationships behind disputes and problems.
In the case of intimate partner violence, for example, we need to recognize that vio-
lence against women is not a matter of gender relations alone. Relational analysis sheds
light on the fact that unless the nature of the relationship is understood, women in vi-
olent relationships cannot be adequately protected or assisted. It exposes how violence
against women is shaped by wider patterns of inequality, including police brutality,
the failure to protect, harms of poverty, and the humiliation and deprivation caused by
discrimination.31
I suggest that there are two broad categories of relations of domination that stand in
the way of Indigenous self-​determination: state relations and gender relations. Both are
shaped by forms of violence, unequal social and material relations, and deeply held, some-
times unconscious beliefs. Together, these two categories are nested relations that sustain
violence. State relations involve ongoing colonial relations of dispossession and displace-
ment, failed agreements and broken promises, racism and paternalism. Gender relations
range from sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and physical and sexual violence to institu-
tional gender regimes and other forms of structural oppression.
This book argues that Indigenous self-​determination in its fullest sense—​that is,
containing the breadth of its individual and collective aspects and potential—​cannot
materialize or be exercised without restructuring all relations of domination. Self-​
determination cannot be regarded as merely a conceptual tool for assigning rights, but
as a value that can be either advanced or compromised through the relationships we have
and structures we occupy individually and collectively. Therefore, an important aspect of
restructuring relations involves considering what kinds of relations promote the value of
self-​determination.
Restructuring relations of Indigenous self-​determination requires identifying rela-
tions of oppression and violence at different sites: in Indigenous communities, existing
self-​government institutions, state-​driven self-​government frameworks, and other state
institutions and practices including law, policy, and administration. Also, violence
directed at the land, such as large-​scale extractive industries and various forms of environ-
mental destruction, is a central element of relations of domination. These relations are
frequently interdependent and mutually reinforcing, and thus must be tackled together.
In the theory of Indigenous self-​determination as a foundational value, relational anal-
ysis involves several dimensions: first, understanding how hegemonic, oppressive state
relations and oppressive gender relations are premised on one another and mutually
reinforcing, and second, recognizing how gender regimes in existing Indigenous political
 Introduction 13
institutions are part of the relations of domination that must be addressed to enable
the full expression of self-​determination. The third dimension involves understanding
the nature of relationality of the norm of integrity that, I argue, is the precondition for
Indigenous self-​determination.
As ­chapter 1 discusses in detail, the norm of integrity lays at the heart of Indigenous
self-​determination conceptualized as a foundational value. It consists of several facets: in-
dividual, collective, territorial, and cultural integrity, all of which are embedded in
and constitutive of relationships. In current circumstances, the norm of integrity is
undermined and radically compromised due to relations of domination and inequality
such as violent gender relations, as well as dispossession and alienation from the land.
Relational analysis not only foregrounds what Indigenous feminists have been saying
for some time—​that both our lands and bodies are targets of same colonial violence—​
but also calls attention to the fact that what has been suggested as an solution to that
violence, namely Indigenous self-​determination, cannot be conceptualized in terms of
rights alone. As the interviews in this book demonstrate, self-​determination is a means
by which Indigenous people express what is considered indispensable for their well-​being
as individuals, as members of their community, and as a distinct people. In short, self-​
determination is a foundational value.
Although this book focuses on Canada, Greenland, and Scandinavia, it is clear that
the analysis and discussion is far from confined to Indigenous peoples or Indigenous
self-​determination struggles in these countries and regions alone. Political and other
discourses on Indigenous self-​determination have become global, especially as the re-
sult of the transnational Indigenous rights advocacy in the UN framework vis-​à-​vis
international law and human rights mechanisms since the 1970s. The way in which
Indigenous peoples understand and talk about self-​determination in the three regions
is greatly influenced by the international discourse and more recently, by social media
that has enabled a real-​time awareness of conflicts involving Indigenous peoples and
their rights (such as Idle No More, Standing Rock, and many others) and consequently,
a strong global Indigenous solidarity movement. Moreover, the current global and local
Indigenous self-​determination discourses are informed and shaped in many ways by
the early contributions of Indigenous scholars and activists, and to a lesser degree, the
policy framework in the United States, where the self-​determination era began in the
late 1960s.32
The term “self-​determination” was first employed in the Indigenous context in
1966 by the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) in their response to the
planned continuation of the Indian termination policy in the United States. The term
was used specifically to gain greater control of the Native American policymaking while
maintaining the trust relationship with the federal government encoded in historical
treaty provisions.33 This led to the articulation of a new direction for federal Indian
policy in 1968 by President Johnson, who presented a new goal “that ends the old debate
about ‘termination’ of Indian programs and stresses self-​determination; a goal that erases
14 Restructuring Relations
old attitudes of paternalism and promotes partnership self-​help.”34 Although the suc-
cess has been both varied and limited, Native American participation in creating policy
frameworks relatively receptive to legislative initiatives to implement self-​determination
has been regarded as one of the main reasons for greater implementation of tribal gov-
ernance. Compared to Canada, “the U.S. federal government is more willing to use its
power to pre-​empt state law’s application to Indian reservations, thus carving out a space
for Indigenous governance.”35
Followed by NCAI’s first invocation of self-​determination, Native American grassroots
activism and political lobbying by the American Indian Movement and other organiza-
tions bore fruit in 1970, when President Nixon called for self-​determination legislation
and five years later, when Congress passed the Indian Self-​Determination and Educational
Assistance Act to delegate the authority to administer the federal funds and control fed-
eral services on reservations.36 It was augmented by the Tribal Self-​Governance Act in
1994, quoted as the beginning of the retribalization of Native American government.37
Under the provisions of the act, Native American tribes were authorized to “redesign
programs, activities, functions or services and reallocate funds of such programs activities
or services.”38 Although far from perfect, these acts have enhanced the Native American
control of Native American affairs to a much greater extent than, for example, in Canada,
where Indigenous policymaking and service delivery are still largely under federal con-
trol.39 Yet over the years there has been a simultaneous backlash, as Congress and the
Supreme Court decisions have slowly undermined tribal authority and sovereignty.40 In
spite of the greater control of tribal affairs, the colonial legislative and policy framework
that treats Indigenous nations as domestic dependent nations remains firmly in place and
the federal oversight of tribal governments continues today.
Besides participation in domestic policymaking, Native Americans have been on the
leading edge in shaping the discourse on Indigenous self-​determination in scholarship.
Native American scholars, most notably the late Vine Deloria Jr., were the first to the-
orize Indigenous self-​determination and related concepts of sovereignty, nationhood,
and self-​government.41 Deloria argued for distinguishing between nationhood and self-​
government, which for him represented “two entirely different positions in the world.”42
While nationhood entailed political autonomy and autonomous decision-​making, self-​
government implied a municipal-​level authority with an external oversight and recogni-
tion for its legitimacy. Deloria was also among the first to be concerned about the way
in which self-​government detaches political life from the social and cultural life of the
community. He also saw how the NCAI’s call for self-​determination was soon turned
against tribal leaders by the federal government through appointing compliant Native
Americans to serve in various administrative positions.43
Deloria’s analysis continues to influence Indigenous scholars and policy analysts be-
yond the United States. In Canada his theories have informed, for example, the criticism
of the federal government’s negotiated self-​government model as allowing only municipal-​
style governance and arrangements that comply with the existing constitutional and legal
 Introduction 15
orders of Canada.44 Thus in North America and beyond, Indigenous peoples need to
continuously pay close attention to self-​determination that acts as a means of incorpora-
tion into the state, if not assimilation. Following Deloria’s lead, scholars have criticized
current self-​government framework in Canada for not only its limited authority but
more fundamentally, for allowing colonial structures and policy frameworks to remain
unchanged while self-​management of poverty and social problems are downloaded to
Indigenous communities without the necessary resources.45 Some further argue that
negotiated self-​government represents continued subordination of Indigenous rights and
governance structures and dispossession of Indigenous territories in the name of creating
certainty for the government and resource industry.46
Since Deloria’s early writings, scholarship on tribal sovereignty in the United States
has greatly enhanced theories on Indigenous self-​determination and analyses of self-​
government, including this book. The intention here is not to provide a genealogy of this
scholarship or trace the various influences, but to contextualize the key arguments in this
book with the broader ongoing conversations vis-​à-​vis the concept of Indigenous self-​
determination and Indigenous feminist analysis thereof. The field of Indigenous femi-
nism is rooted in the writings of Native American women. Kate Shanley was arguably the
first, in 1984, to ask the ever-​pertinent question of why Indian women avoid the designa-
tion “feminist.”47 Until fairly recently, most Indigenous women have been hesitant and
reluctant to take on the label, pointing to its irrelevance, inappropriateness, paternalism,
colonialism, and racism of white women, to mention a few of the critiques.48
Shanley considered herself a feminist and argued that for Native American women,
equality is intricately linked to tribal sovereignty and promoting traditions. She
maintained: “Just as sovereignty cannot be granted but must be recognized as an inherent
right to self-​determination, so Indian feminism must also be recognized as powerful
in its own terms, in its own right.”49 Around the same time, Paula Gunn Allen estab-
lished a theory of tribal feminism in her groundbreaking book Sacred Hoop, comprising
of an analysis of Indigenous teachings about gender and sexuality and a critique of the
effects US imperial and colonial structures on Native American matriarchal societies
and traditions of multiple genders. For her, the common rejection of feminist analysis
by Indigenous women was largely due to misinformation and misunderstanding of patri-
archy and sexism, and their effects on Indigenous communities.50
In Canada, Coast Salish writer and educator Lee Maracle led the way in engaging
with feminism, critiquing the mainstream feminist movement for its racism and com-
plicity in colonialism, and arguing for Indigenous feminist thought and solidarity among
Indigenous women. Her I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism
was also among the first to examine the connections between colonization and gender
violence among Indigenous people.51
While the early tensions and questions remain (albeit less pronounced), Indigenous
feminism no longer needs to be justified as a field. From its “tribal feminist” roots in the
United States, it has grown into a substantial field of global scholarly inquiry that argues
16 Restructuring Relations
for the inclusion of colonialism as an analytical category for conceptualizing Indigenous
peoples’ subjugation in general and Indigenous women’s oppression in particular. It has
illustrated how colonization radically undermined and transformed gender relations to
subordinate, marginalize, and exclude Indigenous women irrespective of their precolonial
political and economic positions. Indigenous feminist theory has simultaneously chal-
lenged the unexamined racism, colonialism, and white privilege in feminist theory and
movements and the sexism and misogyny in Indigenous leadership and communities.52
Similar to postcolonial feminism in its interrogation of colonialism, Indigenous femi-
nism, however, differs from postcolonial critiques in placing the struggle for Indigenous
self-​determination (or sovereignty) and the question of land at the heart of its theory
and activism. Simultaneously, Indigenous feminism sheds light on the internalization
and reproduction of heteropatriarchy in Indigenous conceptions of nationhood, self-​
determination movements, and self-​government structures.53 Luana Ross poetically
captures the key elements of Indigenous feminism that inform much discussion in this
book: “The heart and soul of my feminism remains the promotion of tribal sovereignty
and the empowerment of women. However, we cannot afford to privilege nationhood
and race over gender. . . . I also argue that to reject feminism completely is dangerous. Our
larger sovereignty movement cannot omit issues of gender.”54
A growing number of scholars have further argued that it is necessary to extend the
analysis of gendered nature of colonialism to the examination of how colonialism also
queers Indigenous peoples—​that is, constructs Indigenous peoples as deviant, marked
for death, while settlers are subjects of life.55 Early queer theorists have suggested that
“ ‘queer’ gets a critical edge by defining itself against the normal rather than the hetero-
sexual.”56 Queering implies the interrogation of the logics of heteronormativity and other
normalizing logics rather than merely including queer people into our scholarship.57 Thus
a gender analysis Indigenous self-​government in Greenland, Canada, and Sápmi is also,
in part, an exercise of queering Indigenous self-​government. Queering of Indigenous self-​
determination exposes how the normalizing logic of self-​government requires emulating
Western political structures, institutions, and discourses which are conceptualized and
constructed as universal.58 Anything else, such as Indigenous political structures not rec-
ognizable by the Western political discourse and logic, are considered “unrealistic, naïve,
less sophisticated, or even less intelligent than those mimicking the values and ideals of
the dominant society.”59
Queering Indigenous self-​determination also entails moving beyond analyzing it
through the lens of the normalizing disciplines of political science or law to interro-
gate the normalizing logics of self-​government and self-​determination, and thereby
resist Indigenous nationhood and self-​determination that holds up heteropatriarchy,
white supremacy, and capitalism.60 Notwithstanding that queering Indigenous self-​
determination was not the focus of the participant interviews and discussions in any of
the regions of this study, it is clear that those participants who either questioned or chal-
lenged the norm and the logic of existing self-​government discourses or institutions also
 Introduction 17
were implicitly queering them. Gendering and queering Indigenous self-​determination
are related critical analyses, both aiming at restructuring relations of domination such as
heteropatriarchy, heteronormativity, capitalism, and white supremacy.
Indigenous feminist analysis has established that Indigenous self-​determination is not
possible without addressing gender violence and specifically, violence against Indigenous
women. One of the first comparative studies in this area was by Eileen Luna, who studied
Native American and Australian Aboriginal family violence programs and concluded
that self-​determination of Indigenous communities was strengthened by enhanced do-
mestic violence services in those communities. She established “that there is a direct link
between community and individual empowerment, self-​determination, and the reduc-
tion of violence against women” and that “it is this empowerment, of both Indigenous
women and Indigenous communities, which is the key to significant legal and policy
advances.”61 This book builds on this insight and articulates a theory of Indigenous self-​
determination that incorporates these two dimensions through the norm of integrity.
The two dimensions of the norm of integrity underlying the theory of self-​determination
proposed in this book are integrity of the land and individual integrity, the latter in-
cluding freedom from bodily harm and violence. These two dimensions are indivisible
and mutually constitutive. The encroachment on Indigenous lands is always connected
to the assault on Indigenous bodies, especially those of women. Violence against women
is common in circumstances where Indigenous people are engaged in protecting their
territories from disruptive economic development projects. As Indigenous feminism
has established, also the opposite is true: an attack on Indigenous women’s bodies is al-
ways an assault on Indigenous lands. Dehumanizing Indigenous women and degrading
their bodies was a means to undermine and fragment Indigenous societies, which in turn
enabled access to and dispossession of their territories. As Amanda Lickers, a Seneca
youth activist, puts it, “The reason women [are] attacked is because women carry our
clans. That’s where we get our identity as nations. So if you destroy the women, you de-
stroy the nations and then you get access to the land.”62 There is, however, a need for cau-
tion when Indigenous women and their bodies are employed as a symbols for Indigenous
lands and sovereignty: “While Indigenous women’s bodies are described as targets of
gendered colonial violence, it is critical not to lose sight that we [Indigenous women] are
also legal and political actors.”63
One of the main arguments of this book is that at the core of the difficulty in
implementing and exercising Indigenous self-​determination lies the binary opposition
between self-​determination and social issues created and maintained by international
law, as well as political discourse and institutions, Indigenous and non-​Indigenous
alike. While self-​determination deals with “hard issues” of land rights, resources, and
governance, social issues, also framed as women’s or community issues, have to do with
the welfare and well-​being of individual and communities and are typically considered
“soft issues.” Indigenous women in recent grassroots movements like Idle No More and
Standing Rock, however, challenged this binary in their politics and practice. Based on
18 Restructuring Relations
Indigenous feminist analysis of existing self-​government institutions and drawing on ex-
tensive conversations with Indigenous women in a number of distinct locations, I argue
that the main factors preventing the coalescing of the two core components include the
narrow discourse of Indigenous self-​determination and the gender regimes of Indigenous
political structures.
My argument is further strengthened by my visit in December 2016 to the Pasqua
Yaqui Tribe in Arizona, where a group of mostly Indigenous legal scholars were hosted
by Alfred Urbina, the attorney general of the tribe. Urbina gave us a detailed presen-
tation about the tribal justice system and in particular, the jurisdictional challenges in
prosecuting offenders in cases of violence against women. Acknowledging how domestic
violence is the most pressing criminal justice challenge for the Pasqua Yaqui Tribe, Urbina
spoke about the recent legislation (Tribal Law and Order Act, 2010 and Violence against
Women Act, 2013) and how these acts have enabled significant changes in the ability of
tribal government to prosecute offenders and restored tribal jurisdiction over cases of
violence against women within tribal borders. The Pasqua Yaqui is a leading tribe in the
United States in restoring their authority and jurisdiction in this area, although great
challenges remain, especially a lack of financial resources. Their tribal court, hailed as a
model court, was one of the three tribal courts piloting a program to prosecute nontribal
members in domestic violence cases and in 2017, the Pasqua Yaqui became the first Native
American tribe to prosecute a non-​Indian under the Violence against Women Act.64
In light of my research, it was unprecedented to witness the unwavering commitment
of the senior level of Pasqua Yaqui judiciary and political leadership to prioritizing the
problem of gender-​based violence and linking it inextricably to Pasqua Yaqui sovereignty
and exercise of self-​determination powers. The recent tribal report outlining the successes
and challenges of the pilot program asserts:

Sovereignty is more than a right, it is a responsibility. In the words of Peter

Yucupicio, Chairman of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, “The first responsibility of any gov-
ernment, tribal or otherwise, is the safety and protection of its people, for there can
be no security or freedom for all, if there is insecurity and fear for any of us. Pascua
Yaqui tribal officials no longer have to simply stand by and watch their women be
victimized with no recourse.” Protecting our people comes first and it is absolutely
necessary to any further exercise of sovereignty.65

For the Pasqua Yaqui, violence against women is central to their sovereignty both as a
matter of protecting their own people and exercising their jurisdictional authority: “For
hundreds of years Pascua Yaqui ancestors fought to preserve the territorial integrity of
their homeland and to protect their people. The recent decision to exercise [Special
Domestic Violence Criminal Jurisdiction] to protect tribal victims is a mission that is
consistent with that history.”66 Significantly, the commitment and duty to protect tribal
members is not deterred by the considerable costs, as often is the case: “Although the
 Introduction 19
investments in our system were costly, no cost is greater than the harm and shame that
was being borne by our women and children.”67
The Pasqua Yaqui Tribe in Southern Arizona is among the leading Indigenous nations
globally in framing gender violence as a matter of self-​determination. The commitment
of the leadership and their pilot initiative are precedent-​setting in bridging the distance
and eliminating the opposition between Indigenous self-​determination and the so-​called
social issues, especially violence against women. As the following chapters illustrate,
placing violence against Indigenous women on the agenda, prioritizing it and following
through by action and concrete measures, are issues that many Indigenous nations and
communities continue to struggle. Moreover, the Pasqua Yaqui example also lends it sup-
port the theory of Indigenous self-​determination as a foundational value characterized
by the norm of integrity—​territorial integrity, the integrity of the land, cultural integrity,
and individual integrity—​which will be discussed in ­chapter 1.

The Book Outline

The book consists of three interrelated yet distinct areas of inquiry: theorizing Indigenous
self-​determination as a fundamental value; examining the gender regimes of the existing
self-​government structures in Canada, Greenland, and Scandinavia; and interrogating
the relationship between Indigenous self-​determination, self-​government institutions,
and violence against women. Chapter 1 examines the established meanings of Indigenous
self-​determination in favor of a more comprehensive concept that is not limited to and by
Indigenous–​state relations or Indigenous rights discourse. It begins with a critical anal-
ysis of the concept in international law and international Indigenous politics.
I contend that an exclusive focus on rights discourse provides us with a limited legal-
istic and state-​centered conception of Indigenous self-​determination that does not reflect
the breadth of Indigenous self-​determination nor pays adequate attention to relations of
domination beyond the state. Employing Iris Marion Young’s concept of nondomination
and Jennifer Nedelsky’s theory of relational autonomy, the chapter develops a theory of
Indigenous self-​determination that posits it as a foundational value seeking to restructure
all relations of domination. Central to this theory is the norm of integrity, with two of its
main dimensions: integrity of the land and individual integrity.
Chapters 2, 3, and 4 discuss the practical application of self-​determination that takes
the form of self-​government and includes the existing Indigenous political institutions
considered to exercise some measure of self-​governing authority. These chapters cri-
tique and analyze the existing self-​government institutions in relation to the founda-
tional norm of self-​determination as a value that restructures relations. More specifically,
­chapter 2 considers the scope and structures of the existing self-​government arrangements
and institutions in the three regions that are the focus of this book: the parliamentary
system of Greenland, with its extensive political autonomy (although it remains part of
20 Restructuring Relations
the Kingdom of Denmark); the elected representative bodies of the Sámi Parliaments,
which operate under the constitutions of Finland, Sweden, and Norway; and the main
models of organizing Indigenous self-​government in Canada. In the Canadian context,
the focus of the analysis is not on a specific First Nation or self-​government arrangement
but rather on the predominant state-​driven, self-​government policy and practice, as well
as the way in which they have been challenged by Indigenous actors. The chapter also
provides a brief background of the historical and political context of each region vis-​à-​vis
Indigenous self-​determination.
Chapter 3 assesses the status and scope of implementing Indigenous self-​determination
in Greenland, Canada, and Scandinavia. Drawing on participant interviews, it examines
the main obstacles and challenges of implementing and exercising self-​determination and
considers whether and how the current efforts have a connection to people’s daily lives. In
Greenland, these include the persistent lack of educated workforce needed for both the
self-​government administration and emerging extractive industry. Many Greenlanders
also perceive the intrusion of extractive industries without adequate public consultation
as a major challenge. In Canada, the main obstacles have to do with the state, especially
the restrictive neocolonial framework of the federal government within which self-​
government agreements are to be negotiated, regarded by many as the extinguishment
model. In Scandinavia, the main problem centers on the fact that with an extremely lim-
ited decision-​making authority, the Sámi Parliaments lack teeth, resources, and vision in
shaping the discourse of Sámi self-​determination in concrete terms.
In terms of similarities, the lack of community engagement by Indigenous leadership
seemed to stand in the way of greater legitimacy of the political institutions in all the re-
gions, regardless whether the institutions were centralized assemblies or decision-​making
authorities on a local level. Chapter 3 concludes with a discussion of future visions in
implementing Indigenous self-​determination, with a particular focus on what appears to
be the two poles of a continuum: modern nationhood and rematriation of Indigenous
governance systems. While Greenland has set its sights on full political independence,
Indigenous women in Canada argue for reinstating the political authority and positions
they formerly held as part of Indigenous systems of governance. Importantly, as Maracle
reminds us, reinstituting women’s positions of power is an Indigenous feminist act that
goes beyond the standard arguments of nationhood: “Rematriation and the restoration
of our original systems would be a feminist activity,” rather than merely ensuring that that
existing governing systems are gender complementary.68
In ­chapter 4 I employ feminist institutional analysis, especially R. W. Connell’s theory
of gender regimes, to examine how self-​government institutions in the three regions
are gendered. I focus on two particular dimensions of the gender regimes: the collec-
tive gender division of labor and the internal structure of power in the self-​government
institutions. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that if sexism is not squarely addressed
when Indigenous self-​government structures and institutions are set up, gender dis-
crimination and oppression become naturalized as gender regimes and entrenched in
 Introduction 21
the exercise of Indigenous self-​determination. Although the starting point of gendering
self-​determination in this chapter is the interrogation of gender regimes of Indigenous
self-​government institutions, it is clear that a number of participants, especially many
Indigenous women in Canada, push the interrogation beyond gender regimes to the
queering or the examination of the naturalized logic of self-​government as a mere imita-
tion of Western political structures and institutions.
Chapter 5 explains the absence of the discussion of gender violence in Indigenous self-​
determination discourse and self-​government institutions. As ­chapter 1 establishes, indi-
vidual integrity, including freedom from bodily harm, coercion, and violence, are integral
to Indigenous women’s conceptions of self-​determination. Further, nearly all participants
agreed that violence against women is a self-​determination issue, but maintained that ex-
isting self-​government institutions do not address the problem adequately. This chapter
shows the ways in which Indigenous women’s concerns and views have been subsumed
through an establishment of discursive fault line between social (or community) issues
on the one hand, and self-​determination (or sovereignty) issues on the other. It contends
that existing models and structures of Indigenous self-​government are a form of struc-
tural violence in their exclusion of Indigenous women and their conceptions of self-​
determination, which includes addressing gender-​based violence. The chapter considers
the role of the state vis-​à-​vis Indigenous women, specifically the question of whether
Indigenous women and their organizations ought to rely on the patriarchal, colonial state
in seeking to remedy gender violence in their communities.
Chapter 6 concludes the book with an argument that there is no Indigenous self-​
determination without Indigenous gender justice. If Indigenous self-​determination (or
sovereignty) fails to interrogate gender regimes of existing political organizations and the
responsibility of these institutions to address violence against women, it will only serve
as a proxy for the status quo and subordination of groups and individuals whose interests
and concerns do not correspond with the established agendas. In this concluding
chapter I expand on Nancy Fraser’s three-​dimensional theory of gender justice based
on distribution, recognition, and representation, proposing an approach to Indigenous
gender justice based on key issues and concerns raised and discussed by the research
participants: upholding and protecting children, violence against women/​gender vio-
lence, and rematriating Indigenous governance.
 1
Self-​Determination

FOUNDATIONAL VALUE

Self-​ d etermination is about relations. For Indigenous peoples, self-​

determination is about a vision and struggle for restructuring relations of domination for
a more just present and future for their societies and people. In the formal political dis-
course, Indigenous self-​determination is discussed mostly in terms of a (deeply unequal)
relationship with the state. As a legal and political relation with the state, Indigenous self-​
determination is typically conceptualized as a collective human right that enables a group
to determine their own political, social, cultural, and economic affairs. In the struggle
for Indigenous self-​determination, rights and the relationship with the state are no
doubt central questions. Given how the discourse of Indigeneity and the very concept of
Indigenous peoples are products of colonialism and continued state domination, the cen-
trality of the state in the Indigenous struggles and vision for freedom is expected. Outside
the legal and political framework, however, the meaning and content of Indigenous self-​
determination exceed rights and the relations with the state and encompass myriad other
relationships, including the land, kinship, spirituality, and others.
As a future vision, Indigenous self-​determination requires nondomination in all re-
lations, ranging from state relations of dispossession and removal, oppressive relations
of colonial policies and law, to the most intimate relationships. Indigenous women who
participated in the study were adamant that in addition to the colonial relations with
the state, there are a number of other relations of domination that must be examined if
we are ever going to make Indigenous self-​determination a reality. According to nearly
all participants, relations in need of restructuring include land, power, and governance,
gender and patriarchy, as well as responsibility and autonomy, to mention the most sig-
nificant ones. Nondomination and freedom from coercion and violence were broadly
considered the precondition for the exercise self-​determination.

22
 Self-Determination 23
In this chapter, I argue that an excessive—​or worse, exclusive—​focus on the rights dis-
course provides us with a limited legalistic and state-​centered conception of Indigenous
self-​determination that neither reflects the breadth of Indigenous self-​determination
nor pays adequate attention to relations of domination beyond the state. This was very
clearly indicated in the participant interviews in all three regions. In these interviews,
Indigenous self-​determination was defined in much broader terms than rights or political
autonomy of having control of one’s own affairs and decision-​making powers as a dis-
tinct polity. Instead of focusing on politics, rights, or international law, the participants
typically discussed their underlying values shaping their conceptions of Indigenous self-​
determination such as relationality, the paramount significance of the land, and freedom
from domination. As an example, Lee Maracle noted: “I think we have a right to na-
tional self-​determination, including the necessary territory to affect that . . . But it’s not
something that I would advocate. For me, I’m always talking about self-​determination
in the context of all our relations and the continuance of those relations and the laws
that govern those relations.”1 Self-​determination is therefore, above all, about ensuring
the existence and continuation of “all our relations” as well as the norms shaping those
relations. As this chapter argues, integrity with its different dimensions is one of the fun-
damental norms for self-​determination.
Drawing on my fieldwork and building on Iris Marion Young’s concept of
nondomination and Jennifer Nedelsky’s theory of relational autonomy, I develop a
theory of Indigenous self-​determination that posits it as a foundational value that seeks
to restructure all relations of domination. The theory of Indigenous self-​determination
I propose considers and interrogates a number of aspects of relationality, including rela-
tions of domination and Indigenous ontologies and norms premised on relations with
the land and kinship relations. It differs from proposed relational models of Indigenous
self-​determination that consider interaction with state institutions as strengthening and
complementing Indigenous self-​determination. According to these models, “indigenous
representation in shared-​rule institutions such as national legislatures” is a “form of po-
litical voice [that] can be viewed as part of a broader strategy for advancing indigenous
self-​determination by targeting a variety of parallel and complementary access points to
political power.”2
I support having multiple strategies, and I agree with the idea that “indigenous peo-
ples must seek influence in a variety of different political forums to manage the com-
plex web of relationships in which they have become entangled with non-​indigenous
communities and governments.”3 I am, however, wary of Indigenous representation in
national legislatures and other state institutions, where it tends to remain tokenistic
and marginalized. I have a problem particularly when shared rule is mistaken for or
misrepresented as an exercise of self-​government (I discuss this in the Sámi context in
the next chapter).
While my focus in this book is not on shared rule or Indigenous participation in state
institutions, I see the importance of recognizing the reality of interdependence. In this
24 Restructuring Relations
regard I turn to Young, who has argued that the dominant understanding of self-​de-
termination as noninterference, separation, and independence is not only misleading
but inadequate in interpreting the norm of self-​determination. Examining the dis-
course of Indigenous self-​determination advanced at the United Nations and theories
of individual autonomy critical of the idea of noninterference, she maintains that a
more accurate interpretation is based on the norm of nondomination: “Understanding
freedom as nondomination implies shifting the idea of state sovereignty into a dif-
ferent context. Sovereign independence is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condi-
tion of self-​determination understood as nondomination.”4 I expand Young’s theory
beyond Indigenous–​state relations by developing the idea of nondomination into an
examination of relations of domination. I further elaborate Young’s argument about
nondomination into a process of restructuring relations of domination by upholding
the norm of integrity.
Defining Indigenous self-​determination as a value, I draw on Nedelsky, for whom
“value” denotes a widely shared conception with which members of a group express what
is considered indispensable for their well-​being as individuals as well as a distinct col-
lectivity. As examples of core values, she mentions equality, dignity, security, autonomy,
bodily integrity, adequate material resources, individual and collective spiritual expres-
sion, and respect for the earth and the rest of creation.5 I suggest that in the same way,
self-​determination is a broad conception with which Indigenous people convey what
they regard as essential and necessary for their individual and collective well-​being.
That imperative is the norm of integrity that is radically undermined by various rela-
tions of violence and inequality, thus negatively impacting the exercise of Indigenous
self-​determination.
As a core value, the conception of Indigenous self-​determination fosters the norm of
integrity which has several interrelated and reciprocal dimensions. These include terri-
torial integrity, cultural integrity, collective and individual integrity, and the integrity of
the land.6 My focus is specifically on individual integrity and the integrity of the land for
two reasons. While scholarship and international law have focused on the significance
of cultural and collective integrity of Indigenous peoples, the two other dimensions
have received less attention. The primary importance of land and of relations with the
land are widely considered but are rarely discussed through the norm of integrity. The
second reason is that the themes of individual integrity and the integrity of the land were
frequently raised by the research participants in all three regions, even if they did not
necessarily use those terms. Therefore, I concur that the norm of integrity, especially in-
dividual integrity and the integrity of the land, form the foundation of the theory of
self-​determination as a fundamental value.
The chapter proceeds as follows. I begin by examining key conceptions of Indigenous
self-​determination understood as a fundamental principle in international law and
as decolonization, sovereignty, and noninterference. I then discuss the international
Indigenous rights discourse. I consider Indigenous critiques of rights and explain how
 Self-Determination 25
defining Indigenous self-​determination as a value differs from these critiques. In the final
section, I examine self-​determination as a foundational value and transformative vision
for restructuring all relations of domination.
Needless to say, the way in which Indigenous women who participated in the study un-
derstand and discuss self-​determination is shaped by their specific geopolitical contexts
and informed by their specific histories, cultures, and various political contexts. Indigenous
political discourse in Canada is very different from that of Scandinavia or Greenland, and
these differences inform the way in which self-​determination is conceptualized, under-
stood, and discussed in different regions (discussed in the next chapter). In Scandinavia
and Greenland, the concept and idea of Indigenous self-​determination belongs nearly
exclusively to the domain of politics, meaning that by and large, there is no sustained
public discourse of self-​determination beyond the formal political organizations. In
Canada, self-​determination, although often framed as sovereignty or nationhood (and
more recently, Indigenous resurgence), is actively debated beyond politics in the media,
social media, and within various organizations and networks. Moreover, Indigenous sov-
ereignty, nationhood, and resurgence are common parlance among Indigenous people
in Canada in ways that do not exist among the Inuit in Greenland and the Sámi in
Scandinavia.

Self-​D etermination as a Fundamental

Principle of International Law

Since its conception in the wake of the World War I, the concept of self-​determination
has been contested and is continually evolving in international law. Volumes have
been written about the nature and scope of self-​determination, which apparently only
agree on one thing: that there cannot be a single definition or application of the con-
cept or the right of self-​determination. There is, however, considerable consensus that
self-​determination is a fundamental principle in international law.7 Importantly, self-​
determination is a right vested in peoples, not states. Codified in the two human rights
treaties adopted in 1966, the International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights
(ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
(ICERC), self-​determination is a right that belongs to all peoples. The common first
article of the two treaties affirms: “All peoples have the right to self-​determination. By
virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their
economic, social and cultural development.”
Since the 1970s, Indigenous representatives attending intergovernmental forums such
as the United Nations have maintained that “all peoples” must include Indigenous peo-
ples. This view was supported by a 1981 UN study, which states that “the Charter of the
United Nations should not be interpreted as confining that right to a particular category
of peoples, because, as United Nations practice has made clear, the word ‘peoples’ as used
26 Restructuring Relations
in Article 1, paragraph 2, of the Charter means all peoples.”8 Regardless, the study points
out, there is a clear cleavage between the states and the nonstate actors within the rubric
of “all peoples.” From a state perspective, “a people” refers to all citizens and therefore, the
right to choose “their political status and [to] freely pursue their economic, social and
cultural development” is vested in the aggregate population of an existing state, not in
substate groups. The two assumptions underlying this interpretation are that (1) all citi-
zens have an equal access to government and to participate in the political, economic, so-
cial, and cultural development of the state; and (2) any other claims of self-​determination
are excessive and will destabilize state sovereignty and thus undermine the states’ capacity
to effectuate the right of self-​determination for all of its citizens.
Indigenous peoples have rejected the state-​centric interpretation of self-​determination
and opposed corollary views according to which their claims for the right of self-​
determination destabilizes territorial integrity and sovereignty of the state. They have
argued that Indigenous peoples’ self-​determination prevents rather than promotes
conflict.9 Recognizing, respecting, and upholding the right of self-​ determination
of Indigenous peoples and its applications in practice (such as various forms of self-​
government and other autonomous arrangements) regularly results in enhanced co-
operation between Indigenous peoples and states and more effective participation by
Indigenous peoples—​if they so choose—​in political, economic, and social affairs of
the state.
Understandings of self-​determination advanced by most Indigenous representa-
tives are distinct from the standard understanding of self-​determination as secession
and independent statehood. A well-​rehearsed axiom in many Indigenous political
circles is that self-​determination is a process right without a predetermined outcome.
The practical application and meaning of self-​determination for Indigenous peoples is
negotiated and decided on the ground within their own communities and in dialogue
with the states.10 A number of participants agreed with this view, emphasizing that self-​
determination “means different things for different people and different communities.”
Some maintained that Indigenous self-​determination cannot be discussed in general
terms nor should we attempt to define self-​determination of a particular Indigenous
people once and for all. Instead, we need to pay attention to the intragroup variance
regarding gender, livelihoods, and generations among others as well as recognize that
self-​determination of any Indigenous nation inevitably looks different from fifty years
from now.11
Indigenous rights advocates have also challenged the application of self-​determination
to only certain colonial contexts and argued that they remain colonized peoples within
settler colonial states. The global Indigenous caucus has long maintained that excluding
Indigenous peoples from the application of self-​determination as decolonization is based
on an indefensible assumption that Indigenous peoples were not colonized by nation-​
states. The fact that the colonization of Indigenous peoples remains unaddressed has
resulted in a euphemism of Indigenous peoples as “still colonized peoples.”12
 Self-Determination 27
Instead of statehood, Indigenous representatives typically endorse the self-​
determination as a fundamental human right according to which “human beings, indi-
vidually and as groups, are equally entitled to be in control of their own destinies, and
to live within governing institutional orders that are devised accordingly.”13 As such, it
has been argued, the right to self-​determination enables Indigenous peoples to remain
distinct peoples by having control of their own affairs and practicing their own laws,
customs, and land tenure systems through their institutions and in accordance to their
traditions. In the words of Sámi politician Lars Anders Baer, “The aim of our advocacy
for our right of self-​determination has nothing to do with the creation of Western style
nation-​states. . . . We are only trying to get greater control over our lives and future.”14
In spite of states’ fears of secession,15 Indigenous peoples typically claim or seek explicit
recognition as distinct peoples, greater political autonomy, and decision-​making powers
over their own affairs, as well as more extensive opportunities to participate in the affairs
of the state. As distinct political entities, they reject the states’ unilateral imposition of ju-
risdiction over them and their territories and resources and insist on the states’ obligation
to negotiate agreements with them.
Since international law stipulates neither the content of self-​determination nor the
meaning of “peoples,” the disparate interpretations of the states and Indigenous peoples
at the United Nations led to a long-​standing impasse and finally to a compromise in
drafting and adopting the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Significantly,
the joint Article 1(1) of the 1966 International Covenants on Human Rights was adopted
as such in Article 3 of UNDRIP, recognizing Indigenous peoples on an equal footing
with other peoples entitled to the right of self-​determination. This hard-​won right
makes UNDRIP “the first international human rights instrument to expressly recog-
nize the right to self-​determination to a sub-​state group.”16 The affirmation of the right
of Indigenous peoples to self-​determination as achieving an equal political and legal
standing with other peoples is, however, radically curtailed by Article 4, which limits to
the exercise the right of Indigenous self-​determination to internal and local affairs.17 No
such restrictions are placed on the general right of peoples in their exercise of the right to
self-​determination.
The quest for the affirmation of the Indigenous peoples’ right to self-​determination
is a quest for justice and equal standing with other peoples. It has been noted that “No
indigenous delegates on self-​determination at the UN have ever construed the concept
to mean merely ‘autonomy,’ ‘self-​governance,’ ‘secession,’ ‘political rights,’ or ‘economic
rights.’ Nor have they said that the right belongs exclusively to indigenous peoples. They
have, rather, argued for a much broader vision of justice and equality.”18 The affirmation
of the applicability of the right of self-​determination to Indigenous peoples as a collec-
tive right is significant, for it confers the right holders a status as subjects in international
law equal to nation-​states. Through the concept of self-​determination, Indigenous peo-
ples can enter into negotiations with states on an equal footing and appeal to the in-
ternational community in cases of state violence and human rights violations.19 Others
28 Restructuring Relations
maintain, however, that this is a profoundly problematic and flawed approach, arguing
that Indigenous rights regime is grounded in the Western notion of international law
which, in spite of inroads by Indigenous peoples, “remains fixated on the state as the sole,
legitimate international actor.”20
The existing Indigenous human rights discourse also reproduces and perpetuates
exclusions and hierarchies toward indigenous women similar to those that international
law maintains toward women in general. Discussing the Australian context, Megan
Davis questions the ability of the right of self-​determination in its current form “to fa-
cilitate Aboriginal women’s capability to freely determine their political status and freely
pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”21 As a state-​centric right, self-​
determination “is skewed toward the Indigenous man as ‘Indigenous peoples’ because
it makes mistaken assumptions about the shared experiences of Indigenous men and
women and has manifested in distorted policy-​making and judicial decisions that impact
negatively upon Aboriginal women.”22 Moreover, like other international human rights
instruments, UNDRIP reflects the bias of prioritizing civil and political rights and the
subsequent inferiority of rights violations taking place in the sphere considered private. It
also problematically positions indigenous women inherently as vulnerable, categorizing
them with children and elders without acknowledging that in most cases, women’s vul-
nerability is constructed by patriarchal relations of power and is a result of the preva-
lent gender discrimination and subjugation in society. Moreover, UNDRIP turns a blind
eye to the intragroup difference and discrimination that also exists within Indigenous
communities.23
In spite of the fact that UNDRIP has been praised as a comprehensive, ground-
breaking human rights document addressing the rights of Indigenous peoples, it falls
short of protecting the rights of Indigenous women. Out of forty-​six articles, UNDRIP
mentions Indigenous women only in three. The three articles discuss the need to pay
particular attention to “the rights and special needs of indigenous elders, women, youth,
children and persons with disabilities” when implementing the Declaration and specif-
ically, when improving Indigenous peoples’ economic and social conditions (Articles
22.1 and 21.2 respectively) and protecting Indigenous women and children “from all
forms of violence and discrimination” (Article 22.2). Finally, Article 44 states that the
Declaration applies equally to “male and female indigenous individuals.” With the ex-
ception of these three articles, the language of UNDRIP is gender-​neutral and it does
not elaborate on what the “rights and special needs” of women or the other aforemen-
tioned groups might be.24
The regional differences in the nature of regarding Indigenous peoples’ engagement
with the international law were clearly reflected in the interviews. In Scandinavia, due to
the ongoing political debate about the importance of ratifying the International Labour
Organization (ILO) Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent
Countries (adopted in 1989), a number of Sámi women mentioned the Convention to-
gether with UNDRIP in their discussions of self-​determination. In Greenland, where
 Self-Determination 29
Indigenous rights have surpassed the ILO Convention 169 as the result of the Self-​
Government Act of 2009, international law and human rights instruments were rarely
mentioned. In Canada, they were not mentioned at all. Notwithstanding this variation,
international law and the rights discourse was on balance discussed minimally in the
three regions compared to the other ways in which the participants engaged with the
concept of self-​determination.
The level of involvement of a particular Indigenous people in international Indigenous
politics has also shaped local Indigenous political discourses, which in turn inform
Indigenous individuals’ views of self-​determination. The Inuit (through their NGO the
Inuit Circumpolar Council) and the Sámi (through their NGO the Sámi Council) have
long been among the most active Indigenous peoples globally in the work of the United
Nations as well as other international Indigenous diplomacy such as the Arctic Council.
This has meant that besides the political and academic elite, many ordinary Inuit and
Sámi are familiar, mostly through their own media, with the discourse of international
law as it pertains to Indigenous peoples, such as the ILO Convention 169 and UNDRIP.
Of the five countries studied here, only Denmark and Norway have ratified the ILO
Convention 169. Since Norway’s ratification in 1990, the Sámi in Finland and Sweden
have also regularly appealed to the ILO Convention in pressing their rights and urged
their governments to ratify it as a minimum protection of Sámi rights. While Sweden
has steadfastly refused to ratify, the government of Finland has made insipid attempts
to ratify the Convention, most recently just ahead of the national elections in early 2015.
Strategically or not, it was left on the table as the government dissolved. As of writing
this, with the new right-​wing government, the ratification remains as distant as ever.
In Canada, the situation is radically different with a number of distinct Indigenous
peoples. Some nations and groups have been active in the international Indigenous rights
advocacy, while others have preferred to engage in politics in other venues and approaches
and to focus on other issues than international law. Traditionally, there has been no strong
Indigenous engagement with international human rights instruments at the national
level, although this has somewhat changed with the adoption of UNDRIP, which has
become an important tool of international law to advance Indigenous rights and issues
domestically. There is generally little awareness of or interest in the ILO Convention 169
among Indigenous peoples in Canada. One common explanation is the history of treaty-​
making between Indigenous nations and the Crown, which does not exist in Scandinavia
or Greenland. Indigenous peoples have felt there is no need for another layer of interna-
tional treaties that in concrete terms would not add anything to the existing rights and
Indigenous–​state relations. According to Nigel Banks, federalism also helps explain the
“lukewarm approach,” since it makes ratification processes more complex and potentially
less meaningful.25 Another key factor is that Indigenous people in Canada have been
critical of the Convention’s limited involvement in Indigenous peoples developing its
platform, including “the procedures adopted for the negotiation of the Convention and
to some extent the substantive provisions of the Convention.”26
30 Restructuring Relations
Self-​D etermination as Sovereignty,
Noninterference, and Decolonization

Divergent interpretations of the content of self-​determination derive from different

conceptions of sovereignty. As a concept, sovereignty is not only highly contested but
historically contingent.27 The concept of self-​determination as statehood and geograph-
ically separate territories and jurisdictions is rooted in the Westphalian concept of sover-
eignty and the related doctrine of noninterference in the domestic affairs of a state. Yet it
has been suggested that state sovereignty conceptualized as noninterference and ultimate
authority is being increasingly undermined by global capitalism and international law,28
and in fact may have never existed to the degree normally associated with the concept.29
Some argue that the interpretation of self-​determination as political independence is a
misconception originating in the post-​World War II decolonization framework, which
“involved the transformation of colonial territories into new states under the normative
aegis of self-​determination.”30
The concept of sovereignty is complex and contested also in scholarship on Indigenous
law and politics. Some scholars argue that sovereignty for Indigenous peoples seldom
calls forth independence or noninterference.31 Others maintain that there are Indigenous
peoples that have always been sovereign and independent.32 Others still suggest that
Indigenous sovereignty is a contradiction in terms because the concept and ideology of
sovereignty is incompatible with Indigenous ways of being, knowing, and relating in the
world.33 Instead, they consider the legitimating and hegemonic role of sovereignty in the
world dominated by a system of sovereign states and its profound impacts on Indigenous
peoples and their social, cultural, and political organization. Even if Indigenous people
may not seek independence, they nevertheless have to assume the trappings of sover-
eignty and the state if they wish to operate “in a universe of states and state-​like polit-
ical entities.”34 This is particularly evident in Indigenous self-​government institutions,
discussed in the next two chapters.
In today’s interconnected world, the Westphalian view of the world divided into mu-
tually exclusive territories appears particularly deficient, for it “ignores the multiple,
overlapping spheres of community, authority, and interdependency that actually exist in
the human experience.”35 It also ignores Indigenous conceptions of self-​determination
and sovereignty for which the notion of shared territories, jurisdictions, and overlapping
or coexisting sovereignties are common.36 As an example, the historical Dish With
One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee
Confederacy, the Anishinabek, and allied nations, provided for peaceably sharing and
caring for the hunting territories and resources around the Great Lakes.37
On the other hand, however, there are Indigenous people who support the principle of
noninterference which, they argue, forms the foundation of the treaty agreements. Most
notable is the Guswentah or Two-​Row Wampum Treaty presented by the Haudenosaunee
Confederacy to the Dutch in 1613. The Guswentah is a beaded belt consisting of two
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 I saw the signs of thrift everywhere. Firewood was piled up for
the winter, and in many cases a few cords of pulpwood besides,
sometimes in such a manner as to form fences for the vegetable
gardens. This winter the pulpwood in these fences will be sold. The
chief crops raised are hay, oats, beans, and peas. The latter, in the
form of soup, is served almost daily in the Quebec farmer’s home.
In the villages all the signs are in French, and in one where I
stopped for a time, I had difficulty in making myself understood. The
British Canadian resents the fact that the French do not try to learn
English. On the other hand the French rather resent the English
neglect of French, which they consider the proper language of the
country. Proceedings in the provincial parliament are in both
tongues. French business men and the professional and office-
holding classes can speak English, but the mass of the people know
but the one language and are not encouraged to learn any other.
When the British conceded to Quebec the right to retain the
French language, the French law, and the Catholic Church, they
made it possible for the French to remain almost a separate people.
The French Canadians ask only that they be permitted to control
their own affairs in their own way, and to preserve their institutions of
family, church, and school. They cultivate the land and perform most
of the labour; they own all the small shops, while most of the big
business is in the hands of British Canadians. Any slight, real or
fancied, to the French language or institutions, is quickly resented.
The other day a French society and the Mayor of Quebec made a
formal protest to a hotel manager because he displayed a sign
printed only in English. American moving picture distributors must
supply their films with titles in French. Menu cards, traffic directions,
and, in fact, almost all notices of a public character, are always given
in both languages. Only two of the five daily newspapers are printed
in English; the others are French.
 In the old Lower Town are all sorts of narrow
streets that may end in the rock cliff, a flight of stairs,
or an elevator. Many of them are paved with planks.
 Miles of rail fences divide the French farms into
ribbon-like strips of land that extend from the St.
Lawrence far back to the wooded hills. This is the
result of repeated partition of the original holdings.
Quebec is now capitalizing her assets in the way of scenery and
historic association, and is calculating how much money a motor
tourist from the States is worth each day of his visit. The city of
Quebec hopes to become the St. Moritz of America and the centre
for winter sports. The Canadian Pacific Railroad has here the first of
its chain of hotels that extends across Canada. It is built in the
design of a French castle, and is so big that it dwarfs the Citadel.
The hotel provides every facility for winter sports, including skating
and curling rinks, toboggan slides, and ski jumps. It has expert ski
jumpers from Norway to initiate visitors into this sport, and dog
teams from Alaska to pull them on sleds. Quebec has snow on the
ground throughout the winter season, and the thermometer
sometimes drops to twenty-five degrees below zero, but the people
say the air is so dry that they do not feel this severe cold. Which
reminds me of Kipling’s verse:

There was a small boy of Quebec

Who was buried in snow to his neck.
When they asked: “Are you friz?”
He replied: “Yes I is——
But we don’t call this cold in Quebec.”
 CHAPTER VIII
STE. ANNE DE BEAUPRÉ AND ITS
MIRACULOUS CURES

I have just returned from a visit to the Shrine of the Good Sainte
Anne, where three hundred thousand pilgrims worshipped this year. I
have looked upon the holy relics and the crutches left behind by the
cured and my knees are sore from climbing up the sacred stairway.
The Shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, some twenty miles down
the river from Quebec, is the most famous place of the kind on our
continent. Quebec is the capital of French Catholicism, and Beaupré
is its Mount Vernon, where good Catholics pay homage to the
grandmother of their church. The other day a family of five arrived at
Ste. Anne; they came from Mexico and had walked, they said, all the
way. Last summer two priests came here on foot from Boston, and I
talked this morning with a man who organizes weekly pilgrimages
from New England. Thousands come from the United States and
Canada, Alaska and Newfoundland. I saw to-day a couple just
arrived in a Pennsylvania motor truck.
On Ste. Anne’s day, July 26th, the number of pilgrims is often
twenty thousand and more. Special electric trains and motor busses
carry the worshippers from Quebec to Ste. Anne. For the
accommodation of overnight visitors, the one street of the village is
lined with little hotels and lodging houses that remind me of our
summer resorts. For a week before Ste. Anne’s day, every house is
packed, and sometimes the church is filled with pilgrims sitting up all
night. Frequently parties of several hundred persons leave Quebec
on foot at midnight, and walk to Ste. Anne, where they attend mass
before eating breakfast.
 The story of Ste. Anne de Beaupré goes back nearly two
thousand years. The saint was the mother of the Virgin Mary, and
therefore the grandmother of Christ. We are told that her body was
brought from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and then to Apt, in France,
which thereupon became a great shrine. In a time of persecution her
bones disappeared, but they were later recovered in a miraculous
manner. According to tradition they were revealed to Charlemagne
by a youth born deaf, dumb, and blind. He indicated by signs an altar
beneath which a secret crypt was found. In the crypt a lamp was
burning and behind it was a wooden chest containing the remains of
the saint. The young man straightway was able to see, hear, and
speak, and the re-discovered shrine became a great source of
healing. This was exactly seven hundred years before Columbus
discovered America.
The first church of Ste. Anne was erected at Beaupré in 1658.
Tradition says it was built by sailors threatened with shipwreck, who
promised Ste. Anne a new church at whatever spot she would bring
them safely to land. Soon after the shrine was established bishops
and priests reported wonderful cures, and since then, as the fame of
the miracles spread, the shrine has become a great place of
worship. Churches, chapels, and monasteries have been built and
rebuilt, and countless gifts have been showered upon them. The first
relic of Ste. Anne brought here was a fragment of one of her finger
bones. In 1892, Pope Leo XIII gave the “Great Relic,” consisting of a
piece of bone from the saint’s wrist. This is now the chief object of
veneration by pilgrims.
On March 29, 1922, the shrine suffered a loss by fire. The great
church, or basilica, was completely destroyed, but the sacred relics
and most of the other articles of value were saved. The gilded
wooden statue of Ste. Anne, high up on the roof over the door, was
only slightly scorched by the blaze. It now stands in the gardens
awaiting the completion of the new church. The new building has
been planned on such a large scale that five years have been
allowed for its construction. Meanwhile, the pilgrims worship in a
temporary wooden structure.
 The numerous buildings that now form part of the shrine of Ste.
Anne are on both sides of the village street, which is also the chief
highway along the north bank of the St. Lawrence. On one side the
fenced fields of the narrow French farms slope down to the river. On
the other, hills rise up so steeply that they seem almost cliffs. The
church and the monastery and the school of the Redemptorist
Fathers, the order now in charge of the shrine, are on the river side.
Across the roadway are the Memorial Chapel, the stations marking
“The Way of the Cross,” the sacred stairway, and, farther up the
hillside, the convent of the Franciscan Sisters.
 In the province of Quebec nine tenths of the
people are French-speaking Catholics. Every village
supports a large church, every house contains a
picture of the Virgin Mary, and every road has its
wayside shrine.
 In the heart of the business and financial districts
of Montreal is the Place d’Armes, once the site of a
stockade and the scene of Indian fights. There stands
the church of Notre Dame, one of the largest in all
America.
 One of the Redemptorists, the Director of Pilgrimages, told me
much that was interesting about Ste. Anne and her shrine. He gave
me also a copy of the Order’s advice on “how to make a good
pilgrimage.” This booklet urges the pilgrim to hear Holy Mass as
soon as possible. It says that “the greatest number of miraculous
cures or favours are obtained at the Shrine after a fervent
Communion.”
“After Holy Communion,” the Order’s advices continue, “the act
most agreeable to Sainte Anne and the one most calculated to gain
her favours, is the veneration of her relic.”
The act of veneration is performed by pilgrims kneeling before
the shrine containing the piece of Ste. Anne’s wrist bone. It is then
that most of the cures are proclaimed. The people kneel in prayer as
close to the shrine as the number of worshippers will permit. Those
who experience a cure spring up in great joy and cast at the feet of
the saint’s statue their crutches or other evidence of their former
affliction. In the church I saw perhaps fifty crutches, canes, and
sticks left there this summer by grateful pilgrims. At the back of the
church I saw cases filled with spectacles, leg braces, and body
harnesses, and even a couple of wheel chairs, all abandoned by
pilgrims. One rack was filled with tobacco pipes, evidence of
promises to give up smoking in return for the saint’s favours.
The miraculous statue of Ste. Anne, before which the pilgrims
kneel, represents the saint holding in her arms the infant Christ. On
her head is a diadem of gold and precious stones, the gifts of the
devout. Below the statue is a slot marked “petitions.” Pilgrims having
special favours to ask of Ste. Anne write them on slips of paper and
drop them into the box. After three or four months, they are taken out
and burned. On the day of my visit the holy relic was not in its usual
place in the church, but in the chapel of the monastery, a fireproof
building, where it had been moved for safekeeping. It was there that
I gazed upon the bit of bone. The relic is encased in a box of solid
gold and is encircled by a broad gold band, about the size of a
napkin ring, set with twenty-eight diamonds. The box is studded with
gems and inlaid with richly coloured enamels. All the precious stones
came from jewellery given by pilgrims.
 I visited also the “Grotto of the Passion.” This contains three
groups of figures, representing events in the life of Christ. In front of
the central group is a large, shallow pan, partly filled with water and
dotted with the stumps of candles lighted and set there by pilgrims to
burn until extinguished by the water. The Grotto is in the lower part of
a wooden structure that looks like a church, built on the side of the
hill. Above is the “Scala Sancta,” or sacred stairway. Large signs
warn visitors that these stairs, which represent those in Pilate’s
house, are to be ascended only on the knees. There are twenty-eight
steps, and those who go up are supposed to pause on each one and
repeat a prayer. As I reverently mounted the steps, one by one, I
was reminded of the Scala Sancta in Rome, which I climbed in the
same way some years ago. It is a flight of twenty-eight marble steps
from the palace of Pilate at Jerusalem, up which our Saviour is said
to have climbed. It was brought to Rome toward the end of the
period of the crusades, and may be ascended only on the knees.
The stairway at Beaupré is often the scene of miraculous cures,
but none occurred while I was there. At the top the pilgrims kneel
again and make their devotions, ending with the words, “Good
Sainte Anne, pray for us.”
Near the church are stores that sell souvenirs, bead crosses,
and the like, the proceeds from which go toward the upkeep of the
shrine. At certain hours each day articles thus purchased, or those
the pilgrims have brought from home, are blessed by the priests in
attendance. Another source of revenue is the sale of the shrine
magazine, which has a circulation of about eighty thousand.
Subscribers whether “living or dead, share in one daily mass” said at
the shrine. Pilgrims are also invited to join the Association of the
Perpetual Mass, whose members, for the sum of fifty cents a year,
may share in a mass “said every day for all time.”
The Director of Pilgrimages told me that the past summer had
been the best season in the history of the shrine. The pilgrims this
year numbered more than three hundred thousand, their
contributions were generous, and the number of cures, or “favours,”
large. About one third of these, said the Director, prove to be
permanent. The Fathers take the name and address of each pilgrim
who claims to have experienced a miraculous cure, and inquiries are
made later to find out if relief has been lasting. The shrine has
quantities of letters and photographs as evidences of health and
strength being restored here, and I have from eye-witnesses first-
hand accounts of the joyous transports of the lame, the halt, and the
blind when their ailments vanish, apparently, in the twinkling of an
eye.
I have referred to Quebec as the American capital of French
Catholicism. It is not only a city of many churches, but is also
headquarters for numerous Catholic orders, some of which
established themselves here after being driven from France. The
value of their property holdings now amounts to a large sum, and
one of the new real-estate sub-divisions is being developed by a
clerical order. Many of the fine old mansion homes, with park-like
grounds, once owned by British Canadians, are now in the hands of
religious organizations. The Ursuline nuns used to own the Plains of
Abraham, and were about to sell the tract for building lots when
public sentiment compelled the government to purchase it and
convert it into a park. A statue of General Wolfe marks the spot
where he died on the battlefield. It is the third one erected there, the
first two having been ruined by souvenir fiends.
The homes of the Catholic orders in Quebec supply priests for
the new parishes constantly being formed in Canada. They also
send their missionaries to all parts of the world, and from one of the
nunneries volunteers go to the leper colonies in Madagascar. Other
orders maintain hospitals, orphanages, and institutions identified with
the city’s historic past. Before an altar in one of the churches two
nuns, dressed in bridal white, are always praying, night and day,
each couple being relieved every half hour. In another a lamp
burning before a statue of the Virgin has not been extinguished since
it was first lighted, fifteen years before George Washington was born.
Some of the churches contain art treasures of great value, besides
articles rich in their historical associations.
Driving in the outskirts of Quebec I met a party of Franciscan
monks returning from their afternoon walk. They were bespectacled,
studious-looking young men, clad in robes of a gingerbread brown,
fastened with white girdles, and wearing sandals on their bare feet.
All were tonsured, but I noticed that their shaved crowns were in
many instances in need of a fresh cutting. These men alternate
studies with manual labour in the fields. In front of the church of this
order is a great wooden cross bearing the figure of Christ. Before it is
a stone where the devout kneel and embrace His wounded feet.
Near by is also a statue of St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuit Order,
standing with one foot on the neck of a man who represents the
heretics.
There are in Quebec a few thousand Irish Catholics,
descendants of people who came here to escape the famine in
Ireland. They have built a church of their own. Another church,
shown to visitors as a curiosity, is that of the French Protestants,
who, according to the latest figures, number exactly one hundred
and thirty-five.
Though a city of well over one hundred thousand people,
Quebec has an enviable record for peace and order and for
comparatively few crimes. The credit for this is generally given to the
influence of the Church, which is also responsible, so I am told, for
the success of the French Canadian in “minding his own business.”
The loyalty of the people to their faith is evidenced by the fact that
even the smallest village has a big church. Outside the cities the
priest, or curé, is in fact the shepherd of his flock, and their
consultant on all sorts of matters. I am told, however, that the clergy
do not exercise the same control over political and worldly affairs as
was formerly the case, and not nearly so much as is generally
supposed. It is still true, however, that the Catholic religion is second
only to the French language in keeping the French Canadians
almost a separate people.
 CHAPTER IX
MONTREAL

Following the course of the French explorers, I have come up

the St. Lawrence to the head of navigation, and am now in Montreal,
the largest city of Canada and the second port of North America. It is
an outlet for much of the grain of both the United States and
Canada, and it handles one third of all the foreign trade of the
Dominion. Montreal is the financial centre of the country and the
headquarters for many of its largest business enterprises. In a
commercial sense, it is indeed the New York of Canada, although
totally unlike our metropolis.
In order to account for the importance of Montreal, it is
necessary only to glance at the map. Look first at the Gulf of St.
Lawrence and the broad mouth of the river! See how they form a
great funnel inviting the world to pour in its people and goods. Follow
the St. Lawrence down to Quebec and on by Montreal to the Great
Lakes, which extend westward to the very heart of the continent.
There is no such waterway on the face of the globe and none that
carries such a vast commerce into the midst of a great industrial
empire.
Montreal is the greatest inland port in the world. It ships more
grain than any other city. It is only four hundred and twenty miles
north of New York, yet it is three hundred miles nearer Liverpool.
One third of the distance to that British port lies between here and
the Straits of Belle Isle, where the Canadian liners first meet the
waves of the open sea. The city is the terminus of the canal from the
Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence and of Canada’s three
transcontinental railways. Vessels from all over the world come here
to get cargoes assembled from one of the most productive regions
on the globe. Although frozen in for five months every winter,
Montreal annually handles nearly four million tons of shipping, most
of which is under the British flag. It has a foreign trade of more than
five hundred million dollars. The annual grain movement sometimes
exceeds one hundred and sixty bushels for each of the city’s
population of almost a million.
In the modern sense, the port is not yet one hundred years old,
though Cartier was here nearly four centuries ago, and Champlain
came only seventy years later. Both were prevented from going
farther upstream by the Lachine Rapids, just above the present city.
Cartier was seeking the northwest passage to the East Indies, and
he gave the rapids the name La Chine because he thought that
beyond them lay China.
At the foot of the rapids the Frenchmen found an island, thirty
miles long and from seven to ten miles wide, separated from the
mainland by the two mouths of the Ottawa River. It was then
occupied by a fortified Indian settlement. The presence of the
Indians seemed to make the island an appropriate site on which to
lay the foundations of the new Catholic “Kingdom of God,” and the
great hill in the background, seven hundred and forty feet high,
suggested the name, Mont Real, or Mount Royal.
Although the Indians seemed to prefer fighting the newcomers to
gaining salvation, the religious motive was long kept alive, and it was
not until early in the last century that the city began to assume great
commercial importance. During the first days of our Revolution,
General Montgomery occupied Montreal for a time, and Benjamin
Franklin begged its citizens to join our rebellion. It had then about
four thousand inhabitants. Even as late as 1830 Montreal was a
walled town, with only a beach in the way of shipping
accommodations. The other day it was described by an expert from
New York as the most efficiently organized port in the world.
I have gone down to the harbour and been lifted up to the tops of
grain elevators half as high as the Washington Monument. I have
also been a guest of the Harbour Commission in a tour of the water-
front. The Commission is an all-powerful body in the development
and control of the port. Its members, who are appointed by the
Dominion government, have spent nearly forty million dollars in
improvements. This sum amounts to almost five dollars a head for
everyone in Canada, but the port has always earned the interest on
its bonds, and has never been a burden to the taxpayers.
An American, Peter Fleming, who built the locks on the Erie
Canal, drew the first plans for the harbour development of Montreal.
That was about a century ago. Now the city has its own expert port
engineers, and last summer one of the firms here built in ninety days
a grain elevator addition with a capacity of twelve hundred and fifty
thousand bushels. A giant new elevator, larger than any in existence,
is now being erected. It will have a total capacity of fourteen million
bushels of grain.
 Montreal’s future, like her present greatness, lies
along her water front. Here the giant elevators load
the grain crop of half a continent into vessels that sail
the seven seas.
 On a clear day one may stand on Mt. Royal,
overlooking Montreal and the St. Lawrence, and see
in the distance the Green Mountains of Vermont and
the Adirondacks of New York.
The port handles at times as much as twenty-three hundred
thousand bushels of wheat in a day. It is not uncommon for a lake
vessel to arrive early in the morning, discharge its cargo, and start
back to the head of the lakes before noon. Rivers of wheat are
sucked out of the barges, steamers, and freight cars, and flow at
high speed into the storage bins. There are sixty miles of water-front
railways, most of which have been electrified. Every operation
possible is performed by machinery, and there are never more than
a few workmen anywhere in sight. Yet the grain business is a source
of great revenue to the city, and furnishes a living to thousands of
people. One of the industries it has built up is that of making grain
sacks, of which one firm here turns out two and one half millions a
year.
But let me tell you something of the city itself—or, better still,
suppose we go up to the top of Mount Royal and look down upon it
as it lies under our eyes. We shall start from my hotel, a new eight-
million-dollar structure erected chiefly to accommodate American
visitors, and take a coach. As a concession to hack drivers, taxis are
not allowed on top of Mount Royal.
Our way lies through the grounds of McGill University, and past
one of the reservoirs built in the hillside to supply the city with water
pumped from the river. McGill is the principal Protestant educational
institution in the province of Quebec. Here Stephen Leacock teaches
political economy when he is not lecturing or writing his popular
humorous essays. Besides colleges of art, law, medicine, and
applied science, McGill has a school of practical agriculture. It also
teaches young women how to cook. It has branches at Victoria and
Vancouver in British Columbia. The medical school is rated
especially high, and many of its graduates are practicing physicians
in the United States.
Now we are on the winding drive leading to the top of the hill.
Steep flights of wooden stairs furnish a shorter way up for those
equal to a stiff climb, and we pass several parties of horseback
riders. All this area is a public park, and a favourite spot with the
people of the city. See those three women dressed in smart sport
suits, carrying slender walking sticks. They seem very English. Over
there are two girls, in knickers and blouses, gaily conversing with
their young men. They have dark eyes and dark hair, with a brunette
glow on their cheeks that marks them as French.
Step to the railing on the edge of the summit. If the day were
clear we could see the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains of
Vermont. Like a broad ribbon of silver the St. Lawrence flows at our
feet. That island over there is called St. Helene, bought by
Champlain as a present for his wife. Since he paid for it out of her
dowry, he could hardly do less than give it her name.
That narrow thread to the right, parallel with the river, is the
Lachine Canal, in which a steamer is beginning its climb to the level
of Lake St. Louis. The canal has a depth of fourteen feet, and
accommodates ships up to twenty-five hundred tons. The shores of
the lake, which is really only a widening out of the river, furnish
pleasant sites for summer bungalows and cool drives on hot nights.
Nearer the city the canal banks are lined with warehouses and
factories. Montreal’s manufactures amount to more than five
hundred million dollars a year.
There below us is Victoria Jubilee Bridge, one and three quarters
miles long. Over it trains and motors from the United States come
into the city. Another railroad penetrates the heart of Montreal by a
tunnel under Mount Royal that has twin tubes more than three miles
in length. The Canadian Pacific Railroad has bridged the St.
Lawrence at Lachine.
Most of Montreal lies between Mount Royal and the river, but the
wings of the city reach around on each side of the hill. The French
live in the eastern section. The western suburbs contain the homes
of well-to-do English Canadians. One of them, Westmount, is
actually surrounded by the city, yet it insists on remaining a separate
municipality.
Mark Twain said that he would not dare throw a stone in
Montreal for fear of smashing a church window. If he could view the
city to-day he would be even more timid. Almost every building that
rises above the skyline is a church, and the largest structures are
generally Catholic schools, colleges, hospitals, or orphanages.