I'm beginning to wonder if we're entering (or indeed have entered) an aspatial arrangement, and if technology is leading the charge.  A few recent examples have struck me and got me wondering if it was technology that caused earlier shifts in the late eighteenth century that had western european society moving from a non-spatial (or better yet aspatial) world to a more fully spatialised one, a world where ideally there was full congruence between the Nation and the State.

In the current context, I'm struck by communications technology in particular that no longer cares where we are to assign identity (in this case telephone numbers).  Although somehow they manage to charge for long distance calls. Consider for example MTS's recent approach to a lack of numbers. They've chosen to add three digit codes to all new phone numbers, but where in the past this was known as an 'area code' and truly did refer to an area, the new system presumably because of the mobility of the telephones, simply adds these numbers to any new line.  There is no longer a good way to determine where physically a phone number  is located. If this is the case, what was the technology in the eighteenth century that provided the push into a spatial world. Was it, as I had surmised many years ago, the advent of surveying and cartographic techniques, pioneered by Ambros von Amman, David Thompson, and the rest?

Court upholds native fisher's tax exemption, by Alexandra Paul, Winnipeg Free Press, March 22, 2012.


From this story alone, having not actually read the ruling itself, nor analysed the other cases that have ruled on section 87 of the Indian Act, I'm fascinated by what I see as a trend towards establishing 'indianness' (for lack of a better word) by the principle of jus sanguinis, a right that as the old phrase has it can 'be carried on one's back'.  This is in marked distinction to the territorially bounded principle used in other cases.
 In short, it is no longer necessary to remain on reserve, and I assume more to the point for future decisions, to somehow prove that you or your ancestors were on reserve, or in that specific geographical locale at the time a treaty was signed, to claim rights that were promised and reiterated in various court rulings to ones identity as an aboriginal person.

This deserves closer attention, both to the use of section 87 in recent cases, and the increased recognition that your status / rights to conduct business, engage in social discourse, or otherwise exist as a Canadian, are not bound by the border markers of the reserve.