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.

Aboriginal Contributions to Justice

I just spent the last 40 minutes chatting with a student researching native contributions to the Canadian Justice system.  He was stumped with database searching, and I can't say I blame him.  But over the course of chatting we came up with a number of items, plus some additional strategies.  This just demonstrates that while Databases are wonderful tools, they are just one in the toolbox, and nothing can fully replace human interaction with intelligent informed librarians.

He began by outlining his topic, and while he was chatting, and telling me he didn't have any good keywords to search, I was madly writing down some of the keywords from what he told me, which he claimed he didn't have.  His discussion also allowed me to recalls some key texts, I hadn't immediately thought of, and before long we ended up having a lengthy conversation with me occassionally interrupting and saying, 'Oh lets search that term, or that database'.  He also seemed to gain the confidence to talk to some people he knows who work directly in the field. It was a nice a ha moment for him.  Me, a bit frustrated at first that nothing was coming up with simple searches, but nice feeling as he left, that indeed there was hope, and no doubt he will find something, as there have been, in recent years some notable contributions.  Thanks to the folks at the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards for having a category for Justice and Law and recognizing these contributions.