James Anaya’s remarks came after a nine-day visit to Canada. Pressing issues include education reform and the epidemic disappearance of aboriginal women.
Here is a Huffington Post article, and here’s a CBC article.
indigenous people
Graham and McJohn: “Thirty Two Short Stories about Intellectual Property”
Lorie Graham and Stephen M. McJohn have posted their paper, “Thirty Two Short Stories about Intellectual Property,” on SSRN.
Here is the abstract:
In the United States, intellectual property law is usually viewed as serving economics, by providing an incentive for authors and inventors to create works. The incentive policy, however, ill fits the actual contours of intellectual property law and how artists and inventors use it. Adding other approaches offers a fuller explanation. Intellectual property plays a greater role than economic theory suggests in disclosing technology, and in serving to coordinate cultural values in technology. Intellectual property can serve human rights (similar to the moral rights approach in some jurisdictions), by allowing people to control the way that their works are publicly exploited, and by allowing groups (such as indigenous peoples) to implement rights of self-determination, education, and media.
This piece also departs from the typical law review format. In assessing doctrine and theory, deductive reasoning from economic or legal principles is no more important than literary tools, like interpretation and narrative. These points can be illustrated by some stories.
Courtney Jung on Transitional Justice and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools
Courtney Jung has posted “Canada and the Legacy of the Indian Residential Schools: Transitional Justice for Indigenous Peoples in a Non-Transitional Society” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The framework of transitional justice, originally devised to facilitate reconciliation in countries undergoing transitions from authoritarianism to democracy, is used with increasing frequency to respond to certain types of human rights violations against indigenous peoples. In some cases, transitional justice measures are employed in societies not undergoing regime transition. This paper outlines some of the potential complexities involved in processing indigenous demands for justice through a transitional justice framework. First, governments and indigenous peoples may differ over the scope of injustices that transitional justice measures can address. Second, governments may try to use transitional justice to draw a line through history and legitimate present policy, whereas indigenous peoples may try to use the past to critique present policy and conditions. Third, governments may try to use transitional justice to reassert their sovereign and legal authority, whereas indigenous peoples may try to resist this strategy, and even make competing claims to sovereignty and legal authority.
Turtle Talk 