CANADA THE BULLY: INDIGENOUS HUMAN RIGHTS IN CANADA AND THE UNITED NATIONS DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

摘要

Canada, a settler-state created on the territories of and at the expense of Aboriginal peoples, opposed the 2007 United Nations adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and despite ratifying the Declaration in November 2010, hasqualified the significance of the Declaration to the point of meaninglessness. In this article I frame this approach as bullying, and take up the Harper government’s resistance to the undrip; its refusal to take the advice of its own expert bureaucrats; and its final equivocal and conditional adoption of the undrip. I argue that indigenous (or Aboriginal) rights are a species of human rights and that Canada, like all other states, is bound to observe the framework of international law, including indigenous rights. I consider the Canadian context for Aboriginal human rights, and the implications of the undrip for Canadian compliance with international law and for domestic policies.