About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

29 U. Brit. Colum. L. Rev. 143 (1995)
If Quebec Secedes from Canada Can the Cree Secede from Quebec

handle is hein.journals/ubclr29 and id is 153 raw text is: IF QUEBEC SECEDES FROM CANADA
CAN THE CREE SECEDE FROM QUEBEC?
DOUGLAS SANDERSt
The question has arisen in Canada of whether a secession of Quebec
from the Canadian federation would legally or politically allow the
indigenous peoples of Quebec to make their own choices, whether for
Quebec, for Canada or for independence.
When is secession possible? East Pakistan became Bangladesh in a
civil war. For many years it was the major example of a successful
secession. In the same period the secessionist war in Biafra failed. The
region remains within Nigeria. On the basis of outcome, one struggle
was a war of liberation, the other an internal civil war.1 The interna-
tional political order recognizes Tibet as part of China; the Kurdish
lands as parts of Iraq, Iran and Turkey; and Quebec as part of Canada.
The International Court of Justice recognized independent political
rights for the people of the Western Sahara, but those rights continue to
be denied in practice.2 The breakup of the Soviet Union and of Yugo-
slavia has created a number of new states, but bitter fighting continues in
some localities over independence or borders.
Occasionally there are rearrangements within existing states, recog-
nizing some new form of internal autonomy. The separate canton of
Jura was created in Switzerland on ethnic grounds, following complex
negotiations and votes. Hong Kong will be reunited with China, but
with a high degree of autonomy. Catalonia gained a regional parlia-
ment and continues to act more and more like a separate state. Green-
land has home rule and might eventually go its own way.3 Canada has
t Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia.
© Douglas Sanders, 1995.
1 The problem of explaining these two examples is illustrated in the literature. See, for example,
J. N. Saxena, Sel-Determination: From Biafra to Bangladesh (Bombay:Tripathi, 1978).
2 Re Western Sahara (1975) I.CJ. Rep. 6; H. A. Amankwah, Self-Determination in the Spanish
Sahara (x98i) 14 CILJSA 34.
3 The handling of Greenland by Denmark has been questioned; see G. AIfredsson, Greenland
and the Law of Political Decolonization (1982) 25 Ger. Yearb. Int'l L 29o.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most