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21 Soc. & Legal Stud. 3 (2012)

handle is hein.journals/solestu21 and id is 1 raw text is: 





Article


The Crown in a

Multicultural Age:

The Changing

Epistemology of

(Post)colonial

Sovereignty


           Social & Legal Studies
                 21(I) 3-21
         K The Author(s) 2012
         Reprints and permission:
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   DOI: 10.117710964663911418719
              sls.sagepub.corn
              OSAGE


Mariana Valverde
University of Toronto, Canada




Abstract
In Canada as in other (post)colonial settings, courts have been facing the challenging
task of redefining both substantive aboriginal legal rights and evidentiary rules that
now look ethnocentric. Recent litigation has shown that while rights claims made by
indigenous collectives are difficult to make and sustain in court, the newly revived
doctrine of the Crown's inherent 'honour' can work for aboriginal peoples precisely
because the Crown's honour is, as it were, self-acting. But the neo-medieval dis-
course of the Crown coexists, in the text of Canadian courts, with discursive prac-
tices that enact a contemporary, pluralistic, socially aware form of judicial
anthropology. These two wholly conflicting representations of the Canadian state
live happily side by side in current Canadian judicial discourse. This easy eclecticism
stands in marked contrast to the difficulties and embarrassments experienced by
aboriginal leaders testifying before judges. The close judicial scrutiny of aboriginal
claims contrasts with the tolerance of major epistemological contradictions in the
state's discourses about itself.


Keywords
aboriginal rights, Crown, 'duty to consult', monarchy, multiculturalism



Corresponding author:
Mariana Valverde, University of Toronto, 14 Queen's Park Crescent West, Toronto, M5S 3K9, Canada
Email: m.valverde@utoronto.ca

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