Mother Earth, Cultural Authenticity, and Canadian Law

Authors

  • Matthew Glass Western University, Ontario

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.23942

Keywords:

Mother Earth, Aboriginal Law, Canada, Van der Peet, cultural authenticicty

Abstract

I can understand that Gill’s commitment to the academic study of religion would lead him to make a strong distinction between the scholarly search for truth and political advocacy—a point he emphasized in his 1997 JAAR debate with Chris Jocks (Gill 1997; Jocks 1997). At the same time, however, scholarly searches for truth in contentious areas might best lead those scholars to acknowledge how their searches fit in with and affect the surrounding contests of the political world, if only to ensure that their work is not appropriated in ways that misconstrue their conclusions.

References

Angus Reid. 2018. ‘Truths of Reconciliation: Canadians Are Deeply Divided on How Best to Address Indigenous Issues’. https://angusreid.org/indigenous-canada/

Borrows, John. 2010. Canada’s Indigenous Constitution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).

Bakht, Natasha, and Lynda Collins. 2017. ‘The Earth is Our Mother: Freedom of Religion and the Preservation of Indigenous Sacred Sites in Canada’, McGill Law Journal 62.3: 777–812. https://doi.org/10.7202/1042774ar

Carlson, Kirsten Matoy. 2014. ‘Political Failure, Judicial Opportunity: The Supreme Court of Canada and Aboriginal and Treaty Rights’, American Review of Canadian Studiesm 44.3: 334–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/02722011.2014.941153

Chidester, David. 2005. Authentic Fakes: Religion in Popular American Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press).

Dawson, Mary. 2012. ‘From the Backroom to the Front Line: Making Constitutional History or Encounters with the Constitution: Patriation, Meech Lake, and Charlottetown’, McGill Law Journal 57.4: 955–1000. https://doi.org/10.7202/1013035ar

Flanagan, Thomas. 2000. First Nations? Second Thoughts (Montreal Kingston: McGill Queens University Press).

Gill, Sam. 2024. ‘What is Mother Earth? A Name, A Meme, A Conspiracy’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 18.2: 162–88. https://doi.org/10.1558/ jsrnc.19924

———. 1997. ‘Rejoinder to Chris Jocks’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65.1: 177–81. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LXV.1.177

———. 1987. Mother Earth: An American Story (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

Guillemin, Jeanne. 2018. ‘C. P. Snow, Sputnik and the Cold War’, European Review 27.1: 80–86. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798718000546

Hobsawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger. 1983. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Jocks, Christopher. 1997. ‘American Indian Religious Traditions and the Academic Study of Religion: A Response to Sam Gill’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65.1: 169–76. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LXV.1.169

Kawacatoose First Nation et. al. and Star Blanket First Nation and Little Black Bear First Nation and Standing Buffalo Dakota First Nation and Peepeekisis First Nation v. Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada. 2019. SCTC 3.

McNally, Michael D. 2020. Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom Beyond the First Amendment (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

McNeil, Kent. 2014. ‘Indigenous Rights Litigation, Legal History, and the Role of Experts’, Saskatchewan Law Review 77.2: 173–204.

McHugh, Paul G. 2014. ‘Time Whereof—Memory, History and Law in the Jurisprudence of Aboriginal Rights’, Saskatchewan Law Review 77.2: 137–72.

Miller, Bruce. 2011. Oral History on Trial: Recognizing Aboriginal Narratives in the Courts (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press).

Ray, Arthur J. 2016. Aboriginal Rights Claims and the Making and Remaking of History (Montreal Kingston: McGill-Queens).

———. 2011. Telling It to the Judge: Taking Native History to Court (McGill-Queen’s University Press).

R. c. White et Montour. 2023 QSC 505-01-137394-165.

R. v. Desautel. 2021. SCC 17.

R. v. Marshall. 1999. 3 SCR 456.

R. v. Marshall. 2001. NSPC 2.

R. v. Van der Peet. 1996. 2 SCR 507.

R. v. Sappier; R. v. Gray. 2006. SCC 54.

Saugeen First Nation v. The Attorney General of Canada. 2021. ONSC 418.

Snow, Charles P., William O. Baker, Theodore M. Hesburg, and Warren Weaver. 1961. ‘The Moral Un-Neutrality of Science’, Science 133.3448: 255–62. https://doi.org/10.14452/MR-012-10-1961-02_2

Umbach, Maiken, and Mathew Humphrey. 2018. Authenticity: The Cultural History of a Political Concept (New York: Palgrave MacMillan).

Von Gernet, Alexander. 2000. ‘What My Elders Taught Me: Oral Traditions as Evidence in Aboriginal Litigation’ in Owen Lippert (ed.) Beyond the Nass Valley: National Implications of the Supreme Court’s Delgamuukw Decision (Calgary: Fraser Institute): 103–27.

Widdowson, Frances, and Albert Howard. 2008. Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation (Montreal Kingston: McGill Queens University Press).

Downloads

Published

2024-03-13

Issue

Section

Special Issue - Sam Gill Forum

How to Cite

Glass, M. (2024). Mother Earth, Cultural Authenticity, and Canadian Law. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 18(2), 217-229. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.23942