The common law basis of Aboriginal entitlements to land in Canada, the law's crooked path

• Main Author: Donovan, Brian
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1993/2677

Indians of North America === Land tenure === Indians of North America === Claims === Indians of North America === Legal status, laws, etc === Indiens d'Amerique === Terres === Indiens d'Amerique === Reclamations === Indiens d'Amerique === Droit === Prior to contact with European societies, Aboriginal peoples inhabiting the geographical territory which now comprises Canada had numerous and varied relationships with the land. In many cases, pre-contact Aboriginal rules and customs relative to land were sufficiently developed to amount to systems of "land tenure" in the parallel European sense. Such Aboriginal systems had nothing to do with "tenure" in the Anglo-Norman feudal sense. They were systems of land-holding Equally, all Aboriginal peoples were territorial in some degree. Pre-contact patterns of Aboriginal territoriality and land occupation can in many cases be ascertained even in cases in which, due to the passage of time and the decimation and dislocation of populations, original Aboriginal systems of tenure can now no longer be reconstructed. Pre-contact Aboriginal systems of tenure and patterns of territoriality have present legal implications relative to Aboriginal legal entitlements to land. These have not been fully explored. This thesisexplores some of these implications. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)