Recognition Policies, Self-Determination, and Legal Redress for Indigenous Peoples in the United States, Australia, and Canada: A Comparative Study

Introduction

The United States’ federal system of devolved sovereignty and the concurrent operation of federal recognition of American Indian tribes involves the federal government’s acknowledgment of tribes’ continuing sovereignty and its granting of eligibility for certain federal benefits. This system, in tandem with state-level recognition practices, provides tribes with a degree of flexibility that allows them to pursue a government-to-government relationship with states in the face of federal unwillingness or inability to grant recognition. While not without limitations, this dual federalist system of Indian sovereignty furnishes a potential model for judicial systems in other common-law countries such as Australia to fill the gaps their legal and constitutional structures have created in guaranteeing the land rights, self-determinative capacities, and social and cultural rights of Indigenous

Peoples. Given the recent failure of a nationwide referendum that would have provided Aboriginal Peoples in Australia with constitutional recognition and an advisory body in the Australian

Parliament, the governments of individual Australian states and territories possess an opportunity to step in and engage on a regional level where the federal Commonwealth Government has not: that is, with Aboriginal Peoples in their efforts to win greater acknowledgment of their rights to self-determination.

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Zavardino, Recognition Policies, Self-Determination, and Legal Redress for Indigenous Peop.

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