Ebook: Native Liberty, Crown Sovereignty: The Existing Aboriginal Right of Self-Government in Canada

It is generally assumed in Canada that native liberty and crown sovereignty are antagonistic and mutually exclusive forces. In this penetrating study, Bruce Clark shows that they are in fact complementary. The British government exercised its sovereignty in the eighteenth century in order to protect the liberty of the natives of Canada to continue governing themselves. Clark argues that this recognition continues to bind federal and provincial governments constitutionally, even though these governments habitually flout the law in practice.