From Recognition to Reconciliation

"Finding a way to live together is not about tinkering with this or that Aboriginal policy or about expanding this or that feature of constitutional law. It's an opportunity to reimagine our common future as a people ... The issues at stake in section 35 therefore go beyond any purely intellectual exercise. They challenge our definition of what it is to be Canadian; they are absolutely central to the economic and political future of our country." -- Michael Ignatieff, former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Edward R. Murrow Professor of the Practice of Politics, the Press, and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University "Professors Macklem and Sanderson present a timely collection of essays that greatly illuminate thinking about the place of Aboriginal peoples in Canada's social and legal architecture. This book is an important reference for anyone interested in how a modern democracy might come to terms with the present-day legacies of its colonial past." -- S. James Anaya, Regents' Professor and James J. Lenoir Professor of Human Rights Law and Policy, James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona

In From Recognition to Reconciliation, twenty leading scholars reflect on the continuing transformation of the constitutional relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state.

More than thirty years ago, section 35 of the Constitution Act recognized and affirmed “the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada.” Hailed at the time as a watershed moment in the legal and political relationship between Indigenous peoples and settler societies in Canada, the constitutional entrenchment of Aboriginal and treaty rights has proven to be only the beginning of the long and complicated process of giving meaning to that constitutional recognition.

In From Recognition to Reconciliation, twenty leading scholars reflect on the continuing transformation of the constitutional relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state. The book features essays on themes such as the role of sovereignty in constitutional jurisprudence, the diversity of methodologies at play in these legal and political questions, and connections between the Canadian constitutional experience and developments elsewhere in the world.