Social Justice in Canada

Introduction to the concept of human rights

Monday January 17 2011

Lecture 3: Human Rights and Social Justice in Canada

PEACE ST 2B03/LABR ST 2W03/WOMEN’S ST 2A03: Human Rights and Social Justice

Dr Colin Salter, Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster University

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 Outline

• Treaty rights
• Red Hill valley
• Caledonia

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 Guswenta (1613)
symbolize the path of two vessels, travelling down the
same river together. One, a birch bark canoe, will be for
the Indian people, their laws, their customs and their
ways. The other, a ship, will be for the white people and
their laws, their customs and their ways. We shall each
travel the same river together, side by side, but in our
own boats. Neither of us will try to steer the other’s
vessel.
Chief Michael Mitchell in Tully (1995)

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 Guswenta (1613)
The white man said he would respect the
Onkwehonweh's [the real people’s] belief and
pronounce him as a son. The Onkwehonweh replied, ''I
respect you, your belief, and what you say; but you
pronounced yourself as my father and with this I do not
agree, because the father can tell his son what to do
and also can punish him.'' So the Onkwehonweh said,
''We will not be like father and son, but like brothers''
Indian Country Today (2007)

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aboriginal title is not equivalent to a common law
understanding of property rights primarily because an
aboriginal conception of ‘ownership’ was conceived of
as a ‘whole’ or ‘entity’ which includes people living, past
generations and future generations, rather than an
‘individual’ right.
Kobayashi & Ray (2000)

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 Civil risk

• Socially constructed
• Is it a suitable framework for reframing human rights
and social justice?

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We define civil risk as a failure of human rights, brought
about by institutional processes constructed over time,
space and place, which create disadvantages for
marginalized social groups
Kobayashi & Ray (2000)

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 For Wednesday

• Given the incommensurability between First Nations

and colonial (Lockean, Enlightenment) notions of
property, how might we approach the issue of land
and treaty rights in Canada?

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 For Thursday

• Should risk, and not rights, motivate social justice?

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 Citations & further reading
Lila Abu-Lughod (2002) ‘Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological
Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others’, American Anthropologist,Vol. 104,
No. 3: pp. 783-790.

Audrey Kobayashi & Brian Ray (2000) ‘Civil risk and landscapes of marginality in
Canada: a pluralist approach to social justice’, The Canadian Geographer, Vol. 44, No. 4.
pp. 401-417.

Walter Peace, Ed. (1998) From Mountain to Lake: the Red Hill Creek Valley, Hamilton,
Ontario: The Conserver Society of Hamilton and District

Charles Royce (1899) Indian Land Cessions in the United States (US Serial Set, Number
4015). Washington: Government Printing Office.

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 Citations & further reading
Colin Salter (2009) ‘Contested Grounds: incommensurability and the paradigms of
whiteness’ in Barbara Baird and Damien Riggs (eds.) The Racial Politics of Bodies, Nations
and Knowledges, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 72-92

Shannon Sullivan & Nancy Tuana, Eds. (2007) Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance,
Albany: State University of NewYork Press.

James Tully (1995) Strange multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an age of diversity, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press

unknown 2007. 'Two Row Wampum: Symbol of Sovereignty', Indian Country Today,
June 28: 1.

Louis Aubrey Wood (1915) The War Chief of the Six Nations: a chronicle of Joseph Brant,
Wrong, G.M., & Langton, H.H. (eds.) Toronto: Galsgow, Brook and Company.

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 Image sources
Mike Konopacki. 2000. ‘If there was justice in the world‘, 2000 — http://www.veggies.org.uk/calendar/2000.htm

‘Human Rights Champions’, 2001 — http://invisiblecollege.weblog.leidenuniv.nl/2007/03/11/who-wants-to-be-the-

new-human-rights-cha

‘Which do you pet, which do you eat?‘ — http://www.meatout.org/action/outreach.htm

Shane T. McCoy, ‘Detainees at Camp X-Ray’, 11 January 2002. Image in the domain image — http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Camp_x-ray_detainees.jpg

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