Aboriginal Rights Are Not Human Rights (Semaphore)

Aboriginal rights are often assumed to belong to the broader category of human rights; Kulchyski makes a powerful argument against this. On the contrary, indigenous people across the world need specific rights in part to balance against the universalist core of human rights. This book provides conceptual and historical analyses distinguishing aboriginal rights from human rights. It shows how aboriginal rights result from the struggles of native peoples. It traces the development of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Aboriginal rights provisions of the Constitution of Canada and pertinent Canadian legal decisions. While not a critique of the universalistic nature and European origins of human rights, Kulchyski shows how the effective use of aboriginal rights necessitates a clear understanding of their unique nature. The book includes additional essays on related themes demonstrating how knowledge of aboriginal rights is critical to socialist practice, highlighting how specific Canadian struggles can be understood through the lens of aboriginal rights.

Peter Kulchyski is a leading Canadian Native Studies scholar at the University of Manitoba. He has published numerous books on Aboriginal issues, including The Red Indians and Like the Sound of a Drum: Aboriginal Cultural Politics in Denendeh and Nunavut, which won the 2005 Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction.