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Striving for Indigenous justice

Shiri Pasternak chronicles long history of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake

BY SHARON ASCHAIEK PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF BIERK

MANY OF US KNOW CANADA’S Indigenous Peoples have struggled to control their ancestral lands, but a new book by a Ryerson academic reveals just how complex, protracted and unjust these cases can be.

Criminology professor Shiri Pasternak is the author of Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the State (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), an in-depth account of a Quebec-based Indigenous community’s efforts to restore full governance over its land and natural resources. The band of about 450 members has sought to get the federal and provincial governments to honour their commitments in the 1991 Trilateral Agreement, which recognized its right to have a decisive say in the development of a 10,000-sq.-km section of their almost 17,000-sq.-km territory, and receive a share of revenues from resource extraction, hydroelectricity and tourism operations. The Algonquins have never ceded their territory through a treaty, yet the Crown refuses to recognize their inherent jurisdiction over their land.