Getting Aboriginal Rights Right

In 2007, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (with the unfortunate acronym DRIP), which is meant to apply to the societies around the world that meet the UN’s definition of Indigenous peoples. (The world’s Indigenous population is estimated to exceed 300 million, out of a total population of 7 billion.) Although Canada under Liberal governments had been a keen supporter of the declaration, under the Conservative Harper government it  was one of the last states to adopt it, finally doing so in 2010.

Canadians appear to take the rights of aboriginal peoples seriously. I know of no other country in the world whose constitution includes, as ours does, the flat-out statement that the aboriginal rights of aboriginal peoples in the country are “recognized and affirmed.” Yet there is much confusion about what these rights are, including whether aboriginal rights are the same thing as the rights of Indigenous peoples, and much...