Description
Book SynopsisHow can indigenous people best assert their legal and political distinctiveness? In This is Not a Peace Pipe, Dale Turner explores indigenous intellectual culture and its relationship to, and within, the dominant Euro-American culture. He contends that indigenous intellectuals need to engage the legal and political discourses of the state, respecting both indigenous philosophies and Western European intellectual traditions.
According to Turner, the intellectual conversation about the meaning of indigenous rights, sovereignty, and nationhood must begin by recognizing, firstly, that the discourses of the state have evolved with very little if any participation from indigenous peoples and, secondly, that there are unique ways of understanding the world embedded in indigenous communities. Further, amongst indigenous peoples, a division of intellectual labour must be invoked between philosophers, who possess and practice indigenous forms of knowledge, and those who have been edu
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction: From Peace Pipes to Word Warriors * White Paper Liberalism and the Problem of Aboriginal Participation * Cairns's Canada: Citizens Nonplussed * Liberalism's Last Stand: Minority Rights and the (Mis)recognition of Aboriginal Sovereignty * Word Warriors * Towards a Critical Indigenous Philosophy Appendix: Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969 Notes Bibliography Index
