The Myth of Westphalia in North America: Shared Indigenous Sovereignty

It is usually assumed that the European concept of state sovereignty developed during the medieval and renaissance periods and acknowledged by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 applied in North America.  In this talk, I will contend that this is wrong.  When the European powers colonized Turtle Island, as Indigenous peoples generally refer to North America, it was already inhabited by factually independent Indigenous nations.  The Europeans acknowledged this fact and entered into treaties with them that involved nation-to-nation relations and a sharing of sovereignty, lands, and resources.  Although Canada and the United States tended to disregard this nation-to-nation relationship during the second half of the 19th century, the concept of shared sovereignty has continued to the present-day and has recently been confirmed by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that both Canada and the United States have endorsed.

Kent McNeil is an emeritus distinguished research professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, where he taught from 1987 to 2016.  He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an honorary member of the Canadian Indigenous Bar Association.  His work focuses on legal history, property law, constitutional law, and the rights of Indigenous peoples.  He is the author of over 70 scholarly articles and three books.  One of them, Common Law Aboriginal Title (Clarendon Press, 1989) has been relied upon by the Supreme Court of Canada and the High Court of Australia in leading decisions on Indigenous land rights.

This event is part of the MacCormick Seminar, co-branded by ECIGL. The event is in-person only and is open to all to attend.

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