Summary Aboriginal rights and particularly those assigned by treaties have many times collided with other bodies of law. Aboriginal persons also have much experience of legal and judicial matters decided with inadequate knowledge of their legal particularities or in other ways that act against Aboriginal interests and entitlements. The dispute to which this paper refers offers an anomaly in a case decided in 2006 by the Supreme Court of Canada that served the Tsartlip appellants as individuals, not necessarily their band, and contravened by its conclusion in a majority vote in the Supreme Court a federal Canadian law. Section 27 of the Wildlife …show more content…
This small detail is interesting to mull over in awareness of the different biographical and intellectual profiles that people bring to the bench in a geographically and socially diverse Canada. Laura Beth Neilsen explained the study of legal consciousness in awareness of law as something that is not autonomous from social life, normative systems, or from social institutions, but has many competing forms that affect and shape social life. Nielsen discussed a totally different area of law in urban matters of public verbal harassment but her points on the instrumental versus constitutive and dynamic nature of law are helpful in understanding the different Supreme Court responses to matters of Tsartlip men night hunting with lamps in British Columbia. A decision-maker needs to study and interpret perhaps several layers of law, and in the Tsartlip case, a perhaps archaic ‘Douglas Treaty’ in the light of everyday custom and experience, and modern day realities, as in an Aboriginal community or reserve jurisdiction. In sum, decision makers must know something of what they are talking about, beyond adherence to law or required …show more content…
Morris one finds a decision in favour of night hunting that reflects a strong effort to respect the North Saanich Treaty, the duty of the federal government to uphold Aboriginal rights in the face of provincial or territorial challenges, and attention to the Charter of Rights & Freedoms of 1982. Obviously, the Supreme Court took the case very seriously with effort made not to diminish a treaty given right. One does wonder however if the modern context of the Tsartlip Indian Band was examined cautiously, seeking opinions from persons familiar with the area or its development through the last decades. The southern tip of Vancouver Island was somewhat different when the Treaty of 1852 was drafted – a factor that makes this case and many others very stimulating to