'The Tay River watershed is our responsibility': The Ardoch Algonquins and the 2000--2002 Environmental Review Tribunal hearings (Ontario)

Some legal geographers challenge the orthodoxy of law by demonstrating that the legal discourse is actually constitutive of social and political worlds. I intend to argue that the legal arena is for that very reason a necessary space to insert the “subversive” voice. The Ardoch Algonquin First Nation and Allies (AAFNA) in southeastern Ontario have used the provincial environmental legal setting to insert their Aboriginal knowledge of the environment and their alternative perspectives on jurisdiction. The specific case study focuses on the 2000–2002 Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal that concerned an appeal to the Ministry of Environment's issuance of a Permit To Take Water from the Tay River near Perth, which is part of the traditional territory of the Algonquin people. AAFNA's act was thwarted from the start by the legal argument in the provincial setting that their claims, “Aboriginal issues,” were federal matters and did not have a place in the provincial environmental legislation. Nevertheless, they persisted in their resistance and began the dialogue about alternative interpretations of the meaning of jurisdiction, leading to an examination of the Aboriginal-government relationship. AAFNA's involvement in this Tribunal is an example of using the legal arena as a political space of resistance effectively, even when faced with extreme odds and definitive acts of exclusion based on Canadian law.