| Heading into the 21st Century one of the enduring challenges facing Indigenous Peoples is access to and control of land, critical to Indigenous cultural revitalization and preservation initiatives. Efforts to resolve Indigenous land struggles generally occur within domestic spheres of conflict resolution, thereby placing primacy on the spatial sovereignty of nation-states. Using as a case study a recent land conflict between Wabanaki Peoples and the Province of New Brunwick and placing it within the cultural production of landscapes, this thesis disrupts the national (Canadian) narrative by problematizing the domestic strategy of Aboriginal 'rights' discourse. By moving beyond the material process and physical primacy of land, this thesis explores the ways in which Aboriginal 'rights' discourse instigates contestations over the meanings of landscapes, shapes cultural politics and symbolic practices, which in turn give rise to and indelibly adjudicate the outcome of territorial disputes. Within this context, the case study reveals that rather than securing Wabanaki Peoples a more self-determined existence, the Aboriginal 'rights' trickster drains Aboriginal communities of their collective power by enveloping them further into the spatial imagery of the nation-state. |
