Indigenous scholars and others have characterized Canadian discourses of reconciliation as supporting a top-down, government-defined and controlled agenda, which is at best ineffective and misleading and at worst fraudulent and recolonizing. Some have argued that reconciliation should only occur after the Indian Act has been abolished, reparations made, land and resources returned, and a political and economic nation-to-nation relationship restored. The author agrees that it is essential to look critically at state and nationalistic discourses of reconciliation and that neither the federal government, the churches, nor non-Indigenous peoples generally can or should control the agenda. However, while reconciliation is not a sufficient condition for decolonization in Canada, Indigenous resurgence on its own will not achieve full decolonization either. If the psychic structures of colonialism persist, various forms of neocolonialism will be prevalent even after a nominal “nation-to-nation” relationship has been established, given the demographic imbalance and geographical proximity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. There will always be a need for relationship and negotiation.

In fact, decolonization and reconciliation may be understood as complementary and concurrent processes. The concept of reconciliation underlines the emotional, psychological and human changes that are as necessary as political and economic reformulations for decolonization and that are not easily addressed by other means. Rather than a top-down government-initiated campaign focused on assimilation into the status quo or a Eurocentric Christian doctrine focused on forgiveness, reconciliation can be a transformative process of building the relationships, alliances and social understandings necessary to support the systemic changes that true decolonization entails. Indigenous and other cultural paradigms for resolving conflicts, making restitution and healing relationships, such as the Sto:lo concept of lummi or “facing yourself,” can help restore interconnectedness and reciprocity at all levels, both within Indigenous communities and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and the land. We also should not overestimate the government’s power to control even those reconciliation processes it does initiate, let alone those that arise autonomously. Decolonization and reconciliation are processes underway on many fronts in Canada, and they can’t be controlled by anyone.

Indigenous peoples encounter restrictions on their modes of reasoning and account-giving within democratic sites of negotiation and deliberation. Political theorists understand these restrictions as forms of exclusion related to what theorist Iris Young has called the ‘internal exclusion’ of subordinated perspectives and theorist James Bohman has referred to as the ‘asymmetrical inclusion’ of such perspectives. ‘Internal exclusion’ refers to ways in which actors are formally accepted into decision-making processes, only to find their perspectives disqualified due to informal but no less pervasive criteria of exclusion. ‘Asymmetrical inclusion’ refers to the undue burdens placed on marginalized peoples to persuade dominant communities. It is argued in light of these problems that more inclusive institutions as well as the cultivation of an ethos of receptivity will be necessary for genuine inclusion. I argue that this focus on enriching dialogue can mischaracterize the nature of disagreement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

Disagreement does not only arise between opinions or discourses that can be articulated and judged, but also at a deeper level, between the background assumptions against which practices of articulation and judgment are understood. Territorial state sovereignty, I argue, is a background understanding that can render sites of democratic negotiation inhospitable to Indigenous claims. I conclude that when thinking through Indigenous equality and autonomy, theorists should be attuned to the sites and conditions of dialogue that might serve to reinscribe relations of domination and exclusion.

This article highlights the trajectory of indigenous peoples’ territorial claims when they appear before certain international and regional authorities that protect human rights. It demonstrates that the right of indigenous peoples to have their ways of life respected is a misguided and hollow response to their claims, at best approximate and ambiguous. However, the right to communal property of ancestral lands and essential resources entrenched by international courts, even if it directly echoes back to indigenous claims, is formulated in a specific language and vocabulary and according to categories defined by the dominant society. As a consequence, rights derived from this process are confined to an intrastate pluralism, since they are shaped by sources of law defined by member states that have signed regional charters and conventions protecting human rights. In the absence of a reciprocal intercultural dialogue that would facilitate a mutual circulation of ideas in the language and based on the beliefs held by indigenous and non-indigenous peoples – the only real tool for effective decolonization – the initial hypothesis, that the communal right to ownership facilitates the decolonization process, is partially invalidated.

Many contemporary Indigenous communities in Canada assert an ability to make fundamental authoritative decisions about what is acceptable use of their territories. I focus on the question of legal obligations that might befall the Crown in its relationships with these communities and their claims. I argue that any such obligations must be seen as culturally and contextually specific, not only in the sense that particular Crown obligations take on content and form within the context of the culture within which the Canadian legal system has emerged but also in the sense that this non-Indigenous culture and history generate the very meaning of the notion of ‘obligation’ here at play. This culturally determined meaning functions to make it extremely difficult to make sense of the notion the Crown actually has legal obligations in relation to Indigenous assertions of authority over territories. This suggests decolonization in this context should be focused on discursive colonization and its undoing. Along those lines I offer a sketch of what ‘legal obligation’ might mean in an Indigenous cultural-historical setting. Within this way of understanding the situation, addressing questions of Crown obligations would begin with consideration of Indigenous systems of meaning-generation. Analysis would focus on working out what it means within such normative worlds to determine a party has a legal obligation, and would then turn to what this has to say about legal obligations that might be understood to fall on the Crown.

I argue that while the Crown will almost certainly not respond to claims it has legal obligations within what it takes to be separate legal systems, describing the landscape this way paints a truer picture of the world as it presents itself. The landscape has been, and continues to be, one of distinct meaning-generating peoples, each determining what it understands such concepts as ‘legal obligations’ to mean and entail. The colonial agenda has been for many generations to deny the existence of Indigenous systems, to have Indigenous communities come to think of ‘legal obligations’ in ways colonial authorities determine. Decolonization – in this form – requires a backing out of these ways of thinking. This article clears away forms of thinking that obstruct our view, giving us all an opportunity to perceive the complex landscape we in fact inhabit.

New institutions of indigenous governance will be the product of negotiations, negotiations that will take place against a background of colonial structures and relationships. Having examined the challenges of structuring a negotiation process that takes due account of pre-existing cultural and power differences between the parties, the author analyzes the significance of their choice of negotiation strategy on the negotiation process and outcome. In particular, this paper reflects on the promise and limitations of the parties’ adopting interest-based, or “integrative”, negotiation strategies and the potential for fruitful entanglements between those strategies and indigenous diplomatic traditions.