Aboriginal Rights: The Right to Self-Government versus the Right to Self-Determination

To learn the difference between the right of self-government and the right of self-determination.

To learn the details of a leading Canadian example of Aboriginal self-government.

In one of his post–prime ministerial writings, Pierre Trudeau wrote, “Throughout our negotiations with the aboriginal peoples, we refused to talk about ‘self-determination,’ and only envisaged the possibility of ‘self-government’ on condition that a heterogeneous population might still live in a given territory.”¹ Trudeau thus distinguished between self-government and self-determination and stressed that Canada could accommodate Aboriginal demands to the extent that they were consistent with the meaning of self-government. But what is...