Indigenous Empowerment through Co-management

Co-management boards, established under comprehensive land claims agreements with Indigenous peoples, have become key players in land-use planning, wildlife management, and environmental regulation across Canada’s North. This book provides a detailed account of the operation and effectiveness of these new forms of federalism in order to address a central question: Have co-management boards been successful in ensuring substantial Indigenous involvement in policies affecting the land and wildlife in their traditional territories?

Graham White tackles this question, drawing on decades of research and writing about the politics of Northern Canada. He begins with an overview of the boards, examining their legal foundations, structure and membership, decision-making processes, and independence from government. He then presents case studies of several important boards. While White identifies constraints on the role Northern Indigenous peoples play in board processes, he finds that overall they exercise extensive decision-making influence. These findings are provocative and offer valuable insights into our understanding of the importance of land claims boards and the role they play in the evolution of treaty federalism in Canada.

Graham White is a professor emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He has been researching and writing about the politics of Northern Canada since the 1980s and has published widely on Canadian politics, especially at the provincial and territorial level. His books include Made in Nunavut (with Jack Hicks), which was shortlisted for the Canadian Political Science Association’s Smiley Prize for the best book in Canadian politics, and Cycling into Saigon (with David Cameron), which was shortlisted for the Donner Foundation Prize for the best book in Canadian public policy. He is a former president of the Canadian Political Science Association and a former English-language editor of the Canadian Journal of Political Science.

His lucid treatment of critics and the continuing evolution of the boards up to the present is revelatory. This work is seminal for Canadians and instructive for states attempting to implement similar policies, an important contribution to the literature.