Oral History on Trial: Recognizing Aboriginal Narratives in the Courts

In most English-speaking countries, including Canada, "black letter law" - text-based, firmly entrenched law - is the legal standard upon which judicial decisions are made. Within this tradition, courts are forbidden from considering hearsay - testimony based on what witnesses have heard from others. Such an interdiction presents significant difficulties for Aboriginal plaintiffs who rely on oral rather than written accounts for knowledge transmission.In this important book, anthropologist Bruce Granville Miller breaks new ground by asking how oral histories might be incorporated into the existing court system. Through compelling analysis of Aboriginal, legal, and anthropological concepts of fact and evidence, Miller traces the long trajectory of oral history from community to court, and offers a sophisticated critique of the Crown's use of Aboriginal materials in key cases, including the watershed Delgamuukw trial.A bold intervention in legal and anthropological scholarship, Oral History on Trial presents a powerful argument for a reconsideration of the Crown's approach to oral history. Students and scholars of Aboriginal affairs, anthropology, oral history, and law, as well as lawyers, judges, policymakers, and Aboriginal peoples will appreciate its careful consideration of an urgent issue facing Indigenous communities worldwide and the courts hearing their cases.

History

Miller, Bruce Granville

Americas

UBC Press

In most English-speaking countries, including Canada, "black letter law" - text-based, firmly entrenched law - is the legal standard upon which judicial decisions are made. Within this tradition, courts are forbidden from considering hearsay - testimony based on what witnesses have heard from others. Such an interdiction presents significant difficulties for Aboriginal plaintiffs who rely on oral rather than written accounts for knowledge transmission. In this important book, anthropologist Bruce Granville Miller breaks new ground by asking how oral histories might be incorporated into the existing court system. Through compelling analysis of Aboriginal, legal, and anthropological concepts of fact and evidence, Miller traces the long trajectory of oral history from community to court, and offers a sophisticated critique of the Crown's use of Aboriginal materials in key cases, including the watershed Delgamuukw trial. A bold intervention in legal and anthropological scholarship, Oral History on Trial presents a powerful argument for a reconsideration of the Crown's approach to oral history. Students and scholars of Aboriginal affairs, anthropology, oral history, and law, as well as lawyers, judges, policymakers, and Aboriginal peoples will appreciate its careful consideration of an urgent issue facing Indigenous communities worldwide and the courts hearing their cases.

Invisible Indigenes: The Politics of Nonrecognition

In the last few decades, as indigenous peoples have increasingly sought out and sometimes demanded sovereignty on a variety of fronts, their relationships with encompassing nation-states have become ever more complicated and troubled. The varying ways that today’s nation-states attempt to manage—and often render invisible—contemporary indigenous peoples is the subject of this global comparative study. Beginning with his own work along the northwest coast of North America and drawing on contemporary examples from South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, Bruce Granville Miller examines how national governments classify, govern, and control the indigenous populations within their boundaries through administrative, judicial, and economic means. One telling consequence of such regulation strategies is that certain indigenous peoples become unrecognized—their ethnic identities and heritages fail to find legal register and thus empowerment within the very state organizations that manage other aspects of their lives. In the United States alone reside two hundred thousand unrecognized indigenous individuals, some members of indigenous communities that were dropped from the roster of tribes and others whose ancestors were overlooked. Miller also considers some important differences between the fluid nature of ethnic identity for some indigenous peoples and the more rigid notion of identity encoded in many state regulations. Invisible Indigenes reveals a recurring issue integral to the formation and maintenance of nation-states today and highlights a common challenge facing indigenous peoples around the globe in the twenty-first century.

University Of Nebraska Press

For the indigenous peoples of North America, the history of colonialism has often meant a distortion of history, even, in some cases, a loss or distorted sense of their own native practices of justice. How contemporary native communities have dealt quite differently with this dilemma is the subject of The Problem of Justice, a richly textured ethnographic study of indigenous peoples struggling to reestablish control over justice in the face of conflicting external and internal pressures. The peoples discussed in this book are the Coast Salish communities along the northwest coast of North America: the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe in Washington State, the Stó:lo Nation in British Columbia, and the South Island Tribal Council on Vancouver Island. Here we see how, despite their common heritage and close ties, each of these communities has taken a different direction in understanding and establishing a system of tribal justice. Describing the results—from the steadily expanding independence and jurisdiction of the Upper Skagit Court to the collapse of the South Island Justice Project—Bruce G. Miller advances an ethnographically informed, comparative, historically based understanding of aboriginal justice and the particular dilemmas tribal leaders and community members face. His work makes a persuasive case for an indigenous sovereignty associated with tribally controlled justice programs that recognize diversity and at the same time allow for internal dissent.

The Problem of Justice: Tradition and Law in the Coast Salish World (Fourth World Rising)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

In the last few decades, as indigenous peoples have increasingly sought out and sometimes demanded sovereignty on a variety of fronts, their relationships with encompassing nation-states have become ever more complicated and troubled. The varying ways that today’s nation-states attempt to manage—and often render invisible—contemporary indigenous peoples is the subject of this global comparative study. Beginning with his own work along the northwest coast of North America and drawing on contemporary examples from South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, Bruce Granville Miller examines how national governments classify, govern, and control the indigenous populations within their boundaries through administrative, judicial, and economic means. One telling consequence of such regulation strategies is that certain indigenous peoples become unrecognized—their ethnic identities and heritages fail to find legal register and thus empowerment within the very state organizations that manage other aspects of their lives. In the United States alone reside two hundred thousand unrecognized indigenous individuals, some members of indigenous communities that were dropped from the roster of tribes and others whose ancestors were overlooked. Miller also considers some important differences between the fluid nature of ethnic identity for some indigenous peoples and the more rigid notion of identity encoded in many state regulations. Invisible Indigenes reveals a recurring issue integral to the formation and maintenance of nation-states today and highlights a common challenge facing indigenous peoples around the globe in the twenty-first century.

For the indigenous peoples of North America, the history of colonialism has often meant a distortion of history, even, in some cases, a loss or distorted sense of their own native practices of justice. How contemporary native communities have dealt quite differently with this dilemma is the subject of The Problem of Justice, a richly textured ethnographic study of indigenous peoples struggling to reestablish control over justice in the face of conflicting external and internal pressures. The peoples discussed in this book are the Coast Salish communities along the northwest coast of North America: the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe in Washington State, the Stó:lo Nation in British Columbia, and the South Island Tribal Council on Vancouver Island. Here we see how, despite their common heritage and close ties, each of these communities has taken a different direction in understanding and establishing a system of tribal justice. Describing the results—from the steadily expanding independence and jurisdiction of the Upper Skagit Court to the collapse of the South Island Justice Project—Bruce G. Miller advances an ethnographically informed, comparative, historically based understanding of aboriginal justice and the particular dilemmas tribal leaders and community members face. His work makes a persuasive case for an indigenous sovereignty associated with tribally controlled justice programs that recognize diversity and at the same time allow for internal dissent.

In these essays Bruce Granville Miller addresses critical issues facing contemporary Coast Salish people and communities. Building on his own fieldwork, on the salvage ethnography of an earlier generation, and the work of present-day anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Miller describes current-day tribes and bands as composed of family corporate groups and details their role in the transformations of gender and political systems. Miller examines tribal codes and courts, historical concepts and practices of justice, and the relations between the mainstream populations of British Columbia and Washington and the Coast Salish themselves, including the circumstances of non-recognized tribes among the Coast Salish and world wide, the efforts to use oral traditions and the language of sacredness in court, and in media reporting. Engaging theories of borderlands and globalization, Miller writes that studies of Coast Salish are constrained by the international border as are the people themselves, especially post-9/11.

The Contemporary Coast Salish: Essays by Bruce Granville Miller (Journal of Northwest Anthropology)

Anthropology

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

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Books by Miller, Bruce Granville

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Miller, Bruce Granville. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Oral History on Trial: Recognizing Aboriginal Narratives in the Courts

Oral History on Trial: Recognizing Aboriginal Narratives in the Courts

Invisible Indigenes: The Politics of Nonrecognition

The Problem of Justice: Tradition and Law in the Coast Salish World (Fourth World Rising)

Invisible Indigenes: The Politics of Nonrecognition

The Problem of Justice: Tradition and Law in the Coast Salish World (Fourth World Rising)

The Contemporary Coast Salish: Essays by Bruce Granville Miller (Journal of Northwest Anthropology)