Call for papers

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has over the past 5 years been hearing an ongoing case between Coast Salish peoples from Vancouver Island and the state of Canada. The details of this case present a set of challenges at the intersection between Canadian property rights and Indigenous land rights.  

The questions raised are vexing: Are the private property rights held by individuals and corporations throughout Coast Salish territories fundamentally incompatible with the ongoing exercise of Indigenous cultural and religious practices? Are there creative legal and political spaces for the continued exercise of Indigenous jurisdictions on privately held lands?  

Are there prospects for significant titling and demarcation of Indigenous titles on land that is currently privately held? Do the legal and political processes of the state systematically favour private land-holders over Indigenous peoples? How can the IACHR ensure the ongoing recognition of Indigenous cultural practices on private lands?  

In this paper, I discuss the prospects for intervention by the international community and the limitations. In the absence of forms of international intervention that are binding for states, Indigenous peoples are developing their own strategies for implementing the political and moral will of the international community. I examine how these strategies are being adopted for the Coast Salish case and consider the broader implications of these experiences for Indigenous peoples looking to the international community for resolution and reconciliation.

On March 26, 2013, the front page of Canada's Globe and Mail Newspaper detailed a unique repatriation ceremony of children's paintings created at the Alberni Indian Residential School (AIRS).  

The now-closed school is infamous for some of the most horrific abuses of Indigenous children in residential schools in Canada. The paintings came to light 50 years after they were created when they were gifted to the University of Victoria in 2008. Since 2010, Elders, Indigenous faculty from the university, and survivors from the AIRS have worked to reunite these paintings with their creators.  

A key consideration has been the role the paintings might play in processes of healing and reconciliation in Indigenous communities, and how they form public narratives of history and identity for non-Indigenous Canadians at a moment when Canada seeks to educate its citizens through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the legacy of the residential schools.  

Memory, truth-telling, the public exhibition of material culture related to violence, and resilience surround the images today as the paintings are exhibited in public galleries and Indigenous communities and reported on through the media.  

How do these paintings act as visual “contact zones” for audiences that do not share the experiences of abuse and oppression associated with the schools? This paper details our work with survivors who created the paintings to understand how they see their childhood paintings from their personal pasts and also how they may play a key role in the imagined future of a nation.  

Levels of phenotypic variability in a species are dependent on the interaction between plasticity (the ability of an organism to adapt during life to stimuli) and constraint (genetic, developmental and selective limitations on morphology). Greater plasticity results in greater intraspecific variability, while greater constraint reduces it.  

The processes generating variation in humans are key to the study of our evolution, as this variation is the raw material for natural selection. The pelvic canal in humans displays differences in size and shape between males and females due to its differential functional roles in locomotion and obstetrics. These distinct roles in females may be postulated to result in stabilizing selection on canal morphology, which would limit pelvic canal variability.  

Levels of intrapopulation morphometric variability in the skeletal regions of the pelvic canal, non-canal pelvis, and appendicular skeleton were compared in females and males of nine skeletal samples (total N females = 126; males = 148). Mean coefficients of variation, corrected for sample size (V*), were calculated for each skeletal region, and then compared between regions using Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests (N = 9).  

Pelvic canal variability is significantly greater than non-canal pelvis and appendicular skeleton variability for both sexes. Levels of non-canal and appendicular variability do not differ. Males are more variable than females for the appendicular skeleton. These results indicate that stabilizing selection does not constrict pelvic canal variability in females. Plasticity in canal size and shape may instead enable females to accommodate obstetrically sufficient canals.