Intergovernmental agreements between municipal and Indigenous governments are rapidly expanding in number and importance in Canada and the United States, yet they remain underexamined in the literature. This article considers how to measure the success of these agreements. It takes as a case study the port divestiture agreement between the City of Cornwall (Ontario, Canada), and a neighbouring Indigenous government, the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne. While the agreement represents a partial success and partial failure by conventional public policy and public administration metrics, these evaluations are different when measured against the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) principle of “one-mindedness.” Findings, which were generated using anthropological and qualitative political science methods, suggest that the use of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous frameworks are required to produce accurate and comprehensive evaluations of these agreements and the outcomes that are produced by them.

Anthropologica, the journal of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA), invites you to submit articles for peer review. We welcome articles in both French and English that engage with any field of sociocultural anthropology, covering a broad range of topics relevant to the dynamics of contemporary life. We welcome articles that are grounded in innovative methodologies, such as visual anthropology, community engaged research, and critical studies of materiality. Submissions should be based on original ethnographic fieldwork in any part of the world.

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