Trampling on Indigenous and Treaty Rights afterR v. Stanley: “That's What You Get for Trespassing”

Abstract

This article reports on institutional ethnographic research into how texts and talk were mobilized in social relations leading to the Government of Saskatchewan's enactment of the Trespass to Property Amendment Act, 2019. The act, proclaimed January 1, 2022, requires First Nations people to get advance permission from rural landowners before exercising their Indigenous and treaty rights to hunt and fish on land deemed private property. Findings (1) connect the 2018 acquittal of Gerald Stanley for the 2016 killing of Colten Boushie to political developments that paved the way for the new legislation and (2) trace how the advance permission requirement at the heart of the new legislation tramples on Indigenous and treaty rights, making it even more difficult for First Nations people to access their traditional territories for purposes such as hunting and fishing.