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The following is excerpted from the Globe and Mail editorial Toward on-reserve property rights for individuals, which references Beyond the Indian Act by Tom Flanagan, Christopher Alcantara, and André Le Dressay (2010).
Toward on-reserve property rights for individuals
The federal Conservatives’ reported intention to introduce a bill to enable individual aboriginals living on a reserve to acquire and own land on that reserve, if the first nation in question opts in to such a regime, is a welcome step forward.
Not many native leaders are now in favour of such a change, but if a few communities were to thrive as a result of the new legislation, opinion would probably shift.
The Conservatives’ election platform of 2006 promised to “support the development of individual property ownership of reserves, to encourage lending for private housing and business.” Their platforms in 2008 and 2011 were less clear. But after a year of majority government, they seem poised to act on a six-year-old plank.
There may be clues to the contents of the future bill in a book published in 2010, Beyond the Indian Act: Restoring Aboriginal Property Rights, by Tom Flanagan (a political science professor who was the Conservatives’ campaign manager in 2004), Christopher Alcantara and André Le Dressay. The authors propose that communities could opt in to a property regime in which individual band members could acquire “fee simple” – that is, basic, normal land ownership, including the right to sell and to mortgage the land.
Read the full article here.
Further reading: To connect the pipeline, connect the dots
Do opponents of native propety rights think things are okay now?
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