Jeremy Schmidt: On Private Property Ownership for First Nations

Since 2006 in Canada, the question of allowing private property ownership on Indigenous First Nations’ reserved lands has stirred controversy. Responses within Indigenous communities have been varied: while the Assembly of First Nations formally rejected it in 2010, the First Nations Tax Commission, spearheaded by Manny Jules, claims that Aboriginal access to private property would greatly improve the living standards of many Indigenous Canadians. In an article published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers on 18 January 2018, Jeremy Schmidt tracked the bureaucratic processes behind federal attempts at creating private property regimes on Indigenous reserved lands. For Schmidt, the current government’s First Nations Property Ownership Initiative is no less than a “[repackaging of] dispossession as the restoration of Aboriginal territory and property.”

Jeremy Schmidt is a 2009 Trudeau scholar and lecturer (assistant professor) of human geography at Durham University. Read his article here (restricted access).