CCCS & CREEL Book Launch: Kirsty Gover, 'Tribal Constitutionalism: States Tribes and the Governance of Membership'
Published 11 Mar 2011, 10:32 am, by Valerie Wong
CCCS & CREEL Book Launch
Kirsty Gover, 'Tribal Constitutionalism: States Tribes and the Governance of Membership'
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM, Tuesday 5 April 2011, Readings Carlton
Speaker Professor Jeremy Webber, University of Victoria (Canada)
TRIBAL CONSTITUTIONALISM
The CCCS and CREEL are co-hosting the launch of Kirsty Gover’s book: Tribal Constitutionalism: States Tribes and the Governance of Membership (OUP, 2010) on Tuesday 5 April at 6pm. The book launch will be opened by Professor Carolyn Evans, Dean, Melbourne Law School, with an introduction by Professor Jeremy Webber.
Professor Jeremy Webber holds the Canada Research Chair in Law and Society at the University of Victoria. Jeremy joined the faculty at Victoria in August 2002, after more than four years as Dean of Law at the University of Sydney in Australia and eleven years on the Faculty of Law at McGill University. Professor Webber’s current work is primarily in the fields of legal and political theory, constitutional law, and indigenous rights.
Abstract
States, Tribes, and the Governance of Membership Recognised tribes are increasingly prominent players in settler state governance, but in the wide-ranging debates about tribal self-governance, little has been said about tribal self-constitution. Who are the members of tribes, and how are they chosen? Tribes in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States are now obliged to adopt written constitutions as a condition of recognition, and to specify the criteria used to select members. This book presents findings from a comparative study of nearly eight hundred current and historic tribal constitutions, many of which are not in the public domain. Kirsty Gover examines the strategies adopted by tribes and states to deal with the new legal distinction between indigenous people (defined by settler governments) and tribal members (defined by tribal governments). She highlights the important fact that the two categories are imperfectly aligned. Many indigenous persons are not tribal members, and some tribal members are not legally indigenous. Should legal indigenous status be limited to persons enrolled in recognized tribes? What is to be done about the large and growing proportion of indigenous peoples who are not enrolled in a tribe, and do not live near their tribal territories? This book approaches these complex questions head-on. Using tribal membership criteria as a starting point, this book provides a critical analysis of current political and sociolegal theories of tribalism and indigeneity, and draws on legal doctrine, policy, demographic data and tribal practice to provide a comparative evaluation of tribal membership governance in the western settler states.
Biography
Dr. Kirsty Gover, Senior Lecturer at Melbourne Law School, directs the Law School’s Comparative Tribal Constitutionalism Research Program at the CCCS. Her research and publications address the domestic and international law, policy and political theory of indigeneity and indigenous self-governance. Dr. Gover received her JSD from NYU Law School, where she was a global scholar at the Institute for International Law and Justice, her LLM from Columbia Law School and LLB from the University of Canterbury Law School in Christchurch.
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Venue Readings, Carlton
Address 309 Lygon Street Carlton VIC 3053
Contact Person Jenny O'Connell
Contact Details Telephone: 03 83446938
Email: law-creel@unimelb.edu.au
RSVP 4 April 2011
Event organised by CCCS & CREEL
Refreshments will be provided