ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the scope of interpretive frameworks for understanding treaties in Canada and New Zealand. It examines the value, uses, and limits of both history and abstract principles in implementing treaties in both countries. It discusses how treaty interpretation implicitly channels foundational messages about life's meaning through its placement of law as both 'prior to' and 'above them' in structuring reality. Treaty law in New Zealand and Canada has problematically come to rely on first principles, including abstract concepts related to knowledge, causation, identity, time, and space. Law's metaphysics may become more visible if they compare and contrast it with religion. Treaty interpretation engages many of the same metaphysical meaning-making moves which are present in religion. The issues of authority, text, and differentiation deserve further attention to highlight similarities between law and religion to demonstrate the metaphysical nature of treaty interpretation.
