ABSTRACT
Settler colonial legalism continues the destruction of Indigenous ways of being and thus is complicit in genocide, sometimes even when it tries to correct a history of injustice. This chapter will demonstrate that this is true of “bad rulings,” when racist presuppositions are laid bare, and also of “good rulings,” when courts are trying to be sensitive to unjust histories and current inequalities but reinforce a structure of domination. Using an Indigenous land claims case from Canadian law, Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, I show both how this is so and why it could be otherwise. Though not as blatant as a history of residential schools designed to “kill the Indian in the man,” rulings such as this undermine the capacity of Indigenous peoples to survive colonialism. A more generous form of decolonial hearing, and an understanding of jurisgenesis—how sustaining forms of law and community get made—could open up new sites of justice and possibility. Settler citizens can transform their views on law, land, justice, and ownership, and this could also have profound effects for Indigenous peoples, global climate change, species loss, deforestation, life under capitalism, and other problems created by the dominant view of the relationship between human beings, animals, the Earth, and the worlds we build.
