ABSTRACT
One of the most important recent sites of struggle for Indigenous peoples in Canada has been that of law. To go to the courts-one of the systems through which their dispossession was enacted-for justice might seem somewhat paradoxical, if not quixotic. Success in this context would require convincing the court that the dispossession of Indigenous peoples was unjust even in the colonizer’s terms. Further, they would have to convince the court of this within the highly ritualized and tightly controlled guidelines of legal procedure: within the rules set by the court itself. Yet further, they would have to do so in a context where this claim potentially puts the legitimacy of the court itself into question: either the courts were unable to prevent an unjust dispossession of Indigenous peoples, or they actively participated in it. Either way, if the courts accept the claims of injustice, they are implicated in a travesty of justice.
