The School of Public Policy and Administration (SPPA) is hosting a two-day conference as part of Carleton’s FPA Research month called Modern Treaties & Citizenship: The Next Forty Years.
The conference will feature keynote addresses from Senator Charlie Watt on Monday, March 7 at 2 p.m. and Tony Penikett, a former Yukon premier and Aboriginal rights activist, on Tuesday, March 8 at 3 p.m. on the topic of First Nation Treaty-Making.
When: March 7 and 8 from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Where: River Building 2nd Floor Conference Rooms
The conference will explore how northern Indigenous people have negotiated comprehensive land claims and self-government agreements with the Crown over the last 40 years. These constitutionally protected agreements have transformed northern land and resources management and control. They have created powerful new Indigenous organizations and have redefined the constitutional relationship between Indigenous nations and peoples and the Crown. This conference will examine potential implications for how northern Indigenous people understand their citizenship and their relationship to the rest of Canada.
The conference is sponsored by Gwich’in Tribal Council, Nunavut Sivuniksavut and the University’s Faculty of Public Affairs. It will bring together Gwich’in and other northern experts and southern scholars, as well as students from northern and southern Canada, to consider the implications of the last 40 years of fundamental change and think about the future. More details about this event are available here.
About Charlie Watt:
Senator Watt represents the province of Quebec and the Senatorial Division of Inkerman. He has served in the Senate of Canada since Jan. 16, 1984. Over the years he has been involved with Parliamentary groups including the Canada-Russia Parliamentary Group and the Canada-Mexico Parliamentary Association. His particular area of interest and specialization is Aboriginal issues. His public career includes serving as co-chair of the Inuit Committee on National Issues, Member of the Nunavik Constitutional Committee and as a board member of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada. An officer of the National Order of Quebec, Watt is also the 1997 recipient of the National Aboriginal Achievement Award. He is a current member of the Fisheries and Oceans Senate committee.
About Tony Penikett:
Penikett is a member of the Gordon Foundation’s Arctic Program Advisory Circle and the author of Reconciliation: First Nations Treaty Making in British Columbia, published by Douglas & McIntyre in 2006. Currently a Vancouver-based mediator, Penikett was deputy minister of negotiations for the British Columbia government and later deputy labour minister. He was also senior adviser on self-government policy to former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow and a Gordon Foundation senior fellow on treaty negotiations at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue from 2001 to 2005. A former Yukon MLA (1978 – 1995) and premier (1985 – 1992), Penikett has been involved in Aboriginal rights negotiations for more than 20 years.
