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How have municipal governments in Canada been engaging Aboriginal peoples and First Nations? This project examined municipal Aboriginal relations offices and/or advisory committees across Canada and focuses on four cases in Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto. This study identified their mandates, size, locations and initiatives these offices and advisory committees have undertaken, which include: awareness training; employment strategies to recruit, hire and retain Aboriginal municipal employees; and improve Aboriginal representation on municipal agencies, boards and commissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While academic interest in accountability and transparency mechanisms in Aboriginal governance has risen over the past few years, very few studies have examined how these mechanisms operate in practice. One author, Shin Imai (2007), argues that Indigenous groups in Canada are faced with an accountability paradox that gives too much power to the federal government to intervene in band affairs, while giving too little power to band members to hold their local officials accountable for their actions. This paper examines the extent to which Aboriginal groups can avoid this paradox by reviewing three experiments in institutional design and self-government in Aboriginal communities: the Sechelt Indian Band and the Westbank First Nation in British Columbia, and Nunatsiavut in Labrador. While considerable variation exists in terms of how well these communities overcome Imai's paradox, each community's accountability regime is an improvement over the one imposed by the Indian Act. The effectiveness of these regimes depends heavily on the institutional designs chosen by the Indigenous groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Despite a rich and diverse literature on the revitalization of Indigenous legal traditions and constitutional orders, no one has yet looked at modern Aboriginal constitutions in Canada. This essay draws upon the comparative constitutional design and Aboriginal politics literatures to describe and analyze the texts of 14 Aboriginal constitutions. The findings suggest that these constitutional documents are similar to non-Aboriginal ones in many ways. Specifically, both deal with similar political problems and try to express and protect local political cultures. In short, they represent practical attempts to marry Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal constitutional orders and legal traditions in the contemporary context. Students of Aboriginal politics and law should pay greater attention to these documents, and especially to their origins and evolution over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]