Aboriginal Sovereignty and Imperial Claims

Abstract

Argues that the premise that North America was legally vacant when Europeans arrived cannot be justified by reference to basic principles of justice. Suggests that at first contact, natives enjoyed two principles of fundamental justice: the "principle of territoriality", which is, in turn, backed by the "principle that all human beings have rights to life and the necessaries of life as against all other people". The fact that Amerindians had such rights to life and the necessaries of life, and that the societies and groups to which they belonged had rights to the territories they occupied at the time of European contact, to the extent that they needed them to survive and flourish, suggests they enjoyed genuine sovereignty, and continue to enjoy a residue of that sovereignty.