Michael Fabris

University of British Columbia | UBC · Department of Geography

This article discusses the Piikani Nation’s attempts to challenge the Oldman River Dam, as this struggle highlights the challenges Indigenous communities can face in attempting to articulate water and land relationships through the languages and structures of settler colonial law. Completed in 1991, the dam faced multiple forms of opposition by Pii...

In this dissertation, I seek to answer: what are the limits to attempts by Indigenous peoples to articulate our own forms of law through the languages and institutions of settler law? I answer this question through a set of distinct but related case studies: the making of Treaty 7, Piikani challenges to the Oldman River Dam, and the theorization of...

This chapter focuses on contemporary proposals to implement private property regimes on First Nations reserves. First, I examine the arguments used by proponents of the First Nations Property Ownership Act to motivate support for this legislation , demonstrating how it represents a rearticulation of past proposals, albeit as a 'restoration' of prec...

This study offers a critique of the First Nations Property Ownership Act (FNPOA), a contemporary proposal to implement private property regimes on First Nations reserves in Canada. First, I examine the arguments used by proponents of the FNPOA to motivate support for this legislation. I demonstrate how the FNPOA represents a re-articulation of thes...

This article explores the possibilities and histories of indigenous solidarity struggles against the settler colonial states of Canada and Israel. Throughout this work, we examine activist and political movements from Canada that make connections between the struggles of indigenous peoples in Canada and Palestine. We ask: In light of efforts to usu...