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State commissions are legal rituals and techniques of knowledge production that have been disproportionately used to navigate what has long been known as “the Indian Problem.” Out of 376 Canadian federal state commissions called since Confederation, at least 44 or 12% were called to address challenges arising from the governance, dispossession, and oppression of the Indigenous Peoples and nations.
This doctoral project takes on this overlooked aspect of Canadian legal and political history in three parts. Each chapter is a manuscript that has been accepted to a peer-reviewed journal: Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Canadian Historical Studies, and BC Studies. The first establishes the historical phenomenon of Indigenous-focused state commissions through a discussion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada; the following two are case studies related to the Royal Commission on Indian Affairs in the Province of British Columbia, conducted a century before.
