TORONTO, March 20, 1998 -- York University law professor and Robarts Chair in Canadian Studies Kent McNeil will speak about Aboriginal land rights and explain the complicated legal issues surrounding them at the 1998 Robarts Lecture. He will pay particular attention to last December's landmark Supreme Court decision (Delgamuukw v. British Columbia) that said that Aboriginal land claims include not only a claim to the land itself, but also to its natural resources -- forests, minerals, and oils.

McNeil, a noted expert on the rights of Indigenous peoples in Canada, Australia and the United States, delivers this year's Robarts Lecture at the conclusion of his year as the Robarts Chair in Canadian Studies at York. He has written articles on Aboriginal rights for journals such as the Alberta Law Review, the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, and the Australian Indigenous Law Reporter. He also co-authored (with Renee Dupuis) a study commissioned by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, entitled Canada's Fiduciary Obligation to Aboriginal Peoples in the Context of Accession to Sovereignty by Quebec, Vol. 2, Domestic Dimensions.

McNeil's lecture, titled "Defining Aboriginal Title in the 90s: Has the Supreme Court Finally Got It Right?", will focus on the impact of the Delgamuukw v. British Columbia case on the ongoing debate over Aboriginal land title.

On one side of the debate, non-aboriginal governments usually argue that Aboriginals' legal title to land is limited to whatever uses Aboriginal people made of the land before European influence. In contrast, Aboriginal peoples generally contend that they are entitled to use their land in any way they wish. While the Supreme Court sided in favour of the Aboriginals in the Delgamuukw case by agreeing that they had legal title to their land and could use it as they wished, it also suggested that there is wide scope for the federal government to infringe on Aboriginal land rights, when for example, resource development is at issue.

McNeil's lecture will look not only at how the case affects aboriginal rights, but will also examine the implications for the constitutional division of power between federal and provincial governments.

The Robarts Chair in Canadian Studies is awarded each year by the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, a research centre on York's campus founded in 1984 to promote and support interdisciplinary and discipline-specific research pertinent to the study of Canada.

The 1998 Robarts Lecture will be held on Wednesday, March 25 from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Senate Chamber, N940 Ross Building, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto.

For more information, please contact:

Sine MacKinnon
Senior Advisor for Media Relations
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22087
email: sinem@yorku.ca

Alison Masemann
Media Relations Officer
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22086
email: masemann@yorku.ca
YU/026/98