The Implications for Australia of Recent Canadian Experience

There is a myth in Australia that Canada has a unique legal framework which explains the relative progress in that country's indigenous policy in recent times. The truth is that legal devices remained unknown or moribund until the non-indigenous public was ready to 'discover' them in recent decades. In other words, indigenous rights and policy in Canada have depended on social attitudes, political pressures, and the ability of indigenous peoples to use the political and legal system to their advantage