How court injunctions do Canada’s dirty work to deny Indigenous rights (ep 320)

This week: The function of injunctions. When First Nations challenge the authority of a province or corporation to enact decisions that ignore Indigenous consent, there’s a handy legal tool those non-Indigenous parties can turn to: the injunction.

Basically a court order which forces someone (or someones) to immediately put an end to a particular action, an injunction is, in principle, available to anyone who can make their case. But according to research by the Yellowhead Institute, decades of injunctions reveal how, in practice, they all too often expedite the use of force against First Nations who push back against reckless resource extraction.

Now a new paper extends that research to more closely exam and explain how Canada’s legal system tends to favour corporate over Indigenous interests when it comes to injunctions—a tendency they argue is baked into its very core. On this episode, host/producer Rick Harp and MI regular Trina Roache (Rogers Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College) are joined by Shiri Pasternak, Associate Professor of Criminology at Toronto Metropolitan University, and Irina Cerić, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Windsor, co-authors of “‘The Legal Billy Club’: First Nations, Injunctions, and the Public Interest”

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