Differentiating indigenous citizenship: Seeking multiplicity in rights, identity, and sovereignty in Canada

In this article, I examine how citizenship has been legally differentiated and conceptually reconfigured in recent treaty negotiations between the Nisga'a First Nation, the provincial government of British Columbia, and the Canadian federal government. The Nisga'a have sought a form of differentiated citizenship in Canada on the basis of rights that flow from their relationship to their lands and their identity as a political community. They have challenged the state as the sole source of rights and achieved a realignment in the relationship between their rights as aboriginal people, Canadian citizenship, and the Canadian state.