The Pleasure of the Crown: Anthropology, Law, and First Nations

David Mardiros is a lawyer and anthropological consultant in Terrace,
British Columbia.

Centred around an analysis of the legal proceedings in Delgamuukw v. The
Queen in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, this book contains a
far-ranging discussion of topics based on what the author calls an
“ethnographic reading” of the trial proceedings. Of greatest
interest to a general audience is the cultural context provided by the
author—the book contains a useful exposition on the role that culture
(whether it be legal culture or the more generalized nonindigenous
Euro-Canadian culture) plays in determining how “facts” are
determined in courts of law. Also of interest is the author’s analysis
of the assumptions made by the B.C. Supreme Court in a case where
different, and irreconcilable, versions of history collided.

While the book presents a largely negative assessment of the
capabilities and sensibilities of judges and courts of law when
questions of Native rights are at issue, the assessment is based almost
exclusively on the author’s analysis of the trial of Delgamuukw in the
B.C. Supreme Court. While the trial judgment is certainly open to
criticism, the author mentions (in a short appendix) the fact that the
Supreme Court of Canada overturned the decision in late 1997, just as
this book was going to press. A future edition that includes a chapter
exploring how the case was dealt with by the Supreme Court of Canada
will improve the book by contributing a better balance to the analysis.

A future edition of the book containing a review of Delgamuukw as seen
by the Supreme Court of Canada may also help to explain why Native
litigants, as opposed to scholarly observers like Culhane, continue to
see the courts as an appropriate forum for the determination of Native
rights. The Supreme Court of Canada, by overturning some of the more
egregious examples of blinkered reasoning by the trial judge in
Delgamuukw, has answered some of Culhane’s criticisms with a
sensitivity that one hopes will be remembered long after the original
decision in Delgamuukw has been confined to the dustbin of legal
history.