Aboriginal policy and claims negotiation in Canada is seen to be a murky and perplexing world that has become an important public issue and has significant policy implications for government spending. Aboriginal land policy in Canada began as an Aboriginal initiative. In No Place for Fairness, David McNab - a long time advisor on land and treaty rights for both government and First Nations groups - looks at the Bear Island Indigenous rights case, initiated by the Teme-Augama Anishinabe, to explore why governments fail to deal effectively with Aboriginal land claims. The book, divided into two sections, includes a survey of the historical background of the Bear Island claim followed by a more personal series of reflections about what happened as the claim encountered decades of policy hurdles, court cases, public protests, and above all resistance by the Temagami First Nation. McNab provides details of how ministers and their senior officials resisted real efforts to resolve problems as well as examples of field staff resisting government attempts at resolution. He also shows that government entities such as the Indian Commission of Ontario and the Native Affairs Directorate were largely used as "mailboxes" where successive federal and provincial governments sent things they wanted to bury. No Place for Fairness is the story of what happens when Aboriginal peoples' political rights are crammed into the Euro-Canadian legal system. McNab makes a clear case that a legalistic approach to these problems is wholly inadequate and that more important things - like fairness - must be recognized as paramount if a just and lasting Aboriginal land policy is to be created.

David T. McNab is a M?tis historian who has worked for three decades on Aboriginal land and treaty rights issues in Canada. McNab teaches in the School of Arts and Letters in the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies at York University in Toronto where he is Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies. He has also been a claims advisor for Nin.Da.Waab.Jig., Walpole Island Heritage Center, Bkejwanong First Nations since 1992. In addition to more than seventy articles, McNab has published Earth, Water, Air and Fire: Studies in Canadian Ethnohistory (editor) (1998) and Circles of Time: Aboriginal Land Rights and Resistance in Ontario (1999) as well as the co-edited (with Ute Lischke) Blockades and Resistance: Studies in Actions of Peace and the Temagami Blockades of 1988-89 (2003), Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and their Representations (2005), and The Long Journey of a Forgotten People: M?tis Identities and Family Histories, (2007) all with WLU Press.

David T. McNab's profile page

"McNab is uniquely positioned to shed light on a topic of vital interest to Canadian public debate because of his extensive experience inside the Aboriginal land claims process. Part memoir, part history, No Place for Fairness is a unique and valuable con

"No Place for Fairness is a powerful piece of writing and a path-breaking study in the field of land claims, revealing the inner workings of the government. It deserves a wide readership." John S. Long, Nipissing University