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Bringing the good feelings back : imagining Stó-lo justice

University of British Columbia

The Sto:lo people face many challenges and issues as they create a government and justice system based on prior ways of governance and justice. Some of these challenges and issues include the documenting and synthesizing of current understanding of judicial practices, establishing principles of membership or citizenship, legitimizing their own institutions, and establishing the scope and mandate of the House of Justice. The Sto:lo people are deciding what they want their justice system to look like. They face a multitude of existing judicial models and the importation of legal practices from elsewhere. Members of the Sto:lo Nation negotiate their way through various levels of federal and provincial government bureaucracy as they form relationships with these government bodies and establish their place among them. Yet, Sto:lo members must also temper their own bureaucratic growth with the need to remain flexible and responsive to the needs of the community. Current understandings of Sto:lo justice practice frame the expectations the Sto:lo people have of their own justice system. Discursive features of previous justice practices and contemporary Sto:lo issues include the importance of elders in community decision making, the importance of community and cohesion, the strength of the family and the desire to settle problems internally without external interference, the importance of sharing resources, and the Sto:lo's connection to the spiritual world. In this paper I study the inception and growth of Sto:lo nationhood, and the creation of one of the Sto:lo Nation's emerging institutions, the House of Justice. I refer to the ethnonationalist literature of Benedict Anderson, Stanley J. Tambiah and John L. Comaroff Anderson's "imagined community" is the central metaphor for this paper.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-05-27

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/8331

Anthropology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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