Aboriginal Societies and the Common Law: A History of Sovereignty, Status, and Self-determination

This book describes the encounter between the common law legal system and the tribal peoples of North America and Australasia. It is a history of the role of anglophone law in managing relations between the British settlers and indigenous peoples. That history runs from the plantation of Ireland and settlement of the New World to the end of the twentieth century. Throughout this history, the common law's encounter with tribal peoples not only describes its view of the aboriginal, but also reveals a considerable amount about the common law itself as a language of thought. This is a history of the voyaging common law.