A Reflection on Decolonization as a Cultural Process: Evidence from the Canadian Jurisprudence

Following the enactment of Sect. 35 (1) of the Constitution Act (1982), Canada constitutes a singular example of formal coexistence between Western legal traditions and Indigenous customs, after a long time of total predominance of the Western legal traditions. With temporal reference to the forty years following the promulgation of the Constitution Act (1982–2022), first this work aims to reconstruct the evolution of the Canadian jurisprudence in the consideration of the Indigenous sovereignty, from a Eurocentric to an Indigenous point of view. In particular, three significant Canadian jurisprudential decisions that adopted an Indigenous perspective on the idea of sovereignty, namely Beaver v. Hill (2019), R. v. Desautel (2021), Yahey v. British Columbia (2021), are carefully analyzed. Then, starting from the potential offered by Ricoeur’s philosophy of translation, this article intends to identify a method of communication between different legal experiences and ensure their effective coexistence in the Canadian context.