The purpose of the ‘10th man rule’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/03/2025 (387 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As Canadians take an “elbows up” stance against the predatory president to the south, we have an opportunity to think creatively about how we can protect our lands. We are hearing the familiar responses to American bellicosity from Canada’s political leaders — increase our security presence in the North, reduce interprovincial trade barriers, and weaken regulations to accelerate resource extraction.

But what if we took an entirely different approach?

It is standard practice in national security matters for strategists considering complex international conflicts to employ the “10th man rule.”

If nine people agree on A, the 10th person is obligated to challenge the nine and propose different interpretations of A. I want to suggest, in the 10th person framing, that we challenge the comfortable and accepted ideas about how we protect our land and resources by flipping the relationship between the Canadian state and its First People on its head.

For the past 170 years, the British Crown (and then Canada) have assumed that it is necessary to assimilate or otherwise erase the roughly 50 sovereign nations that were here prior to colonization. The point of “colonial completion” has been to eliminate challenges to the state by sovereign Indigenous nations for the rights to traditional lands and resources.

But what if those First Nations were instead viewed as a valuable layer of legal protection for Canada’s resources against American predation, as additional reinforcement for politicians wavering under the pressure of extortionate demands?

Internationally recognized Shuswap Chief George Manuel from British Columbia coined the term “Fourth World” 50 years ago to describe sovereign Indigenous nations around the world that existed prior to the arrival of colonizing states and continue to exist, irrespective of state borders.

Nations and states have been recognized as different entities with equal authority since the 18th century.

A nation, in this context, is defined as an organized, law-based society with historic continuity of ancestral bonds of shared tradition, culture, and language that provides security for its people and lands.

A state is a territory with borders defined by war, violence, or treaties, as were Canada’s. However, lacking shared traditional or cultural values to bind its citizens in common caring and purpose, the state instead relies on a constitutional framework of state laws within its internationally recognized borders to legitimize its authority.

Now consider that about 11 per cent of Canada’s landmass is settled, largely contiguous with the Canada-U.S. border. The remaining 89 per cent is Crown land and home to many sovereign Indigenous nations, whether formally recognized by the state or not.

It should be noted here that the term “First Nations” is a modern term applied to the 600-plus bands as defined by the Indian Act, in contrast to the roughly 50 Indigenous nations, to which those bands belong, that retain their sovereign identity.

The fundamental difference between Indigenous nations and the Canadian state lies in the relationship to the land.

The Indigenous sovereign nations of the Fourth World share a near-universal respect, gratitude, and relationality to the land and all its forms of creation, and with it, a profound moral and legal responsibility to protect it. And with that comes the responsibility for ethical resource development achieved through mutually respectful and beneficial relationships that incorporate protections for the lands, communities, and ancestors.

Now, what if Canada were to recognize sovereignty of Indigenous nations over that 89 per cent of lands that are not settled?

Nations within states would certainly seem to present legal and governance conflicts, but as Anishinaabe scholar John Borrows, the Loveland chair of Indigenous law at the University of Toronto, points out, the laws of Indigenous Peoples as sovereign nations do have differences, but they exist in parallel to Canada’s common law and civil law traditions. In many cases, they intersect and overlap.

More to the point, professor Borrows notes that the Supreme Court of Canada already recognizes Indigenous laws as protected under the country’s constitutional framework.

Flipping the role of the Canadian state from one of eliminating Indigenous challenges to the control of the land to engaging Indigenous sovereign nations in the protection of our lands from foreign predators may be provocative.

But being provocative is the purpose and value of the 10th man rule.

Sheilla Jones is a Winnipeg author whose current doctoral research at the University of Manitoba focuses on settler-Indigenous relations.