All of Jeffrey Mason's Comments + Replies
First Nations Special Economic Zones
Hi, I'm happy to provide some additional comment later (traveling at the moment) but copy/pasting with light edits the text of an email I wrote in 2020 on this topic. Context: I work on charter cities.
"Based on our conversations with [Native American political economy scholar], the big problem is that while on paper it looks like the tribes might have some degree of autonomy or freedom, they have virtually none in practice.
The property rights on reservations are structured in such a way that the federal government has to be involved in virtually everything... (read more)
21yI know that the tribes have no freedom now; you could not do anything like a
charter city without changing the Federal laws. The laws need to be changed.
Some places would refuse to sell land to outsiders, but some would. The tribal
governments should be able to, without Federal oversight, choose to either
manage land communally, or assign property rights to individuals.
I'm not intimately familiar with how the law treats Canadian tribes, but you might find this project (Senakw) being developed by the Squamish Nation in Vancouver interesting. In short, they're building a new development adjacent to Vancouver and because they're a tribe are exempt from all the usual planning and zoning regualtions.