人權、法律、與社會學的觀照－加拿大『印地安寄宿學校和解協定書』與梅帝斯族(Métis)之經驗檢討

Abstract

Along with the footsteps of globalization, the emphasis of universal human rights is becoming active at each quoin of the world. It motivates the national government, on the one hand, to regulate the internal and external forces of exploitation; on the other hand, to address the human rights abuses of the former political power the behavior and to make an apology to the victims. In upholding universal human rights values, the mechanism to inspect the exploitative forces and the practices to implement human rights value meets each other in the legal system of framework. Usually from the perspective of the sociologist, law is not only the impetus to boost social change, but also the fruit born by it. In other words, law is the cause as well as the effect of social change. As upholding universal human rights values turns into a globalized trend, the actors in the judicial system in many countries have put on the role of gatekeepers to safeguard social fairness and justice. With a specific focus on the Metis experience, this article explores how the human rights violation in Canadian history by the forced introduction of European languages, cultures and values to aboriginal people to replace their own through the mechanism of government-funded church-run residential schools has been addressed and corrected by the legal actors and the federal government of Canada in the form of the settlement agreement.