Dr. Shiri Pasternak

Shiri Pasternak is Associate Professor in Criminology at Ryerson University in Toronto. She joined the faculty in July 2017. She is the author of Grounded Authority: the Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the State, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2017.

Shiri received her PhD from the Department of Planning and Geography at the University of Toronto in 2013. She then held a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Osgoode Law (2015-2016) and in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University in New York City (2013-2015). From 2016-2017, she held a post as Assistant Professor in the School for the Study of Canada at Trent University.

Shiri teaches courses in the Indigenous Justice stream and her research interests involve interdisciplinary approaches to Indigenous jurisdiction, resource economies, and Crown-First Nations’ relations. She publishes in the fields of legal and historical geography, settler colonial studies, political economy, and critical legal studies.

Refereed Journal Articles

• Pasternak, S. and Ceric, I (2023) “'The Legal Billy Club': First Nations, Injunctions, and the Public Interest.” TMU Law Review. (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. and Scott, Dayna (2020) “Introduction: Getting the Land Back.” South Atlantic Quarterly 119.2.
• Pasternak, S. (2020) “Assimilation and Partition: How Settler Colonialism and Racial Capitalism Co-Produce the Borders of Indigenous Economies.” South Atlantic Quarterly 119.2
• Pasternak, S. (2019) “Introduction: Colonialism in Three Landscapes.” South Atlantic Quarterly Press: Against the Day, 118:4.
• Pasternak, S. and Schabus, N.  (2019) “Privatizing Uncertainty and Socializing Risk: Indigenous Legal and Economic Leverage in the Federal Trans Mountain Buy-Out.” University of New Brunswick Law Journal 70 209-231.
• Pasternak, S. and T. Dafnos, “How does a settler state secure the circuitry of capital?” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36:4 (2018): 739–757. (external link)  [Editor’s Choice Collection, 50th anniversary of Environment and Planning Journals]
• Pasternak, S. “The Fiscal Body of Sovereignty: To ‘Make Live’ in Indian Country,” Settler Colonial Studies 6:4 (2015), 1-22. (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. “How Capitalism will Save Colonialism: The Privatization of Reserve Lands in Canada,” Antipode 47:1 (2015), 179–196. (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. “Jurisdiction and Settler Colonialism: Where Do Laws Meet,” Special Issue: Law & Decolonization, Canadian Journal of Law and Society 29:2 (2014): 145-161. (external link) 
• Pasternak, S., Sue Collis, Tia Dafnos, “Criminalization at Tyendinaga: Securing Canada’s Colonial Property Regime through Specific Land Claims,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 28:1 (May 2013): 65-81. [2014 Canadian Law & Society Article Prize] (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. and David Wachsmuth, “Use It or Lose It: Toronto’s ‘Use It or Lose It’ Campaign for Affordable Housing,” Critical Planning Journal 15 (2008), 7-22. [Edward Soja Prize for Best Essay]

Book

• Pasternak, S. Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the State. University of Minnesota Press, May 2017 (external link) .

[Winner, Western Political Science Association's Clay Morgan Award for Best Book in Environmental Political Theory, 2018; Honourable Mention, Charles Taylor Book Award, American Political Science Association, 2018; Honourable Mention, Association of Anthropology and Legal Association Book Prize, 2018; Winner, Canadian Studies Network Best Book 2017; Nominated, First Book Award, Native and Indigenous Studies Association, 2017]
 

Book Chapters

• Pasternak, S. (2021) “‘Why does a hat need so much land?’” In Allotment Stories: Indigenous Responses to Settler Colonial Land Privatization, eds. Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O’Brien, University of Minnesota Press. Forthcoming.
• Pasternak, S. (2021) “Water will find a way to flow: Apocalyptic chokepoints and survival in the Indigenous fight against dams,” In Muskrat Falls Symposium: Collected Papers, ed. Stephen Crocker, ISER Books, Memorial University. Forthcoming.
• Pasternak, S. (2020) “Jurisdiction.” In Routledge Handbook of Law and Society, eds. Eve Darian-Smith, Kamari Clarke, Prabha Kotiswaran, Mariana Valverde. Routledge Press. Forthcoming.
• Pasternak, S. Mazer, K., Cochrane, T. “The Financing Problem of Colonialism: How Indigenous Jurisdiction is Valued in Pipeline Politics,” #NoDAPL and Mni Wiconi: Reflections on Standing Rock, ed. Jaskiran Dhillon and Nick Estes, University of Minnesota Press. Forthcoming Fall 2018.  (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. “Blockade: A Meeting Place of Law.” Whose Land is it Anyway? A Manuel for Decolonization, ed. Peter McFarlane and Nicole Schabus, Federation of Post- Secondary Educators of BC, 2017.  (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. “Property as a Technique of Jurisdiction.” Contested Property Claims: What disagreement tells us about ownership, Mikkel Thorup, Maja Hojer Bruun, Bjarke Skærlund Risager & Patrick Cockburn, eds. (New York: Routledge), 2018. (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. “A Tale of Vision and Violence: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake, the Trilateral Agreement, and the Land Claims Policy.” Aboriginal History: A Reader, 2^nd Edition, Kristin Burnett and Geoff Read, eds., (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016).  (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. “Occupy(ed) Canada: The Political Economy of Indigenous Dispossession.” The Winter We Danced, The Kino-nda-niimi Collective, eds. (Winnipeg, MB: ARP Books, 2014).
   

Policy Reports

• Pasternak, S. (Forthcoming) “BC might want to align with UNDRIP, but does UNDRIP align with BC?” Yellowhead Institute Special Report. BC UNDRIPA.
• Pasternak, S. and Houle, Robert (2020) “No Such Thing as Natural Disasters: Infrastructure and The First Nation Fight Against COVID-19.” Yellowhead Institute. Toronto: Ryerson University, April 9, 2019.
• Pasternak, S. and King, H. (2019) “Land Back.” Yellowhead Institute. Toronto: Ryerson University, October.
• Manuel, K. and Pasternak, S. “We Own It So Let’s Kill It: What to do about Kinder Morgan in an Era of Reconciliation,” Yellowhead Policy Brief. Issue 06, July 18, 2018. (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. “The gaping holes in Ottawa’s Indigenous fiscal policy,” Policy Options, Institute for Research on Public Policy, July 10, 2018.  (external link) 
•  (PDF file) King, H. and Pasternak, S. “Canada’s Emerging Indigenous Right’s Framework: A Critical Analysis.” Yellowhead Special Report. Toronto: Ryerson University, June 2018.  (external link) 
• Pasternak, S., D.T. Cochrane, N. Schabus, “Standing Rock of the North: A Summary Risk Assessment of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion,” Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade, June 2017.  (external link) 
   

Journalism

• Pasternak, S. and Ceric, I. (2020) “Injunctions Prove the Point: Canada is a Smash and Grab Country for Industry,” Globe and Mail, Feb. 28.
• Pasternak, S. (2020) “Wet'suwet'en: Why are Indigenous rights being defined by an energy corporation?” The Conversation. February 7.
• Pasternak, S. and Lukacs, M.  (2020) “Industry, government pushed to abolish Aboriginal title at issue in Wet’suwet’en stand-off, docs reveal,” The Narwhal. Feb. 7.
• Pasternak, S.  (2020) “No, those who defend the Wet’suwet’en territory are not criminals.” Globe and Mail. Opinion. Jan. 15, 2020.
• King, H.and Pasternak, S. (2018) “A Different PM Trudeau, Same Buckskin Jacket but Where is the 'Real Change' for Indigenous Peoples?” The Globe and Mail, June 8.
• Cowen, D. and S. Pasternak, “Trans Mountain pipeline another colonial project asserting jurisdiction over Indigenous lands,” Toronto Star, April 24, 2018. (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. “#DeedsNotWords: A National Day of Water Protection Solidarity North of the Medicine Line,” Cultural Anthropology (Dec. 2016).
• Dafnos, T. and Pasternak, S. “The Criminalization of Aboriginal Protests in Recent History and the Implications for Sovereignty Summer.” For the Defence: Criminal Lawyers’ Association Newsletter 34:3 (August 2013): 15-23.
• Pasternak, S. Part 3 of 3: Resistance 150: Unsettling Canada’s Hidden Economic Apartheid, “Mercenary Colonialism: Third-Party Management,” October 25, 2017. (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. Part 2 of 3: Resistance 150: Unsettling Canada’s Hidden Economic Apartheid, “Transfer payments impose permanent austerity on Indigenous communities,” Ricochet, June 28, 2017. (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. Part 1 of 3: Resistance 150: Unsettling Canada’s Hidden Economic Apartheid, “Arthur Manuel’s battle against the 0.2 per cent Indigenous economy,” June 14, 2017. (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. “Starve or Submit: How one First Nation remains in servitude to a private accounting firm,” Ricochet, April 7, 2017. (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. and A. Stanley, “Federal budget could mark end of duty to consult with First Nations,” Ricochet, June 3, 2015.  (external link) 
• Pasternak, S. “Fiscal Brutality and Permanent Austerity: How Canada Controls First Nations,” First Nations Strategic Bulletin, Nov.-Dec. 2014. (external link)