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Le 11 juin 2008, le Premier ministre Stephen Harper au nom du peuple canadien a présenté des excuses à l'égard des enfants autochtones jadis gardés dans des pensionnats. Les ministres de l'opposition Stéphane [Stephane Dion], Jack Layton et Gilles Duceppe ont fait de même. Tous les chefs des organisations nationales d'autochtones ont réagi positivement à cet exercice public. En sa qualité de présidente nationale de l'Associations de femmes autochtones du Canada, l'auteure a eu la responsabilité de diffuser ce message afin que tous en prennent connaissance. Elle en fut honorée et au nom des femmes autochtones du Canada elle a parlé du fond du coeur en témoignant de l'impact de ce système scolaire spécialement sur les femmes autochtones. I then had to reflect on my own personal upbringing and heard about the horrendous abuses that my own grandmother and her siblings had to endure while they attended the "Mush Hole," the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario. I also reflected and reviewed my matrilineal family and the affects that these abuses had on my mother, her siblings and their families. My grandmother and mother had already passed away when I began to realize the intergenerational impacts, so I wasn't able to have direct conversations with them about this issue. I am not sure my grandmother would have wanted to talk about it anyway. I was, however, able to sit with my uncle, my grandmother's brother, and he told me many horrible stories. I began to understand how much was stolen from my matriarchal family as a result of my grandmother attending the Mush Hole. It became a reality that our traditional form of educating our children through language and traditional teachings that were supposed to be taught to us by our grandmother was stolen from her; her language was sexually beaten from her and her spirit was beaten by a system designed to destroy her. She was a Mohawk girl whose life was taken from us by genocidal policies of the Canadian government and religious denominations of churches. Most Canadians became a little educated on June 11, 2008 about the assimilationist policy of the Canadian government. Being that this is one of the most troubling "black marks" against Canada, every Canadian person should be knowledgeable that the human rights violations that occurred against Aboriginal children is as a result of Canada's genocidal policies. Every Canadian person should know its impacts on Aboriginal peoples, and more specifically on Aboriginal women. Everyone should know that the negative issues of the poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction and the cycle of violence can be traced back to Canada's policies. We can even trace the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women to the residential school system. All of this must be mandatorily taught in all Canadian schools. It shouldn't have taken until the year 2008 for most Canadians to be educated about the residential school system.

At the time of their civil divorce, Mr. Marcovitz and Ms. Bruker entered into an agreement concerning custody, access, division of property and support. Their agreement also included an undertaking by each to appear before the Beth Din (rabbinical court) for the purpose of obtaining a get, or divorce, under Jewish law. For their marriage to be dissolved under Jewish law, it was necessary for Mr. Marcovitz to provide, and Ms. Bruker to accept, a “bill of divorce”, or get. Without a get neither party could remarry in the faith, and any subsequent intimate relationship entered into by either of them would be considered adulterous and any children born of that relationship would be viewed a illegitimate.

Freedom of conscience or religion is no longer protected as the most effective way for the individual to discover spiritual truth, or as necessary to his meaningful commitment to that truth, or because human conscience, the capacity to recognize truth and right, is a divine endowment. The public justification for religious freedom is now framed in more secular terms. In the contemporary context of spiritually diverse community, the protection of religious belief or commitment is most often said to be based on the value of individual judgment or autonomy. What the individual chooses, what she judges to be right or true, is deserving of respect because it has been chosen, because it is an expression of her autonomy or the outcome of her independent judgment.

The connections between law and religion are many. State laws support some religious values and practices and interfere with others. And, from the other side, religious beliefs often inform or shape state laws. Even if Canadian law does not directly compel citizens to engage in religious practices, to attend church or pray, for example, it sometimes favors or advances the religious practices or values of some members of the community over those of others. And even if it does not directly restrict religious practices on the ground that they are erroneous, Canadian law, when advancing otherwise legitimate public purposes, sometimes impedes minority religious practices.

The thesis examines protections afforded by the emerging right in international law of refugees or internally displaced persons to retum to their homes of origin following conflict. The establishment of discrete, quasi-judicial housing and property restitution mechanisms (for example in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina) promising "restitution in kind" has become the preferred approach of the international community. Their attractiveness is that they promise both legal redress and a practical outcome - the retum of refugees and IDPs to their homes. However, as the thesis discusses, the desires of refugees and IDPs often shift over a long displacement, to the point that return often no longer equates with going "home". Meanwhile ties begin to form with the host community. The thesis assesses the effectiveness of restitution mechanisms as concerns the decision-making of refugees and displaced persons, and concludes that they will be useful if undertaken quickly and in coordination with a larger project to encourage return. In protracted refugee situations, by contrast, restitution is unlikely to lead to widespread retum. A wider array of remedies (including increased use of compensation in place of restitution in kind) and approaches to the protection of housing and property rights for displaced persons should be available. Further, rather than detracting from the rights-based approach, such solutions are solidly rooted in the larger property rights discourse and may in fact strengthen protections of the rights to housing and property for returnees. Based in qualitative and quantitative empirical research, the last chapter presents a case study of protracted displacement and the possibilities for housing and property rights approaches which support a range of durable solutions in the Republic of Georgia and South Ossetia.