The Fiduciary Crown: The Private Duties of Public Actors in State–Indigenous Relationships

Abstract

This chapter argues that enforceable fiduciary obligations owed by states to Indigenous peoples are best understood as private duties. The private character of state fiduciary duties is unnecessarily obscured by judicial findings that analogise them to private law ones and characterise the relationship as ‘sui generis’. We argue that there is little to be gained by characterising state-Indigenous fiduciary duties, expressly or by implication, as public duties. The private rights and duties generated within state-Indigenous relationships are structurally and substantively distinct from, and sometimes methodologically and normatively opposed to, the more general relationship between state and ..