Spotlight on Indigenous and Indigenous-Focused Presses

This book is a legal inquiry into the prevalence of Métis diplomacy during the Métis Nation’s growth and development on the American prairies. In particular, the book focuses on Métis treaty diplomacy. Contrary to popular opinion, the Métis communities did engage in considerable treaty activity with other Indigenous nations and colonial authorities despite an emerging and hardening federal policy of ignoring the Métis as a distinct people. With the odd exception, the Federal government rejected nation-to- nation negotiations, and instead treated the Métis as a group of half-civilized individuals who were to be classified as either “white” or “Indian” but not as their own distinct people. This policy continues to the present day and is manifest in discriminatory treatment in accessing treaty claim processes for Métis collectives. This book explores the need to decolonize the Métis-Canadian relationship and to re-engage in a treaty relationship once again.

This edited collection features essays by Indigenous legal academics from across Canada about renewing relationships between Indigenous peoples and Canada. Some Indigenous nations might embrace principles of reconciliation as reflecting a renewed relationship, while others reject the concept of reconciliation and instead advocate for resistance or decolonization. This collection includes chapters that critically engage with these theoretical debates, as well as chapters that analyze how these concepts can be instantiated in tangible and specific ways. It builds on existing literature on Indigenous-Crown relationships that addresses issues such as the inclusion of Indigenous laws, self-determination, and the role of the constitution.

The Wabanaki Compact presents a legal history of the beginning of trans-Atlantic treaties between the nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy and British sovereign. This Compact generated an innovative treaty commonwealth that was the foundation of both the New England states of the United States of America and the Atlantic Canada. This book is written from the traditions and perspectives of the Mi’kmaw Nation, one of nations of the Confederacy. It is an initial attempt to unravel the neglected structure and meaning of these treaties from a trans-systemic perspective that incorporates both Indigenous and British law, and to provide a foundational perspective and a set of values through which the meaning of the legacy of the treaties of North America may be understood. These treaties of the Wabanaki Compact generate an alternative relationship to the colonists’ narratives and myths about Indians and the wilderness, based on the law of nature and of nations, which shaped the constitutional law of the colonies as it relates to the Indigenous nations.