Natives and Settlers, Now and Then: Historical Issues and Current Perspectives on Treaties and Land Claims in Canada (review)

Presented as ‘a collection that will make a difference in many fields and places,’ Natives and Settlers, Now and Then is a timely and valuable contribution to the literature on Native treaty and land claims. The essays argue for the need to embrace ‘the deconstruction of racist colonial paradigms’ caused, as editor DePasquale sees it, ‘by persistent modes of thinking in the broader society.’ Hence DePasquale’s introduction briefly references the state of Native treaties and land claims in former colonial countries such as Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.

Patricia Seed’s essay presents an international perspective on treaty making and points out the range in interpretations, despite similarities in colonization regimes. She argues that the colonial fiction of the Aboriginal ‘savage’ remains current. Conflict between Natives and settlers was centred on land and its ownership and ‘constituted not merely the official, but also the cultural, heart of the English invention of Americas as theirs.’ Decolonization is definitely a need, but postcolonial ideas and terminology are nothing if not a discourse in ambiguity that is rejected by some Native scholars as untenable and misguided. Seed believes that modern states are just as confused about Native policy as ever.

Sharon Venne’s contribution is an exposé of Treaty Six based on the oral evidence of Cree elders. The problem, according to Venne, is a significant but little-known situation where the Cree reserved lands that they would not share with the Queen nor surrender in treaty, but their wish was not honoured in the treaty making – the result of cultural confusion and discrepancies in language and meaning between Natives and newcomers. Unfortunately the reader can only imagine the persuasiveness of arguments originally presented in an oral forum. Perhaps this is what is needed in the place of weighty academic tomes and certainly will be more appealing to those ready to accept an emotive as well as a reasoned argument. Venne offers a novel way to look at treaties, and one can accept that modern behaviours violate treaty rights, a view sustained by court decisions. Venne speaks with conviction, but her observation that ‘[t]hey [non-Natives] live here because we let them live here’ is, perhaps, a bit hopeful.

With their investigation of the Metis scrip system, Frank Tough and Erin McGregor make a valuable contribution to the explanation of this seemingly complex government land policy. They document the failure of the system ‘to meet the standards of existing conventions for conveying interests in property.’ They clearly point out problems with documentation and suggest duplicitous official behaviour regarding the transfer of scrip, thus undermining the validity of the entire system. This essay reaches historically and socially significant conclusions in that there is little doubt that ‘claims to equity, fairness, and impartiality of the scrip system may be challenged.’ It is a must read for anyone interested in this complex and much misunderstood land policy.

Harold Cardinal’s contribution is a thoughtful summative reflection on the convergences of traditional and Western knowledge in light of the colonization experience. His chief focus is on how colonialism has shaped, and continues to shape, Native identity from outside as well as within, such as through Bill C-31. He calls for recognition of the differences in the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities. A problem for Natives, Cardinal asserts, is that they have adopted the colonialist mindset, and consequently are continually being victimized by the state. Nothing less than a new intellectual paradigm will help resolve issues among Aboriginals, and between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginal Canadians.

The formal essays are followed by an appendix of ‘Questions and Discussions’ inviting the contributors to comment further on some of their ideas, and a short appendix, ‘Remembering Harold Cardinal.’

This short collection of essays focuses mainly on the dispossession of Native lands and reinforces the view that...