Solemn Words and Foundational Documents: An Annotated Discussion of Indigenous-Crown Treaties in Canada, 1752–1923 by Jean-Pierre Morin (review)

Jean-Pierre Morin is a historian at Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada who specializes in treaties and Crown–First Nations relations. He is also an adjunct professor at Carleton University. Accordingly, Solemn Words and Foundational Documents evaluates eight treaty events from across the lands that make up today's Canada from the perspectives of an expert and a teacher. Each chapter consists of Morin's introduction to a particular treaty, the treaty document, a selection of associated oral and written texts, a court decision, a bibliography, discussion questions, and dramatis personae. The book includes an introduction to the broad topic of treaties, a map, a timeline, and some illustrations. As such, it is a good text for courses on Crown–Indigenous history where it could be used as a platform for seminar discussions or as a starting point for essay research. Beyond that, the book serves general readers interested in learning about the subject, while people with advanced expertise will find the case studies from outside their realms of competence to be useful. The treaties explored in detail are the 1752 "Cope Treaty," the 1760 Huron-British Treaty, the 1818 Rice Lake Treaty, the 1850 Robinson-Huron Treaty, the 1852 Saanich Treaties, the 1876 and 1896 Treaties Numbers 6 and 8, and the 1923 Williams Treaty.

Reflecting current legal views, Morin states that we only can understand a treaty properly when we incorporate relevant oral and written texts beyond the treaty document itself. Additionally, we need to investigate the motivations and perceptions of the negotiators, along with the cultural, linguistic, political, and other conditions that influenced their behaviour. Aligned to this argument, Morin summarizes the Supreme Court of Canada's nine principles for judging treaties. Two of them include obligations to evaluate ambiguous and doubtful components in the archival record in favour of First Nations interests and to recognize that Indigenous people must be able to exercise treaty rights in ways that are viable within the changing conditions of an evolving world.

Since at least the 1970s and the publication of works by people like Bruce Trigger, most of us specializing in the history of Native–newcomer relations not only have increased understanding of the subject but have attempted to overcome the legacies of colonialist scholarship (with varying degrees of success as the historiographical ground moves beneath our feet). One of the things that we have done is search for information that demonstrates First Nations' independence, power, agency, and resistance through the centuries, thereby interpreting the past with more precision and consequently supporting current Indigenous concerns. Good scholarship, however, demands that we do not take the evidence further than it genuinely allows us to go. Yet, Solemn Words occasionally seems to do so. For instance, Morin presents the 1764 Treaty of Fort Niagara in positive terms for the First Nations, although it was an agreement associated with considerable ambivalence in resolving some of the tensions surrounding the Pontiac War and incorporated punitive measures directed at certain Indigenous groups, which he overlooks (as do others). Moreover, he says nothing about the related 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix. In it, the British and Haudenosaunee (or Iroquoia) met their respective needs by dispossessing the Shawnees and other Indigenous inhabitants in the Ohio country following the war of 1763–4. While it applied to lands within the modern United States, it was a major event in Crown–First Nations history with grave implications outside of its geographical focus and, therefore, ought to have been included in his general analysis of the 1764–83 period. Beyond its intrinsic importance for understating treaty negotiations immediately after the promulgation of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Fort Stanwix treaty exemplifies how tensions transcended simple conceptions of Native–newcomer conflict that dominate much of today's discourse. We must address these sorts of complexities with discernment in...