Mi'kmaq Treaties on Trial

Mi'kmaq Treaties on Trial
Author: William Wicken
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2002-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780802076656

Intersperses close analysis of the 1726 treaty with discussions of the Marshall case, and shows how the inter-cultural relationships and power dynamics of the past, have shaped both the law and the social climate of the present.

Archive Stories

Archive Stories
Author: Antoinette Burton
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2006-01-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822387042

Despite the importance of archives to the profession of history, there is very little written about actual encounters with them—about the effect that the researcher’s race, gender, or class may have on her experience within them or about the impact that archival surveillance, architecture, or bureaucracy might have on the histories that are ultimately written. This provocative collection initiates a vital conversation about how archives around the world are constructed, policed, manipulated, and experienced. It challenges the claims to objectivity associated with the traditional archive by telling stories that illuminate its power to shape the narratives that are “found” there. Archive Stories brings together ethnographies of the archival world, most of which are written by historians. Some contributors recount their own experiences. One offers a moving reflection on how the relative wealth and prestige of Western researchers can gain them entry to collections such as Uzbekistan’s newly formed Central State Archive, which severely limits the access of Uzbek researchers. Others explore the genealogies of specific archives, from one of the most influential archival institutions in the modern West, the Archives nationales in Paris, to the significant archives of the Bakunin family in Russia, which were saved largely through the efforts of one family member. Still others explore the impact of current events on the analysis of particular archives. A contributor tells of researching the 1976 Soweto riots in the politically charged atmosphere of the early 1990s, just as apartheid in South Africa was coming to an end. A number of the essays question what counts as an archive—and what counts as history—as they consider oral histories, cyberspace, fiction, and plans for streets and buildings that were never built, for histories that never materialized. Contributors. Tony Ballantyne, Marilyn Booth, Antoinette Burton, Ann Curthoys, Peter Fritzsche, Durba Ghosh, Laura Mayhall, Jennifer S. Milligan, Kathryn J. Oberdeck, Adele Perry, Helena Pohlandt-McCormick, John Randolph, Craig Robertson, Horacio N. Roque Ramírez, Jeff Sahadeo, Reneé Sentilles

Power without Law

Power without Law
Author: Alex M. Cameron
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2009-10-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0773581189

The Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Marshall case asserted sweeping Native treaty rights and generated intense controversy. In Power without Law Alex Cameron enlivens the debate over judicial activism with an unprecedented examination of the details of the Marshall case, analyzing the evidence and procedure in the trial court and tracing the legal arguments through the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. He argues that there were critical defects in the process - the successful argument at the Supreme Court of Canada was never tested in the lower courts, the Crown's expert was precluded from testifying about a vital document, the Court's analysis does not accord with the historical evidence, and the treaty rights are inconsistent with the colonial law of Nova Scotia. Concluding that the Marshall decision was the result of incautious judicial activism, Power without Law challenges us to reconsider the role of our courts in the Charter era.

Truth and Conviction

Truth and Conviction
Author: L. Jane McMillan
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019-01-08
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0774837519

The name “Donald Marshall Jr.” is synonymous with “wrongful conviction” and the fight for Indigenous rights in Canada. In Truth and Conviction, Jane McMillan – Marshall’s former partner, an acclaimed anthropologist, and an original defendant in the Supreme Court’s Marshall decision on Indigenous fishing rights – tells the story of how Marshall’s fight against injustice permeated Canadian legal consciousness and revitalized Indigenous law. Marshall was destined to assume the role of hereditary chief of the Mi’kmaw Nation when, in 1971, he was wrongly convicted of murder. He spent more than eleven years in jail before a royal commission exonerated him and exposed the entrenched racism underlying the terrible miscarriage of justice. Four years later, in 1993, he was charged with fishing eels without a licence. With the backing of Mi’kmaw chiefs, he took the case all the way to the Supreme Court to vindicate Indigenous treaty rights in the landmark Marshall decision. Marshall was only fifty-five when he died in 2009. His legacy lives on as Mi’kmaq continue to assert their rights and build justice programs grounded in customary laws and practices, key steps in the path to self-determination and reconciliation.

Homelands and Empires

Homelands and Empires
Author: Jeffers Lennox
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2017-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442614056

In this deeply researched and engagingly argued work, Jeffers Lennox reconfigures our general understanding of how Indigenous peoples, imperial forces, and settlers competed for space in northeastern North America before the British conquest in 1763.

No need of a chief for this band

No need of a chief for this band
Author: Martha Elizabeth Walls
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2011-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0774817917

In 1899 the Canadian government passed legislation to replace the community appointment of Mi'kmaw leaders and Mi'kmaw political practices with the triennial system, a Euro-Canadian system of democratic band council elections. Officials in Ottawa assumed the federally mandated and supervised system would redefine Mi'kmaw politics. They were wrong. Many Mi'kmaw communities rejected or amended the legislation, while others accepted it only sporadically to meet specific community needs and goals. Compelling and timely, this book supports Aboriginal claims to self-governance and complicates understandings of state power by showing that the Mi'kmaw, rather than succumbing to imposed political models, retained political practices that distinguished them from their Euro-Canadian neighbours.

The Colonization of Mi'kmaw Memory and History, 1794-1928

The Colonization of Mi'kmaw Memory and History, 1794-1928
Author: William C. Wicken
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442611553

In 1927, Gabriel Sylliboy, the Grand Chief of the Mi'kmaw of Atlantic Canada, was charged with trapping muskrats out of season. At appeal in July 1928, Sylliboy and five other men recalled conversations with parents, grandparents, and community members to explain how they understood a treaty their people had signed with the British in 1752. Using this testimony as a starting point, William Wicken traces Mi'kmaw memories of the treaty, arguing that as colonization altered Mi'kmaw society, community interpretations of the treaty changed as well. The Sylliboy case was part of a broader debate within Canada about Aboriginal peoples' legal status within Confederation. In using the 1752 treaty to try and establish a legal identity separate from that of other Nova Scotians, Mi'kmaw leaders contested federal and provincial attempts to force their assimilation into Anglo-Canadian society. Integrating matters of governance and legality with an exploration of historical memory, The Colonization of Mi'kmaw Memory and History offers a nuanced understanding of how and why individuals and communities recall the past.

Muiwlanej kikamaqki "Honouring Our Ancestors"

Muiwlanej kikamaqki
Author: Janet E. Chute
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 1324
Release: 2023-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1487546149

Drawing upon oral and documentary evidence, this volume explores the lives of noteworthy Mi’kmaw individuals whose thoughts, actions, and aspirations impacted the history of the Northeast but whose activities were too often relegated to the shadows of history. The book highlights Mi’kmaw leaders who played major roles in guiding the history of the region between 1680 and 1980. It sheds light on their community and emigration policies, organizational and negotiating skills, diplomatic endeavours, and stewardship of land and resources. Contributors to the volume range from seasoned scholars with years of research in the field to Mi’kmaw students whose interest in their history will prove inspirational. Offering important new insights, the book re-centres Indigenous nationhood to alter the way we understand the field itself. The book also provides a lengthy index so that information may be retrieved and used in future research. Muiwlanej kikamaqki – Honouring Our Ancestors will engage the interest of Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers alike, engender pride in Mi’kmaw leadership legacies, and encourage Mi’kmaw youth and others to probe more deeply into the history of the Northeast.

The Power of Promises

The Power of Promises
Author: Alexandra Harmon
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0295800461

Treaties with Native American groups in the Pacific Northwest have had profound and long-lasting implications for land ownership, resource access, and political rights in both the United States and Canada. In The Power of Promises, a distinguished group of scholars, representing many disciplines, discuss the treaties' legacies. In North America, where treaties have been employed hundreds of times to define relations between indigenous and colonial societies, many such pacts have continuing legal force, and many have been the focus of recent, high-stakes legal contests. The Power of Promises shows that Indian treaties have implications for important aspects of human history and contemporary existence, including struggles for political and cultural power, law's effect on people's self-conceptions, the functions of stories about the past, and the process of defining national and ethnic identities.