Breathing Life into the Stone Fort Treaty

An Anishnabe Understanding of Treaty One

By Aimée Craft
Foreword by John Borrows
Categories: Public & Social Policy, Indigenous Studies, Political Science, Indigenous Law, Law & Society
Publisher: UBC Press
Paperback : 9781895830644, March 2013
Ebook (EPUB) : 9781895830668, March 2013
Ebook (PDF) : 9781895830682, March 2013
Ebook (MobiPocket) : 9781895830934, March 2013
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Table of contents

Foreword / John Borrows

Introduction: Treaty Interpretation and Implementation: Entwined Disconnection

Part One: What Came Before Treaty One

1 Skilled Negotiators and Diplomats: The Anishinabe and Indigenous, Fur Trade, and Crown Treaties

2 Manito Api — this “Piece of Land”: Treaty Making with the Indians of Manitoba

Part Two: Making the Stone Fort Treaty

3 The Anishinabe at the Stone Fort: The People that Belong to this Land

4 Building on Stone Foundations: Relationships and Protocols

Part Three: Anishinabe Inaakonigewin

5 Gizhagiiwin: The Queen’s Obligations of Love, Caring, Kindness and Equality among her Children

6 “The Land Cannot Speak for Itself”: Relationships To and About Land

Part Four: Living the Treaty

7 Implementing the Treaty: Outside Promises and Post-treaty Disputes in the Immediate Post-treaty Years

Conclusion: Re-kindling the Fire: Finding and Embracing the Spirit and Intent of Treaty One Today

Appendix: Treaty No. 1

Endnotes; Bibliography; Index

Description

In order to interpret and implement a treaty between the Crown and Canada’s First Nations, we must look to its spirit and intent, and consider what was contemplated by the parties at the time the treaty was negotiated, argues Aimée Craft. Using a detailed analysis of Treaty One – today covering what is southern Manitoba – she illustrates how negotiations were defined by Anishinabe laws (inaakonigewin), which included the relationship to the land, the attendance of all jurisdictions’ participants, and the rooting of the treaty relationship in kinship. While the focus of this book is on Treaty One, Anishinabe laws (inaakonigewin) defined the settler-Anishinabe relationship well before this, and the principles of interpretation apply equally to all treaties with First Nations.