Bounty and benevolence : a history of Saskatchewan treaties

Abstract

The recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in Regina v. Marshall regarding the treaty rights of the Mi'kmaq dramatically underscored our need to understand the history of treaty relationships between Canada's First Nations and the Crown. The numbered treaties covering Canada's prairie provinces represent the culmination of the country's pre-modern treaty-making era, which ended in the early twentieth century. Sizable portions of the territories covered by six of these accords are located within the boundaries of Saskatchewan. Bounty and Benevolence offers a unique perspective and examination of the history of treaty making in this province. Frank Tough, Jim Miller, and Arthur Ray draw on a wide range of documentary sources to provide a rich and complex interpretation of the process that led to these historic agreements. The authors explain how Saskatchewan treaties were shaped by long-standing First Nations-Hudson's Bay Company diplomatic and economic understandings, treaty practices developed in eastern Canada before the 1870s, and the changing economic and political realities of western Canada during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tough, Miller, and Ray also show why these same forces were responsible for creating some of the misunderstandings and disputes that subsequently arose between the First Nations and government officials regarding the interpretation and implementation of the accords. Bounty and Benevolence offers new insights into this crucial dimension of Canadian history, making it of interest to the general reader as well as specialists in the field of First Nations history.

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