Aboriginal Studies - UBC Press - University of British Columbia

law law
lament for a first nation
The Williams Treaties of
Southern Ontario
peggy J. blair
In a 1994 decision known as Howard, the
Supreme Court of Canada held that the
Aboriginal signatories to the 1923 Williams
Treaties had knowingly given up not only
their title to off-reserve lands but also their
treaty rights to hunt and fish for food. No
other First Nations in Canada have ever
been found to have willingly surrendered
similar rights. Blair argues that the
Canadian courts caused a serious injustice
by applying erroneous cultural assumptions
in their interpretation of the evidence.
In particular, they confused provincial
government policy, which has historically
favoured public over special rights, with the
understanding of the parties at the time.
peggy J. blair is one of Canada’s leading
lawyers in the field of Aboriginal law.
2008, 978-0-7748-1513-0 pb $34.95
364 pages, 6 x 9"
Aboriginal Law
Ontario History
Legal History
LAW AND SOCIETY SERIES
landing native fisheries
Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights
in British Columbia, 1849–1925
douglas c. Harris
Honourable Mention,
2009 lieutenantgovernor’s
medal
for Historical writing,
BC Historical
Federation
Landing Native Fisheries reveals the
contradictions and consequences of an
Indian land policy premised on access
to fish, on one hand, and a program
of fisheries management intended to
open the resource to newcomers, on the
other. Beginning with the first treaties
signed on Vancouver Island between
1850 and 1854, Douglas Harris maps the
connections between the colonial land
policy and the law governing the fisheries.
In so doing, Harris rewrites the history of
colonial dispossession in British Columbia,
offering a new and nuanced examination
of the role of law in the consolidation
of power within the colonial state.
douglas c. Harris is a member of
the Faculty of Law at the University
of British Columbia and the author of
Fish, Law, and Colonialism: The Legal
Capture of Salmon in British Columbia
2008, 978-0-7748-1420-1 pb $34.95
268 pages, 6 x 9"
15 b&w photos, 25 maps, 3 tables
Aboriginal History
Aboriginal Law
BC History
Foresty, Fisheries & Resources
Legal History
LAW AND SOCIETY SERIES
28 Aboriginal Studies 2010 order online: www.ubcpress.ca