Living Treaties, Breathing Research

Abstract

In this article, the author challenges the exclusive use of common law legal principles for the interpretation of historic treaties between Aboriginal people and the Queen’s representatives. It suggests that particular attention to language, culture, relationships, and Anishinaabe normative values allows us to more fully grasp the true meaning and intent of treaties. Interspersed with personal narrative, the author grapples with the role of courts in identifying, interpreting, and applying the terms of treaties. The author aims to provide a framework for retelling a more balanced account of the treaty negotiations, with particular attention to the normative values or Anishinaabe inaakonigewin (laws), which were central to the negotiations. Employing a triangulation between the written accounts of the negotiations, oral history, and Anishinaabe knowledge, norms, and customs, the author probes the complex ways in which Anishinaabe procedural and substantive norms shaped the terms contemplated by each of the parties, the fundamental conflicts between normative values, and the substantive agreement to share the land. The retelling of Treaty One from an Anishinaabe contextual perspective deepens our understandings of treaties and illustrates that the written text of the treaty provides an incomplete understanding of what was negotiated by the parties at the Stone Fort in 1871.