<i>Native Peoples and Water Rights: Irrigation, Dams, and the Law in Western Canada</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Native Peoples and Water Rights: Irrigation, Dams, and the Law in Western Canada Ted Binnema (bio) Native Peoples and Water Rights: Irrigation, Dams, and the Law in Western Canada. by Kenichi Matsui. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009 The topic of indigenous water rights, long a topic of scholarly interest in the United States, has received little attention in Canada—until now. Because of the combination of remarkable similarities and distinct differences in legal traditions and Indian policies in Canada and the United States, the history of indigenous water rights in both countries should be of considerable interest to all scholars interested in either country. For that reason, although this study has significant weaknesses, scholars on both sides of the border should welcome this pioneering book. The most disappointing shortcoming of this book is the lack of any clear explicit or implicit central argument. To be fair, Matsui admits that he does “not seek to offer a definitive account of Native water rights history,” but more modestly to present “an account of the intertwined stories that both Natives and newcomers created” (14). But the book is too interpretively timid. Its introduction draws on Nicholas Thomas, Edward Said, and Homi Bhabha, but that discussion seems divorced from the body of the book. In terms of the Native side of the story, Matsui remains relatively true to his stated aim of avoiding “victim narratives” (xiv), although Natives do sometimes disappear from the discussion. The conclusion represents Matsui’s best attempt at some broader arguments about the significance of his findings (beyond perhaps implying—as his introduction seems to do—that his findings seem to fit the theoretical frameworks of those discussed in his introduction), but it is too short and unfocused to be effective. The lack of any real, convincing, overarching argument or theme means that the book can be read as a collection of five thematically connected chapters. The first, which surveys the history of water and property rights quite broadly, is followed by two that examine conflict over Native irrigation rights in the dry belt of the British Columbia interior. They discuss three interior Salish communities: the St’at’imc [End Page 133] (Lillooet), the Nlaka’pamux (Thompson), and in most detail, the Secwepemc (Shushap). The second of these (chapter 4) is a revised version of an article Matsui published in Wicazo Sa Review in 2005. Chapter 5 looks at the early history of water and irrigation issues on the Tsuu T’ina (Sarcee) and Siksika (Blackfoot) reserves of today’s southern Alberta. The last chapter explores the question of waterpower rights on the Nakoda (Stoney) reserve at Morley. The individual chapters are also more focused on reconstructing the complex and ambiguous history (not that this was an easy feat, by the looks of it), than offering deep analysis and argumentation. Matsui is at his best when presenting his archival discoveries. That means that his chapter on property and water rights law is weak. Its flaws range from the general (it overemphasizes the influence of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson), to the specific (it mysteriously identifies Abraham Lincoln’s administration as Whig [21], and inadvertently, because of poor writing, will lead unaware readers to assume that the Canadian expedition led by Henry Youle Hind may have been sent to the prairies in 1830, rather than 1857 [22]). The chapters based on archival research are much better. Chapters 3 to 6 (those based most heavily on archival research) reveal much about the way water rights principles evolved in Canada (and Matsui’s conclusion does hint at this). We get a sense of the chaotic and inconsistent ad hoc functioning of often cash-strapped and understaffed bureaucracies and corporations, the competing interests of government departments (some weak, some strong), the competing interests of federal and provincial governments, and the different strategies (from conciliation to confrontation) employed by bureaucrats and officials in the Department of Indian Affairs to solve problems, sometimes at the expense of Native communities. In these complex and confused circumstances, Native leaders tried to represent their own interests, with more or less success. In what is probably the most intriguing argument of the book, Matsui contends that the...