No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous by Sheldon Krasowski (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous by Sheldon Krasowski Paulina Johnson (bio) No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous by Sheldon Krasowski University of Regina Press, 2019 WRITTEN BY NON-INDIGENOUS SCHOLAR Sheldon Krasowski, No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous details the negotiations during the Numbered Treaties, focusing specifically on the first seven Treaties of the eleven in Canada. Krasowski's main argument is that the Canadian government through its crown negotiators misled the Indigenous nations they wanted to build relations with because Canada wanted land and these Treaty territories stretch across Manitoba to Alberta today. Chapter 1 examines Treaties 1 and 2, and how outside promises made by crown negotiators in the negotiations were left out of the written texts, but the "cede, release, surrender, and yield up" clause was added without Indigenous knowledge (72). Chapter 2 challenges the previous Treaty research that relied heavily on the unbiased use of Treaty texts by crown officials and ignored Indigenous oral narratives and eyewitness accounts of negotiations. This bias benefits the crown and the Government of Canada as it limited the glimpse into the ceremonial aspects of Treaty 3 and, more importantly, Indigenous philosophical and economic views of natural resources and land. Chapter 3 presents the "conflicts" between the Cree and Saulteaux Nations during Treaties 4 and 5, but as Krasowski points out, these conflicts were not about Indigenous animosity toward one another but about the Hudson's Bay Company's (HBC) impact on their territory. Tensions over ownership of land were prevalent at the time, which increased with the Cypress Hills Massacre, which led Canada to form the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) in 1873. Chapter 4 examines the negotiations of Treaty 6 and the discontent among the Cree Nations in Saskatchewan, where political tensions were high concerning access to land and ownership. This is one of the first negotiations [End Page 124] where missionaries, the NWMP, and interpreters were in attendance, as only three missionaries had witnessed the prior treaty negotiations. Chapter 5 focuses on the 1877 negotiations of the Treaty 7 at Blackfoot Crossing with the Siksika, Piikani, Kainai, Tssu T'ina, and Stoney Nations. The chapter details the negative impacts of the American whiskey trade within their territory and how the creation of the NWMP protected their territories. The concluding chapter forwards the interrelations between Treaty 1 through Treaty 7 as much literature focuses on each separate Treaty, but together we are aware of the negotiation strategies that discuss only the "benefits of treaty" and "ignore[s] its liabilities" (272). Indigenous peoples and settlers understood the importance of a treaty relationship, but Canada had no interest in maintaining the relationships entailed by the Treaties. Krasowski calls into question scholars overuse of treaty texts, yet he defends the documents when statements made by Indigenous academics refer to them as "lies on paper" (citing Venne 1997, 212). Can you blame Indigenous peoples for having such a view when written and official documents have been disingenuous and deceitful? These were not just political agreements; they are representations of Indigenous livelihood. Unfortunately, Krasowski does not mention Indigenous women; this work still falls within the heteropatriarchal view of Canadian history. Lack of recognition of the role that women play in Indigenous societies replicates the patterns of sociopolitical misrecognition carried out by the Crown and state during the treaty negotiations. Krasowski also does not incorporate concepts of Indigenous kinship or reciprocity, both of which are important for the maintenance of relationships. There is mention of oral narratives and eyewitness accounts, yet these are significantly limited. The spiritual importance of the pipes used in the negotiations are only referenced at the end of the book. Cree scholar Winona Wheeler acknowledges in her foreword that Krasowski was an accomplice to the integration of Indigenous oral narratives rather than just written texts on the Treaties because "the more evidence, the stronger the case" (xiv), yet the incorporation of Indigenous spiritual philosophies on Treaties are lacking, and this evidence has more merit than any settler text. For those who do not know the complexity of Indigenous and settler relations extending from the Treaties, No Surrender does provide a look into Canada's emergence based on the...