Description
Breathing Life Into the Stone Fort Treaty: An Anishinabe Understanding of Treaty One focuses on understanding and interpreting treaties from an Anishinaabe inaakonigewin (legal) perspective. In order to interpret and implement a treaty between the Crown and Canada’s First Nations, we must look to its spirit and intent, and consider what was contemplated by the parties at the time the treaty was negotiated, argues author Aimée Craft. Using a detailed analysis of Treaty One – covering what is today southern Manitoba – she illustrates how Anishinabe laws defined Treaty One negotiations and opened the door to a “gathering of spirit.” Those laws included the obligations and responsibilities that derive from the relationship to the land, the need to wait for all participants before negotiations began in order to respect their jurisdiction and decision making authority, and the rooting of the treaty relationship in kinship, including references to the Queen as a mother. These legal concepts and many more are examined in this book with the author illustrating how the terms of Treaty One were defined by such principles. Aimée Craft is an Indigenous lawyer from Manitoba.