Ojibwa fishing grounds : a history of Ontario fisheries law, science, and the sportsmen’s challenge to Aboriginal treaty rights, 1650-1900 ...

• Main Author: Thoms, J. Michael
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2009
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0091924; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0091924

This dissertation investigates the question: what happened to the Ojibwa right to fish in southern Ontario? The region is one of the oldest and most complex in Canada for Aboriginal and treaty rights negotiations and fisheries law. The study involves community-based case studies with four Mississauga and three Chippewa First Nations. It reconstructs their system and laws for the conservation of their valued ecosystem components prior to their first treaties with the British Crown in 1783. This forms the critical environmental context from which to interpret Ojibwa treaty strategies. The Crown made no records of the first treaties, but Ojibwa oral histories of the agreements hold that they reserved the regions' wetlands and fisheries for their exclusive use, agreeing only to cede arable uplands to the Crown for agricultural settlement. The dissertation corroborates the oral histories in British records. Further, the study demonstrates that the parliament of Upper Canada protected the Ojibwa treaty fishing ...