Review of Riel and the Rebellion 1885 Reconsidered By Thomas Flanagan

• Main Author: Foster, John E.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 1985
• Subjects: Other International and Area Studies; Metis
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1835; https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/context/greatplainsquarterly/article/2834/viewcontent/BR_Foster.pdf

Professor Flanagan's latest revisionist publication heralds the centenary of the 1885 Saskatchewan Rebellion with a series of developmentally related essays, expressed as chapters, that challenge the conventional wisdom as to the factors responsible for one Plains Metis community, under Louis Riel, taking up arms to redress their grievances. At the same time Flanagan fails to address one longstanding deficiency in the literature. Flanagan's scholarly strengths lie in his analyses of political issues and processes. His two chapters on the land issues in relation to the Rebellion are without equal. His discussion of aboriginal title is of interest in its own right but, more important, it serves as a vehicle to define and to explain Louis Riel's role and contribution in the Rebellion. His brief introductory chapter leaves him open to accusations that he has selected his issues to reflect . his revisionist views. Yet the chapter constitutes one of the most useful introductions to the subject. At times, however, the author's choice of descriptive terms and phrases suggests the instincts of a polemicist, as does his last chapter on the current issue of a posthumous pardon for Riel. Nevertheless his examination of Reil's motives, expressed in the chapters on the Metis leader's pursuit of a personal indemnity and on his trial, reflect a penetrating and objective, if unsympathetic, analysis. In his analysis of the issues that he has selected for discussion Flanagan successfully challenges the interpretive drift of the last half century, which has witnessed increasingly shrill though frequently uncritical condemnations of Canadian government culpability and equally uncritical identification with the "victimization" of the "innocent" Metis. Rather than concluding discussion, however, Flanagan's book should encourage further research and analysis. The absence of an understanding of the sociocultural ways of the Plains Metis remains a cardinal deficiency in the literature examining the factors responsible for the Rebellion. ...