Review of Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal Treaty Making in Canada . By J.R. Miller.

• Main Author: Harring, Sidney L.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 2011
• Subjects: American Studies; Contracts; Dispute Resolution and Arbitration; Indigenous; Indian; and Aboriginal Law; Indigenous Studies; Law; Legal History; Other Law; Race; Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies; Canada; First Nations
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsresearch/1167; https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/context/greatplainsresearch/article/2166/viewcontent/Miller.pdf

In Canada, the term First Nations explicitly recognizes a nation-to-nation relationship between the Crown and the original inhabitants of North America that requires treaty making as the primary political and legal process for the taking of Indian lands and the incorporation of Indian nations into the multinational Canadian state. There are great political difficulties embodied in this process, including the continued impoverishment and marginalization of the First Nations, and the repeated failure of successive Canadian governments to carry out their responsibilities under these treaties, but the treaty process remains the required process. J.R. Miller, perhaps Canada's leading scholar of Aboriginal history, takes on an ambitious project, a sweeping history of treaty making in Canada with the express goal of making this process understandable to all Canadians in order to promote interracial reconciliation. This is an ambitious book, the first history of treaty making in Canada intended for the general reader as well as for academic historians.