Maintenant nous te parlons, ne dedaigne pas nous ecouter Petitions et Relation Speciale entre les Premieres Nations et la Couronne au Canada, 1840-1860

• Main Author: Arsenault, Mathieu
• Other Authors: Martel, Marcel
• Format: Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Canadian history; Indigenous history; 19th century; Special relationship; Crown; Petitions; Governors; Colonial state; Technologies of government; Province of Canada; King’s Posts; Robinson-Huron Treaty; Canada; Indian; anishina*; First Nations
• Online Access: https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/37407

This thesis analyzes the concept of the special relationship between First Nations and the Crown through the evolution of political relations between the colonial state and Indigenous communities in the Province of Canada from the 1840s to 1860s. It explores how this special relationship is linked with the evolution of the Department of Indian Affairs, and the way it was transposed into a new policy based on the protection and civilization of Indigenous people. A comparative study of petitions addressed to the Crown by Innus of the Kings Posts and Anishinaabe on the north shore of Lakes Huron and Superior, this dissertation examines the political discourse and the power dynamic that emerged between the centre of the state administration and Indigenous communities on the margins of colonial space. Faced with increasing pressures of colonial expansion, these communities mobilized a political discourse based on the special relationship with the Crown in order to spur state action and negotiate their integration within the colonial space to preserves a nation-to-nation relation. Revisiting the evolution of Indian policy and the role of the governor after the adoption of responsible government, this thesis sheds light on the reasons why two different approaches regarding 19th century land claims were adopted in each section of the Province of Canada. Finally, it deals with political action and Indigenous resistance to the policies and laws put in place by the colonial state at the turn of the 1850s-1860s, as well as their opposition to the transfer of the Department of Indian Affairs from London to the colony. In doing so, it demonstrates that the communication channels maintained by the First Nations through petitioning opened a space to put forward discursive forms of resistance to colonial policies, but also to participatewithin the limits of their exclusion from the political sphere, to the redefinition of Indian politics in the middle of the 19thcentury.