In 1885, Louis Riel was charged with high treason, found guilty, and consequently executed for his role in Saskatchewan's North-West Rebellion. During his trial, the Métis leader gave two speeches, passionately defending the interests of the Métis in western Canada as well as his own life. Riel's Defence studies these speeches, demonstrating the range of Riel's political and personal concerns. The first and better known of the two speeches addresses the jury, while Riel's second speech - rarely reprinted - addresses the court following his guilty verdict. Both orations have been edited, annotated, and reprinted, and are followed by essays from diverse perspectives including philosophy, law, history, political science, religion, and communication studies. Through the course of their inquiry, contributors come to understand more about Riel's personal character and political thought, as well as his arguments supporting Métis land claims, grievances against the federal government, and his immigration plan for the North-West. Evaluating the rhetorical quality, legal merit, and cultural stakes of his speeches, Riel's Defence reveals the significance of the last public statements made by a man who indelibly shaped Canada’s history by combining his personal vision with a national vision.

This collection provides new insights into the ’Age of Revolutions’, focussing on state trials for treason and sedition, and expands the sophisticated discussion that has marked the historiography of that period by examining political trials in Britain and the north Atlantic world from the 1790s and into the nineteenth century. In the current turbulent period, when Western governments are once again grappling with how to balance security and civil liberty against the threat of inflammatory ideas and actions during a period of international political and religious tension, it is timely to re-examine the motives, dilemmas, thinking and actions of governments facing similar problems during the ‘Age of Revolutions’. The volume begins with a number of essays exploring the cases tried in England and Scotland in 1793-94 and examining those political trials from fresh angles (including their implications for legal developments, their representation in the press, and the emotion and the performances they generated in court). Subsequent sections widen the scope of the collection both chronologically (through the period up to the Reform Act of 1832 and extending as far as the end of the nineteenth century) and geographically (to Revolutionary France, republican Ireland, the United States and Canada). These comparative and longue durée approaches will stimulate new debate on the political trials of Georgian Britain and of the north Atlantic world more generally as well as a reassessment of their significance. This book deliberately incorporates essays by scholars working within and across a number of different disciplines including Law, Literary Studies and Political Science.

This book sparked national controversy when it was first published in 1983. Updated to include recent developments, such as native rights and land claims, the cultural mythology that surrounds Riel, and the recent campaign to have him pardoned.

In arresting, but harrowing, prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politics--the politics of ethnocide--played in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of aboriginal people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonald's "National Dream." It was a dream that came at great expense: the present disparity in health and economic well-being between First Nations and non-Native populations, and the lingering racism and misunderstanding that permeates the national consciousness to this day. " Clearing the Plains is a tour de force that dismantles and destroys the view that Canada has a special claim to humanity in its treatment of indigenous peoples. Daschuk shows how infectious disease and state-supported starvation combined to create a creeping, relentless catastrophe that persists to the present day. The prose is gripping, the analysis is incisive, and the narrative is so chilling that it leaves its reader stunned and disturbed. For days after reading it, I was unable to shake a profound sense of sorrow. This is fearless, evidence-driven history at its finest." -Elizabeth A. Fenn, author of Pox Americana "Required reading for all Canadians." -Candace Savage, author of A Geography of Blood "Clearly written, deeply researched, and properly contextualized history...Essential reading for everyone interested in the history of indigenous North America." -J.R. McNeill, author of Mosquito Empires

Roots of Entanglement offers an historical exploration of the relationships between Indigenous peoples and European newcomers in the territory that would become Canada. Various engagements between Indigenous peoples and the state are emphasized and questions are raised about the ways in which the past has been perceived and how those perceptions have shaped identity and, in turn, interaction both past and present. Specific topics such as land, resources, treaties, laws, policies, and cultural politics are explored through a range of perspectives that reflect state-of-the-art research in the field of Indigenous history. Editors Myra Rutherdale, Whitney Lackenbauer, and Kerry Abel have assembled an array of top scholars including luminaries such as Keith Carlson, Bill Waiser, Skip Ray, and Ken Coates. Roots of Entanglement is a direct response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call for a better appreciation of the complexities of history in the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada.