This book reconstructs the legal quest for defining the just order between the Aboriginal peoples of the Americas and the Holy See of the Catholic Church and the Castillian and French kings during the Holy Roman Empire. It is a fascinating multidisciplinary analysis covering intellectual history, legal history and theory, political science, religious studies, and the oral history and Putus teaching of the Mikmaq. It cover the era from the arrival of Columbus to the formation of the Mikmaq Concordat in the early seventeenth century. The book unites Mikmaw knowledge with European knowledge to unravel the innovative solution of the Grand Council of the Mikmaw Nation on the North Atlantic Coast to resolve a just order with the Holy See and the French colonialists. Virtually nothing else in print exists concerning the meaning and significance of the Concordat that established the legal unity of Aboriginal imperium, dominium, and rights in Canada.

"Compact, Contract, Covenant" is renowned historian of Native-newcomer relations J.R. Miller's exploration and explanation of more than four centuries of treating-making.

Intersperses close analysis of the 1726 treaty with discussions of the Marshall case, and shows how the inter-cultural relationships and power dynamics of the past, have shaped both the law and the social climate of the present.

Race, Space, and the Law belongs to a growing field of exploration that spans critical geography, sociology, law, education, and critical race and feminist studies. Writers who share this terrain reject the idea that spaces, and the arrangement of bodies in them, emerge naturally over time. Instead, they look at how spaces are created and the role of law in shaping and supporting them. They expose hierarchies that emerge from, and in turn produce, oppressive spatial categories. The authors' unmapping takes us through drinking establishments, parks, slums, classrooms, urban spaces of prostitution, parliaments, the main streets of cities, mosques, and the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders. Each example demonstrates that "place," as a Manitoba Court of Appeal judge concluded after analyzing a section of the Indian Act, "becomes race."

Scholarly depictions of the history of Aboriginal people in Canada have changed dramatically since the 1970s when Arthur J. ("Skip") Ray entered the field. New Histories for Old examines this transformation while extending the scholarship on Canada's Aboriginal history in new directions. This collection combines essays by prominent senior historians, geographers, and anthropologists with contributions by new voices in these fields. The chapters reflect themes including Native struggles for land and resources under colonialism, the fur trade, "Indian" policy and treaties, mobility and migration, disease and well-being, and Native-newcomer relations.

"Regardless of Canada's governmental attitude of entitlement, First Nations, Métis and Inuit lands and resources are still tied to treaties and other documents. Their relevance seems forever in dispute, so it is important to know about them, to read them, to hear them and to comprehend their constitutional significance in contemporary life. Living Treaties aims to reveal another side of the treaties and their histories, focusing on stories from contemporary perspectives, both Mi'kmaw and their non-Mi'kmaw allies, who have worked with, experienced and indeed lived with the treaties at various times over the last fifty years. These authors have had experiences contesting the Crown's version of the treaty story, or have been rebuilding the Mi'kmaq and their nation with the strength of their work from their understandings of Mi'kmaw history. They share how they came to know about treaties, about the key family members and events that shaped their thinking and their activism and life's work. Treaties were negotiated in good faith with the King or Queen with an objective of shared benefits to both parties and members. In Living Treaties, the authors offer the stories of those who have lived under the colonial regime of a not-so-ancient time. Herein are passionate activists and allies who uncover the treaties, and their contemporary meanings, to both Mi'kmaq and settler societies and who speak to their future with them. Here also are the voices of a new generation of indigenous lawyers and academics who have made their life choices with credentials solidly in hand in order to pursue social and cognitive justice for their families and their people. Their mission: to enliven the treaties out of the caverns of the public archives, to bring them back to life and to justice as part of the supreme law of Canada; and to use them to mobilize the Mi'kmaw restoration and renaissance that seeks to reaffirm, restore and rebuild Mi'kmaw identity, consciousness, knowledges and heritages, as well as our connections and rightful resources to our land and ecologies."--