Book Description

Arthur Ray, Jim Miller, and Frank Tough draw on a wide range of documentary sources to provide a rich and complex interpretation of the process that led to these historic agreements. The authors explain how Saskatchewan treaties were shaped by long-standing First Nations' Hudson's Bay Company diplomatic and economic understandings, treaty practices developed in eastern Canada before the 1870s, and the changing economic and political realities of western Canada during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ray, Miller, and Tough also show why these same forces were responsible for creating some of the misunderstandings and disputes that subsequently arose between the First Nations and government officials regarding the interpretation and implementation of the accords. Bounty and Benevolence offers new insights into this crucial dimension of Canadian history, making it of interest to the general reader as well as specialists in the field of First Nations history.