Hunger, Horses, and Government Men : Criminal Law on the Aboriginal Plains, 1870-1905

Scholars often accept without question that the Indian Act (1876) criminalized First Nations. Drawing on court files, police and penitentiary records, and newspaper accounts from the Saskatchewan region of the North-West Territories between 1870 and 1905, Shelley Gavigan argues that the notion of criminalization captures neither the complexities of Aboriginal participation in the criminal courts nor the significance of the Indian Act as a form of law. This illuminating book paints a vivid portrait of Aboriginal defendants, witnesses, and informants whose encounters with the criminal law and the Indian Act included both the mediation and the enforcement of relations of inequality. "Scholars often accept without question that Canada's Indian Act (1876) criminalized First Nations. In this illuminating book, Shelley Gavigan argues that the notion of criminalization captures neither the complexities of Aboriginal participation in the courts nor the significance of the Indian Act as a form of law. Gavigan uses records of ordinary cases from the lower courts and insights from critical criminology and traditional legal history to interrogate state formation and criminal law in the Saskatchewan region of the North-West Territories between 1870 and 1905. By focusing on Aboriginal people's participation in the courts rather than on narrow legal categories such as 'the state' and 'the accused, ' Gavigan allows Aboriginal defendants, witnesses, and informants to emerge in vivid detail and tell the story in their own terms. Their experiences -- captured in court files, police and penitentiary records, and newspaper accounts -- reveal that the criminal law and the Indian Act operated in complex and contradictory ways. By showing that the criminal courts were as likely to include acts of mediation as coercion, Hunger, Horses, and Government Men takes the study of criminal law and criminalization in a new direction, one that challenges conventional wisdom and popular images of relations of power and discrimination in the courts"--Provided by publisher. Contents Illustrations Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Legally Framing the Plains and the First Nations 2 “Of Course No One Saw Them” 3 “Prisoner Never Gave Me Anything for What He Done” 4 “Make a Better Indian of Him” 5 Six Women, Six Stories Conclusion Afterword Notes Bibliography Tells the complex story of the relationship between Plains Indians and Canadian criminal law as it took root in their land.