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

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UBC Press, Oct 24, 2012 - Law - 304 pages

Scholars often accept without question that the 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 criminal courts nor the significance of the Indian Act as a form of law.

Gavigan draws on court files, police and penitentiary records, and newspaper accounts and insights from critical criminology 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 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 stand as evidence that the criminal law and the Indian Act operated in complex and contradictory ways that included both the mediation and the enforcement of relations of inequality.
 

Contents

Introduction
3
1 Legally Framing the Plains and the First Nations
24
2 Of Course No One Saw Them
50
3 Prisoner Never Gave Me Anything for What He Done
88
4 Make a Better Indian of Him
121
5 Six Women Six Stories
156
Conclusion
183
Afterword
189
Notes
195
Bibliography
253
Copyright

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About the author (2012)

Shelley A.M. Gavigan is a professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School and a member of the graduate faculties in Law, Socio-Legal Studies, and Women's Studies at York University.

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