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Hunger, Horses, and Government Men: Criminal Law on the Aboriginal Plains, 1870-1905 (Law and Society) - Softcover
Scholars often accept without question that Canada's"Indian Act" (1876) criminalized First Nations. In thisilluminating book, Shelley Gavigan argues that the notion ofcriminalization captures neither the complexities of Aboriginalparticipation in the courts nor the significance of the "IndianAct" as a form of law. Gavigan uses records of ordinary cases from the lower courts andinsights from critical criminology and traditional legal history tointerrogate state formation and criminal law in the Saskatchewan regionof the North-West Territories between 1870 and 1905. By focusing onAboriginal people's participation in the courts rather than onnarrow legal categories such as "the state" and "theaccused," Gavigan allows Aboriginal defendants, witnesses, andinformants to emerge in vivid detail and tell the story in their ownterms. Their experiences -- captured in court files, police andpenitentiary records, and newspaper accounts -- reveal that thecriminal law and the "Indian Act" operated in complex andcontradictory ways. By showing that the criminal courts were as likely to include actsof 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 relationsof power and discrimination in the courts.Shelley A.M. Gavigan is a professor of law at OsgoodeHall 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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Product Description:
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.
Review:
An enormously interesting and comprehensive read that does a great deal to provide the legal treatise with the respect that it should be afforded. It is an important book for anybody interested not only in legal history but also its “kissing cousins” such as social and political history. Legal history of this sort is something that has, unfortunately, received short shrift, so it is heartening to find such a well-written and well-edited riposte to those who might feel that the legal treatise is not worthy of the scrutiny of some of the best legal minds out there.
Author: Stephen Spong, Reference Librarian, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University Source: Canadian Law Library Review, Vol. 38, No. 2 2013"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherUBC Press
- Publication date2013
- ISBN 10 0774822538
- ISBN 13 9780774822534
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages608
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