Report of an Inquiry into an Injustice: Begade Shutagot'ine and the Sahtu Treaty: 5 (Contemporary Studies on the North) - Softcover

Peter Kulchyski (author)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887558135 ISBN 13: 9780887558139

Publisher: University of Manitoba Press, 2018

Synopsis

A Report of an Inquiry into an Injustice chronicles Peter Kulchyski’s experiences with the Begade Shuhtagot’ine, a small community of a few hundred people living in and around Tulita (formerly Fort Norman), on the Mackenzie River in the heart of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Despite their formal objections and boycott of the agreement, the band and their lands were included in the Sahtu treaty, a modern comprehensive land claims agreement negotiated between the Government of Canada and the Sahtu Tribal Council, representing Dene and Metis peoples of the region. While both Treaty Eleven (1921) and the Sahtu Treaty (1994) purport to extinguish Begade Shuhtagot'ine Aboriginal title, oral history and documented attempts to exclude themselves from treaty strongly challenge the validity of that extinguishment.

Structured as a series of briefs to an inquiry into the Begade Shutagot’ine’s claim, this manuscript documents the negotiation and implementation of the Sahtu treaty and amasses evidence of historical and continued presence and land use to make eminently clear that the Begade Shuhtagot'ine are the continued owners of the land by law: they have not extinguished title to their traditional territories; they continue to exercise their customs, practices, and traditions on those territories; and they have a fundamental right to be consulted on, and refuse or be compensated for, development projects on those territories. Kulchyski bears eloquent witness to the Begade Shuhtagot'ine people's two-decade struggle for land rights, which have been blatantly ignored by federal and territorial authorities for too long.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Kulchyski grew up in northern Manitoba and was one of the few non-Aboriginal students to attend a government-run residential high school. He has a PhD from York University and is a senior Canadian scholars in Native Studies. He is the co-editor of In the Words of the Elders: Aboriginal Cultures in Transition and co-author of Tammarniitt [Mistakes]: Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic, which won the Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize of the American Society for Ethnohistory.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0887558135
• ISBN 13: 9780887558139
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216