TORONTO, May 23, 2002 -- Recent court victories on treaty rights for Canadian aboriginals owe a debt to historians who have shown how native oral traditions helped define and interpret those rights. Governments are now scrambling to respond to a slew of legal challenges, on issues ranging from logging rights to tax exempt status, that appear to have history on their side.
A new book on the subject by York University Professor William Wicken shows the significance of oral history in aboriginal treaties. Wicken is one of the historians whose expert testimony led to the Supreme Court of Canada’s pivotal move in the 1999 Marshall decision to recognize aboriginal perspectives on treaty-making and affirm the right of the Mi’kmaq to the commercial fishery in Nova Scotia. His book, Mi’kmaq Treaties on Trial (U of T Press, April 2002), documents that case and shows how past cultural and power relationships have shaped the current law and social climate. He says the continuing battle over native fishing rights at Burnt Church, N.S. following the Marshall decision must be viewed in this light.
"There is a growing recognition that native people cannot become functioning members of the Canadian federation until they have the economic means to make a living," says Wicken. "The affirmation of aboriginal treaty rights based on the historical reality of how they were accorded is crucial."
Wicken has shown how the treaty signed with the Mi’kmaq by the British colonial government of Nova Scotia in 1725-26 bears on the Marshall case. He has successfully argued that the treaty was re-interpreted by colonial officials in their own interests as a result of a more forceful British military presence in the colony after 1749.
The Marshall decision said that the federal government’s infringement on the Mi’kmaq commercial fishery would have to be justified on grounds of conservation, or historic use by non-aboriginal peoples. The Mi’kmaq are now fighting for the right to regulate their own fishery in Shubenacadie vs. the Attorney-General of Canada. And federal and provincial governments are facing aboriginal title issues across the country as the revelations of historians land them in court.
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For further information, please contact:
| Prof. William Wicken | Susan Bigelow |
| History department | Media Relations |
| York University | York University |
| 902-454-8691 (h) | 416-736-2100, ext. 22091 |
| wwicken@yorku.ca | sbigelow@yorku.ca |
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