Book Review

Sidney L. Harring, professor of law at Queen's College, City University of New York, who in 1994 wrote Crow Dog's Case: American Indian Sovereignty, Tribal Law, and United States Law in the Nineteenth Century, a solid treatment of how U.S. law both established and abused the legal rights of American Indians, has now turned his focused attention in an even more detailed way to the relationship between the legal histories and traditions of Native peoples and Euro-Canadians and the impact of Canadian law on Indian Nations. His original goal had been to do a comparative analysis of these two nation-states and aboriginal populations, but he learned that the idea, an excellent one, "could not survive the complexity of the project" (xii). Complex indeed.	1
There are clearly important parallels in the way the Canadian and American governments have implemented their laws and policies toward the hundreds of tribal nations their borders now embrace; and there are equally interesting parallels in the manner in which indigenous nations have attempted to retain their own cultural and legal traditions and sought to protect themselves from, while at the same time seeking to influence and at times use, the western legal system to their advantage. But any attempt to synthesize the legal histories of Canada and the U.S. into a single text would come at the expense of the kind of nuanced and thick historical and legal description and analysis Harring is able to provide by having examined the two separately.	2
White Man's Law is a rich and textured legal/historical/geographical and social account drawing from British and French colonial law, provincial law, Canadian law, and indigenous law, in addition to a wealth of archival and government materials from across Canada, to craft descriptions and explanations for several important questions: how was Euro-Canadian law applied to indigenous nations and their distinctive property's and rights in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; how did the development of Euro-Canadian law differ in various geographical contexts across Canada and the various aboriginal peoples found in those regions; and what impact did the various Native peoples have on the legal systems in these regions?	3
Above all, Harring is intent on uncovering the internal contradictions in Canadian politics and legal jurisprudence--for example, Indians are treated as "wards" but also are dealt with as nations capable of negotiating treaties; and Canada employed a "liberal" framework allegedly based on humanity and equality in dealing with tribes, but simultaneously and with a stunning level of regularity acted to defraud and mistreat Indian nations and to impose forced assimilation measures on Indians--and how Native peoples, as human communities, received and reacted to the legal, social, physical, economic, and political changes that colonialism wrought in their lands and among their societies. Finally, he asserts in his conclusion that a way to rectify many of the legal problems would be for a "new common law" to be developed "that recognizes indigenous law and legal tradition as well as Anglo and Franco-Canadian law and legal tradition" (279).	4
Harring addresses these powerful and timely questions by adopting a regional (geographic) organizational style rather than the typical chronological approach that most chroniclers of Indian/non-Indian affairs use. He has chapters, for instance, on the Six Nations, Ontario, Upper Canada, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, British Columbia, and the Prairie Indians. He acknowledged explicitly that he was not going to look at the twentieth century, the legal history of the North, the Métis (a possible third book?), or make the study comparative with the U.S.	5
Unlike other areas of law, Harring knows as well as anyone writing in the field that Indian law is a "uniquely historical notion" that requires, although it rarely receives, intense historical analysis and argument (7). Harring then moves the reader through detailed, sometimes oppressive historical attention, in chapters on colonialism's impact on aboriginal rights, the land problems of the Iroquois, Chief Justice J. Beverly Robinson, the struggles of Indians in Ontario's courts, and Indian land title cases, among others. The chapters have a stand alone quality because of their geographic specificity, yet they are interwoven well with the other data to form a haunting picture of aboriginal peoples, no matter where they reside in Canada, lacking any secured political, cultural, or legal rights under Canadian law.	6
This is exemplified in a statement from Frances Abraham, a seventy-year-old Ojibwa mother, who in 1990 was part of a large group of Indians that literally blocked the tracks of the Canadian National Railway. Abraham said: "Where did the MAR. [Ministry of Natural Resources] get the right to tell us what we can do and what we can't do on our own land? How come we have to do a land claim while the others who came and took our land never had to prove anything" (273–74).	7
Harring has written a powerful and thickly described legal history that gives due attention not only to the intent and actual impact of western law on aboriginal lives and resources and rights but also pays attention to aboriginal law itself. His thesis is well articulated and his data is overwhelmingly convincing. Importantly, while the bulk of the book focuses on the nineteenth century, the Introduction and Conclusion bring the reader current on the critical issues of aboriginal sovereignty, Indian land claims, and treaty rights.	8
The book, however, would have been strengthened by several additional maps and some appropriate tables. While a few regionally specific maps are included--along with some excellent photographs--we lack the benefit of a general map(s) that identifies the specific regions, issues, and tribes in those areas. This would have helped orient a reader unfamiliar with Canada/First Nation territory. And while the author understandably eschewed a detailed comparison of Canada and the U.S. Indian policy and jurisprudence, a table or chart of specific doctrines of law common, although not identically defined or implemented, in both states, and how they parallel or diverge from the other would have proven most beneficial (that is, the trust doctrine, plenary power, aboriginal Indian title, guardian-ward, trusteeship, and so forth).	9
These minor quibbles aside, this is an outstanding legal history of a complex and nuanced subject matter. Anyone interested in the historical and legal rights of Canada's aboriginal people or that state's avowed and actual Indian policy and jurisprudence should study it carefully.	10
David E. Wilkins University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

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