Stealing fire, scattering ashes: Anishinaabe expressions of sovereignty, nationhood, and land tenure in treaty making with the United States and Canada, 1785--1923

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to better understand and explain how the Anishinaabe constructed and expressed their sovereignty, nationhood, and land tenure when they negotiated treaties with the United States and Canada from 1785 to 1923. This trilogy of terms often became convoluted in treaty negotiations during which both native Nations and the two states involved brought their own understandings for these terms into the negotiation processes. I analyze approximately fifty-four ratified treaties negotiated between the Anishinaabe and the United States and Canada. Placing Anishinaabe bands at the center, this study examines how and why treaty provisions dealing with land have affected the political and legal status of aboriginal in treaty rights in both states.

Anishinaabe sovereignty was deeply intertwined with conceptions of nationhood and land tenure. A focus on treaty making provides a site where the competing conceptions of these terms held by participating nations must be negotiated. In order to obtain mutual agreements with each other. This dissertation operates from the premise that a re-examination of treaty discourse, when interpreted according to Anishinaabe cultural conceptions and knowledge systems, may help reveal what these peoples ceded or surrendered and what they reserved in these agreements. These findings provide a fresh understanding of bilateral treaty making, which forms the foundation of Anishinaabe-state relations. Furthermore, the insights gleaned from this study may reshape our understandings of Anishinaabe reserved aboriginal and treaty rights and help improve intergovernmental relations.