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Book Cover
E-book
Author Gavigan, Shelley A. M

Title Hunger, horses, and government men : criminal law on the aboriginal plains, 1870-1905 / Shelley A.M. Gavigan
Published Vancouver : Published by UBC Press : for the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2012

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 274 pages) : illustrations, maps
Series Law & society, 1496-4953
Law and society series (Vancouver, B.C. : Online)
Contents Introduction: One Warrior's Legal History -- Legally Framing the Plains and the First Nations -- "Of Course No One Saw Them": Aboriginal Accused in the Criminal Court -- "Prisoner Never Gave Me Anything for What He Done": Aboriginal Voices in the Criminal Court -- "Make a Better Indian of Him": Indian Policy and the Criminal Court -- Six Women, Six Stories -- Conclusion -- Afterword: A Methodological Note on Sources and Data
Summary "Scholars often accept without question that Canada's Indian Act (1876) criminalized First Nations. In this illuminating book, Shelley Gavigan argues that the notion of criminalization captures neither the complexities of Aboriginal participation in the courts nor the significance of the Indian Act as a form of law. Gavigan uses records of ordinary cases from the lower courts and insights from critical criminology and traditional legal history to interrogate state formation and criminal law in the Saskatchewan region of the North-West Territories between 1870 and 1905. By focusing on Aboriginal people's participation in the courts rather than on narrow legal categories such as 'the state' and 'the accused, ' Gavigan allows Aboriginal defendants, witnesses, and informants to emerge in vivid detail and tell the story in their own terms. Their experiences -- captured in court files, police and penitentiary records, and newspaper accounts -- reveal that the criminal law and the Indian Act operated in complex and contradictory ways. By showing that the criminal courts were as likely to include acts of 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 relations of power and discrimination in the courts"--Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Text in Englsih
Subject Indians of North America -- Criminal justice system -- Saskatchewan -- History
Criminal law -- Saskatchewan -- History
Criminal courts -- Saskatchewan -- History
Criminal justice, Administration of -- Saskatchewan -- History
Indigenous peoples -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Saskatchewan
Indigenous peoples -- Saskatchewan -- Government relations
LAW -- Criminal Law -- General.
Indigenous peoples in Canada.
Indigenous peoples -- Legal status, laws, etc.
Indigenous peoples -- Government relations
Criminal courts
Criminal justice, Administration of
Criminal law
Indians of North America -- Criminal justice system
Indigenes Volk.
Strafrecht.
Minderheitenrecht.
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan.
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
Author Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.
LC no. cn2012903971
ISBN 0774822546
9780774822541