The Power of Promises: Rethinking Indian Treaties in the Pacific Northwest(Emil and Kathleen Sick Book Series in Western History and BiographyEmil and Kathleen Sick Book Series in Western History and BiographyEmil and Kathl)

Treaties with Native American groups in the Pacific Northwest have had profound and long-lasting implications for land ownership, resource access, and political rights in both the United States and Canada. In The Power of Promises, a distinguished group of scholars, representing many disciplines, discuss the treaties' legacies. In North America, where treaties have been employed hundreds of times to define relations between indigenous and colonial societies, many such pacts have continuing legal force, and many have been the focus of recent, high-stakes legal contests. The Power of Promises shows that Indian treaties have implications for important aspects of human history and contemporary existence, including struggles for political and cultural power, law's effect on people's self-conceptions, the functions of stories about the past, and the process of defining national and ethnic identities.

Table of Contents:
Foreword / John Borrows Introduction: Pacific Northwest Indian Treaties in National and International Historical Perspective / Alexandra Harmon I. Colonial Conceits Negotiated Sovereignty: Indian Treaties and the Acquisition of American and Canadian Territorial Rights in the Pacific Northwest / Kent McNeil Unmaking Native Space: A Genealogy of Indian Policy, Settler Practice, and the Microtechniques of Dispossession / Paige Raibmon II. Cross-Border Influences "Trespassers on the Soil": United States v. Tom and a New Perspective on the Short History of Treaty Making in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia / Hamar Foster and Alan Grove The Boldt Decision in Canada: Aboriginal Treaty Rights to Fish on the Pacific / Douglas C. Harris III. Indigenous Interpretations and Responses Performing Treaties: The Culture and Politics of Treaty Remembrance and Celebration / Chris Friday Reserved for Whom? Defending and Defining Treaty Rights on the Columbia River, 1880-1920 / Andrew H. Fisher Ethnogenesis and Ethnonationalism from Competing Treaty Claims / Russel Lawrence Barsh The Stevens Treaties, Indian Claims Commission Docket 264, and the Ancient One known as Kennewick Man / Bruce Rigsby IV. Power Relations in Contemporary Forums "History Wars" and Treaty Rights in Canada: A Canadian Case Study / Arthur J. Ray History, Democracy, and Treaty Negotiations in British Columbia / Ravi de Costa Treaty Substitutes in the Modern Era / Robert T. Anderson Contributors Index

About the Author :
Alexandra Harmon is associate professor of American Indian studies at the University of Washington and author of Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities around Puget Sound. Other contributors are Robert Anderson, Russel Lawrence Barsh, Ravi de Costa, Andrew H. Fisher, Hamar Foster, Chris Friday, Alan Grove, Douglas C. Harris, Kent McNeil, Paige Raigmon, Arthur Ray, and Bruce Rigsby.

Review :
"This is a timely and important volume of essays all linked to the idea of treaties. It takes the unusual step of including historians, legal historians, and anthropologists from both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, bringing new insights and approaches to scholars in both directions. Treaties, usually studied as texts in isolation, benefit from being gathered as a corpus and considered alongside the oral treaties that accompanied the written words." John Sutton Lutz, University of Victoria