HST 680 Indigenous North America after 1763

This course focuses on the history of treaty making between Indigenous peoples and European settler colonial governments from the Royal Proclamation of 1763 to the present.

Land acknowledgements have become increasingly common in Canada in recent years. Most of these—including Ryerson’s own official land acknowledgement—refer back to historical treaties between Indigenous nations as well as between settler colonial governments and their First Nations, Métis and Inuit counterparts, both past and present.

Building upon recent historical, socio-legal and Indigenous studies scholarship, this course explores a number of key questions about treaty making. How, for instance, were these treaties negotiated and what do they actually mean? Just as importantly, what responsibilities do we each have towards upholding these agreements and how do these nation-to-nation agreements fit within a much longer history of Indigenous treaty making and diplomacy? In what ways did settler governments and Indigenous peoples interpret these treaties differently? How did treaty-making and the interpretation of treaties change over time? And what role can historians play in the modern interpretation of historical treaties?