The Laws and the Land

As the settler state of Canada expanded into Indigenous lands, settlers dispossessed Indigenous people and undermined their sovereignty as nations. One site of invasion was Kahnawa:ke, a Kanien’keha:ka community and part of the Rotinonhsionni confederacy. The Laws and the Land delineates the establishment of a settler colonial relationship from early contact ways of sharing land; land practices under Kahnawa:ke law; the establishment of modern Kahnawa:ke in the context of French imperial claims; intensifying colonial invasions under British rule; and ultimately the Canadian invasion in the guise of the Indian Act, private property, and coercive pressure to assimilate. What Daniel Ruck describes is an invasion spearheaded by bureaucrats, Indian agents, politicians, surveyors, and entrepreneurs.This original, meticulously researched book is deeply connected to larger issues of human relations with environments, communal and individual ways of relating to land, legal pluralism, historical racism and inequality, and Indigenous resurgence.