Who Controls the Hunt? First Nations, Treaty Rights, and Conservation in Ontario, 1783–1939

In Who Controls the Hunt? First Nations, Treaty Rights, and Conservation in Ontario, 1783–1939, David Calverley examines Anishinaabe hunting rights and the impact of Ontario’s wildlife conservation laws on these rights in northern Ontario. The Anishinaabeg of northern Ontario negotiated their hunting rights through treaties, such as the Robinson treaties (1850–54) and Treaty 3 (1873), which explicitly stated that the Anishinaabeg were free to hunt, trap, and fish as they had always done and that they could engage commercially in these practices. These rights were affirmed during Indigenous-Crown negotiations from at least 1783 to 1939, which is the period covered by Calverley. Despite these enshrined hunting rights, Ontario’s provincial government has implemented conservation laws and policies to undermine treaty agreements and to promote the acculturation of Indigenous people into the Canadian body politic. Reflected in his title Who Controls the Hunt?, Calverley’s legal and historical analysis is positioned...