The Laws and the Land: The Settler Colonial Invasion of Kahnawà:ke in Nineteenth-Century Canada

With its solid research and clear prose, Daniel Rück’s The Laws and the Land makes a valuable contribution to the interconnected histories of Canadian law, Indigenous-newcomer relations, and settler colonialism. The defining feature of this book is its unwavering focus on a single community. Explicitly following in the footsteps of Susan M. Hill’s research on the Haudenosaunee of the Grand River in her book The Clay We Are Made Of, Rück centers his scholarship on the Kanien’kehá:ka community of Kahnawà:ke, located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River only a few kilometers from Montreal. This singular focus allows Rück to seriously engage with the legal, economic, and political traditions of Kahnawa’kehró:non. Some of the book’s most interesting sections emerge from Rück’s careful attention to Kahnawà:ke law as it appears in the archive of the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs, including his insightful discussion of the community’s legal...