There is some question about the initial Haldimand Proclamation in 1784. Brant understood it as giving Six Nations uninhibited access to the land, and the right to sell. This was not in keeping with British policy towards Aboriginal people after the 1763 Royal Proclamation. The Royal Proclamation made it clear that settlers were not to purchase land from Aboriginal people: “We do hereby strictly forbid, on Pain of Our Displeasure, all Our loving Subjects from making any Purchases or Settlements whatever, or taking Possession of any of the Lands above reserved, without Our especial Leave and Licence for that Purpose first Obtained.” John Graves Simcoe reinforced this interpretation in 1793, claiming that the land was held in trust by the British government, and could not be sold to settlers. Lord Dorchester, the governor-in-chief of British North America, overuled him and registered the sales but forbid new sales after the mid-1790s (although sales continued to be made until 1841). None of this negates Six Nations’s claims to independance and autonomy, but it does emphasize that British law was not clearly nor consistently applied to the settlers.

The British policy embodied in the 1763 Royal Proclamation developed out of experiences in other colonies when private land sales between Aboriginal people and English settlers sparked significant tensions (i.e. seventeenth-century history of New England). Sometimes land was sold by people without proper authority or the meaning of the sale misunderstood by one (and often both parties).

The challenge this posed was made explicit in the 1763 Proclamation: “great Frauds and Abuses have been committed in the purchasing Lands of the Indians, to the great Prejudice of Our Interests, and to the great Dissatisfaction of the said Indians; in order therefore to prevent such Irregularities for the future, and to the End that the Indians may be convinced of Our Justice, and determined Resolution to remove all reasonable Cause of Discontent, We do, with the Advice of Our Privy Council, strictly enjoin and require, that no private Person do presume to make any Purchase from the said Indians of any Lands reserved to the said Indians, within those Parts of Our Colonies where We have thought proper to allow Settlement.” Private land sales had been flagged as highly problematic early on in Britain’s settlement of North America.

It seems to me that it is the failure of British officials in applying the Royal Proclamation, Brant’s well-founded belief in Six Nations’s independance and autonomy from the British (i.e. the Royal Proclamation), and the issue of whether Brant had the support of his community to alienate these lands in the first place, that are the principal challenges in understanding this issue.

Getting to the heart of this issue was made even more difficult by the Canadian government’s restictions on Aborignal people through the 1876 Indian Act (particularly in the 1920s when amendments to the act restricted Aboriginal people from raising funds to mount legal challenges and hereditary councils were banned). This led to a period across Canada where it was difficult for Aboriginal people to speak publically about these issues. The re-emergence of these issues in the 1970s, and particularly after 1982, has led many to see these claims as new. Taking a historical perspective demonstrates that most are not. The arguments being made today share many similarities with those made during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Getting to the bottom of these issues is difficult business and one of the reasons, alongside government footdragging, that land claims take so long to resolve.

The history of Native-Newcomer relations in Ontario is not my principal area of research. I would be interested to know what historians you are reading, and what books other people would suggest to read on this subject. I have found these two works helpful in thinking about this subject:

For a quick study: The Handbook of North American Indians, “Six Nations of the Grand River, Ontario,” pp. 525-536.

Something a little longer: Alan Taylor’s “The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution” (Toronto: Random House, 2006).

Perhaps if other people have resources they would like to share they can include them here in the comments section too.

Daniel L.

To top it all off, back when Six Nations agreed to a reserve that is close to the size it now occupies (mid-1840′s), Six Nations members moved willingly. There is no record of violence or coercion to get Six Nations Indians to move, they simply picked up and moved to within the reserve’s new boundaries. Almost as though they had agreed to it……..