Much ado about nothing: The Royal Proclamation on the edge of empire

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By Robert Englebert

On October 7, 1763, only months after signing the Treaty of Paris and ending the Seven Years’ War, Britain sought to confirm sovereignty over its newly acquired territories in North America through a Royal Proclamation.  ‘The Royal Proclamation’ – as it is now known – was a document designed to address the challenges born of conquest.  The exigencies of an expanded empire necessitated imperial directives to bring new peoples and lands into the British imperial fold.  In short, the Royal Proclamation prescribed a series of changes that attempted to redefine North America. Continue reading →

“the said Lands…shall be purchased only for Us”: The Effect of the Royal Proclamation on Government

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By Brandon Morris and Jay Cassel

The Royal Proclamation is not an ancient document but it has remained in effect for 250 years, even if it is not well known by Canadians. It became the framework for treaty-making in relation to land rights in the decades after 1763 and as such it is a core document in Crown-First Nations relations. The principles that it established underlie a large part of the work of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs (MAA).  Simply put, there would not be any territorial treaties, land claims, or Ministries of Aboriginal Affairs without the Royal Proclamation. Continue reading →

Reflections on 1763 in Far Northern Ontario

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By John S. Long

The tensions in the Royal Proclamation have ebbed and flowed over the past 250 years and, of course, are still with us today. The treaty relationships that unite First Peoples with other Canadians are inherently problematic, due to our differing understandings (or perhaps outright ignorance) of history. Notwithstanding the Proclamation, and the gubernatorial proclamations that reinforced it, many of the early treaties in what is now Ontario were fraught with dissatisfaction on the part of First Peoples, even before 1812. After Confederation, treaty-makers sometimes resorted to almost take-it-or-leave-it bargaining. Following the 1888 St. Catherines Milling decision, outright deception sometimes led to diametrically opposed written and oral versions of the treaty relationship. The respectful principles embodied in the Proclamation languished for decades. Continue reading →

Parchment, Wampum, Letters and Symbols: Expanding the parameters of the Royal Proclamation commemoration

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By Alan Ojiig Corbiere, Bne Doodeman, Mchigiing Njibaa

This year marks the 250th Anniversary of the Royal Proclamation, but for some reason it does not mark the 250th Anniversary of the action taken by Odaawaa Chief Pontiac and others.  A piece of paper signed by King George III receives more attention than the actions of this chief and his colleagues.  Pontiac loses out in public consciousness and exposure to a piece of parchment that does not have any Anishinaabe signatories.

The Royal Proclamation has been called the magna carta of Indian rights and Aboriginal title.  However, it was not made for the Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe, Odaawaa, Potowatomi, Nipissing, Mississauga, Algonquin, Saulteux and Toughkawmiwans) nor the Haudenosaunee, nor any other nations (Menominee, Sauk, Fox, Cree, Sioux, Ho-Chunk), it was made for the settlers and colonial officials.  It is a legal document designed as a foundation on which the British could commence dispossessing Native American nations of their land, to affect their Manifest Destiny. Continue reading →

The Haundenosaunee/Six Nations and the Royal Proclamation of 1763

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By Keith Jamieson

THE COVENANT CHAIN RELATIONSHIP

The Haudenosaunee/Six Nations have a very different understanding of the Royal Proclamation of 1763.  While the document stated the process by which the Crown would engage native people in acquiring lands for settlement, it also asserted the sovereignty of the Crown over all people in North America.  To the Haudenosaunee, this unilateral proclamation would have been considered as not applicable to them.  It was contrary to the long-standing Covenant Chain relationship they had already agreed to with the Crown.

In order to grasp this understanding more fully, one needs to understand the progression of wampum belt agreements over time  – those agreements that preceded the Proclamation and those that followed. Continue reading →

The Royal Proclamation and the Canadiens

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By Donald Fyson

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 holds an ambiguous place in debates over Quebec’s relationship with Canada. In sovereignist discourse, it is regularly evoked as a baleful reminder of British perfidy towards francophone Quebecers. The relatively benign military occupation between 1759/1760 and 1764 raised false hopes in the minds of the Canadiens (the French-descended colonists). The Royal Proclamation dashed these hopes and stamped on Canadien rights. It took away their laws and it imposed the harsh anti-Catholic measures in force in England and its colonies. It was a “chape de plomb” (a leaden weight), as an editorialist for Le Devoir put it earlier this year, or more dramatically, according to another commentator, an “arrêt de mort” (a death sentence). In contrast, in what I call the “jovialist” discourse of those who see the British Conquest of Quebec as unreservedly beneficial, the Proclamation is often barely mentioned at all. The emphasis is put on the Quebec Act, which restored Canadien law and Canadien civil rights. At best, it is suggested that by introducing English public law, the Proclamation also introduced English liberties such as habeas corpus (the right to contest unlawful imprisonment) and trial by jury.

The reality was, of course, more complex. Continue reading →

Does the Royal Proclamation apply to all Indigenous People in the Province of Quebec?

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By Denys Delâge and Jean-Pierre Sawaya

Translated by Thomas Peace

On 24 December 1763 the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Sir William Johnson, in the name of the British King George III, publicized the Royal Proclamation of 7 October 1763. In the weeks following Johnson’s announcement a paper copy was posted in the Catholic missions along the St. Lawrence Valley. In this way, Haudenosaunee, Algonquin, Nipissing, Wendat and Mi’kmaq peoples were informed of this edict. [1] Upon receiving notice of the Proclamation, the Algonquins and Nipissings demanded and received a signed copy of the Proclamation from John Johnson, the King’s representative in Montreal (and William Johnson’s son).[2] In taking this action, these communities demonstrated their understanding of the Proclamation as a formal promise that committed the Crown and its representatives to upholding its provisions.

Even after the Proclamation was posted in their villages, doubt remained about its universal application for Indigenous people living in Quebec. Did it apply to those people who, like the Haudenosaunee around Montreal, the Abenaki near Trois Rivières, and the Wendat at Lorette, had migrated into the St. Lawrence Valley during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries? Continue reading →

The Significance of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in Atlantic Canada

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By John Reid

The implications of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 for the territories and adjoining waters of what was later to be known as Atlantic Canada were profound.  They were also diffuse and varied widely according to the political and physical geography of that vast area.  The Proclamation redrew the imperial political geography.  To the existing colony of Nova Scotia, it added the two large islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that had been surrendered by France in the Treaty of Paris:  the Island of St. John (later Prince Edward Island), and Cape Breton Island.  This was a brief transition. In addition to the continuing uncertainty over the western boundary of Nova Scotia with New England, the enlarged ‘Old’ Nova Scotia of the Proclamation lasted only some six years and underwent repeated revision thereafter.  The Island of St. John became an autonomous colony in 1769, as did New Brunswick and Cape Breton Island in 1784, though Cape Breton reintegrated with Nova Scotia in 1820.  Whatever the complications, the Proclamation was a key stage in this colonial evolution. Continue reading →

Is the Royal Proclamation of 1763 a Dead Letter?

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By Brian Slattery

The Royal Proclamation is now 250 years old.  Is it still relevant today?  Arguably not.  The document was drafted in London in the spring and summer of 1763 by a handful of bureaucrats and politicians.  It was part of a project to enforce British imperial claims to a vast American territory from which France had recently withdrawn.  Most of the territory was actually controlled by independent Indigenous nations – some of them former allies and trading partners of the French, many of them hostile to the incoming English or at best suspicious.  The Proclamation was designed to allay those fears while at the same time further imperial ambitions.  In effect it was crafted to deal with a very specific situation – one that has long since passed into history. Continue reading →

The Royal Proclamation – “the Indians’ Magna Carta”?

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By J.R. Miller

Because its concluding paragraphs deal with First Nations and their lands, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 is sometimes referred to as “the Indians’ Magna Carta.” Many people regard George III’s policy for the new territories the United Kingdom had acquired following the Seven Years’ War as the guarantor of Aboriginal title law in Canada today. Its greatest champions argue that it is like the foundation of constitutional government and law in Britain, the document that the barons made King John sign in 1215.

Is the Royal Proclamation as central to Aboriginal rights in Canada as the Magna Carta is in the UK? Or have the so-called ‘Indian clauses’ of the Royal Proclamation been a dud so far as First Nations’ rights are concerned?  Have Indigenous peoples not been systematically stripped of their traditional territories by rapacious settler societies that emerged in Canada as they did in other former British colonies of settlement? Continue reading →