Indian Reserves in the Atlantic Provinces of Canada

Noel Lyon was Professor of Law, Queen's University Law School, Kingston, Ontario.

This pamphlet, written by a legal scholar who specializes in Canadian native law, puts in place one more large piece of the puzzle of aboriginal rights. Until recently our knowledge of Indian reserves in Canada was fragmentary. Little had been done to organize it into useful forms.

Now that aboriginal rights have been recognized and affirmed in the Constitution and a significant body of modern judicial decisions has been achieved, it is important that the historical and legal facts be assembled. Without them, negotiations of land claims and lawsuits for various native rights cannot be undertaken.

This contribution to the task is concise but complete. It sets out the factual backgrounds and legal analysis in lean, readable prose. The result is an excellent reference source for any reader or researcher interested in the rights of aboriginal peoples in the Atlantic Provinces.

Not only is it a complete piece of research, but it is also up to date. Professor Bartlett relies heavily on recent decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada, which reflect judicial awareness of the legitimacy acquired by aboriginal peoples and their rights in 1982, when they were given constitutional status.

The resolution of native peoples’ claims to land and other rights has only begun in Atlantic Canada. As long as governments could ignore those claims with impunity there was little incentive to provide the factual and legal foundations for negotiation or adjudication. A handful of Supreme Court decisions, beginning with the Calder case in 1973, put an end to the possibility of forced assirnilation as an acceptable or viable policy for the Canadian Government.

Professor Bartlett’s excellent study, prepared for the Native Law Centre at the University of Saskatchewan, is a practical and valuable contribution to the cause of achieving just resolutions of the claims of the Indians of Eastern Canada.