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Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Fragile Settlements

Aboriginal Peoples, Law, and Resistance in South-West Australia and Prairie Canada

Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Fragile Settlements

Aboriginal Peoples, Law, and Resistance in South-West Australia and Prairie Canada

Fragile Settlements compares the processes by which British colonial authority was asserted over Indigenous peoples in south-west Australia and Prairie Canada from the 1830s to the early twentieth century. At the start of this period, in a humanitarian response to settlers’ increased demand for land, Britain’s Colonial Office moved to protect Indigenous peoples by making them subjects under British law. This book highlights the parallels and divergences between these connected British frontiers by examining how colonial actors and institutions interpreted and applied the principle of law in their interaction with Indigenous peoples “on the ground.”

336 pages | © 2016

Law and Society

Sociology: Race, Ethnic, and Minority Relations


Table of Contents

Introduction: Settler Colonialism and Its Legacies

1 British Law and Colonial Legal Regimes

2 The Foundations of Colonial Policing

3 Policing Aboriginal People on the Settler Frontier

4 Co-optive Policing: Native Police, Trackers, and Scouts

5 Agents of Protection and Civilization

6 Aboriginal Peoples and Settlers in the Courts

7 Agents of the Church

8 Agency and Resistance: Aboriginal Responses to Colonial Authority

9 Colonizing and Decolonizing the Past

Conclusion: Spaces of Indigenous and Settler Law

Notes; Bibliography; Index of Statutes, Treaties, Charters, and Proclamations; Table of Reported Cases; Index

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