Hunger, horses, and government men : criminal law on the aboriginal plains, 1870-1905 / Shelley A.M. Gavigan.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Introduction: One Warrior's Legal History -- Legally Framing the Plains and the First Nations -- "Of Course No One Saw Them": Aboriginal Accused in the Criminal Court -- "Prisoner Never Gave Me Anything for What He Done": Aboriginal Voices in the Criminal Court -- "Make a Better Indian of Him": Indian Policy and the Criminal Court -- Six Women, Six Stories -- Conclusion -- Afterword: A Methodological Note on Sources and Data.

"Scholars often accept without question that Canada's Indian Act (1876) criminalized First Nations. In this illuminating book, Shelley Gavigan argues that the notion of criminalization captures neither the complexities of Aboriginal participation in the courts nor the significance of the Indian Act as a form of law. Gavigan uses records of ordinary cases from the lower courts and insights from critical criminology and traditional legal history to interrogate state formation and criminal law in the Saskatchewan region of the North-West Territories between 1870 and 1905. By focusing on Aboriginal people's participation in the courts rather than on narrow legal categories such as 'the state' and 'the accused, ' Gavigan allows Aboriginal defendants, witnesses, and informants to emerge in vivid detail and tell the story in their own terms. Their experiences --

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