The North-West Is Our Mother by Jean Teillet

Author:Jean Teillet
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2019-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

THE LAWS OF ST. LAURENT

Canada had asserted its sovereignty in the North-West but still had little idea of what and whom it had sovereignty over. The assertion of sovereignty meant that Canadian law was in effect in the North-West. That was the theory. On the ground there was no Canadian law. No one knew what the Canadian laws were, no one referred to them and no one enforced them. Clarke might be the official representative of Canadian law in Fort Carlton, but the Company enforced laws selectively, usually when there was a transgression against its interests.

The Métis didn’t initially see this as a problem because they had their own laws, the Laws of the Prairie. The Métis Nation Laws of the Prairie were adopted with accompanying ceremonies. The ceremonies took place at a gathering of the people on the hunts, in Red River and in St. Laurent. The leadership took an oath before a priest to act in good faith and according to good conscience. They swore on the Bible to abide by and enforce their laws. Their first codified laws were the Laws of the Hunt, and the existence of that code was well known.12 The Laws of the Prairie also included codes adopted throughout the North-West, such as the Red River Code (1869), the Qu’Appelle Code (1873) and the Laws of St. Laurent (1873).13

None of this law-making was done secretly or in defiance of Canadian law. In fact, wishing to be seen as loyal Canadians, the Métis of Qu’Appelle promptly informed Lieutenant-Governor Morris that they had formed a governing council in Qu’Appelle. They acted to fill a legal vacuum because, as far as they could see, there were no laws in place. So, they said, “We make a law, and that law is strong, as it is supported by the majority.” They sent messengers and received votes of support from “all the Métis of the North-West.”14

The Qu’Appelle Métis also expressed great anxiety about how, in making a treaty at Red River, “the people of Red River being our own people,” were maltreated. Sadly, they knew they would be treated the same. “Bright promises” were made but broken. More specifically, they noted that Schultz and Dennis, the main instigators of the reign of terror, had achieved good positions “in order to give them a chance of annoying the people of Red River.” Finally, they asked for a general pardon for Riel and the other principal men, and noted that even in 1873 it was still too dangerous in Winnipeg for Métis to appear “without being molested and ill-treated by strangers and also by soldiers.”

All of the Métis knew the Laws of the Hunt, but the codes that began to appear in 1869 were more sophisticated. With the Métis diaspora from Red River, it is quite likely that the Red River Code formed the template for the Qu’Appelle Code and the Laws of St. Laurent. George Woodcock, in his biography of Gabriel Dumont, credits the priests in St. Laurent with the idea of a governing council and the laws.

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