Treaties with Native American groups in the Pacific Northwest have had profound and long-lasting implications for land ownership, resource access, and political rights in both the United States and Canada. In The Power of Promises, a distinguished group of scholars, representing many disciplines, discuss the treaties' legacies.In North America, where treaties have been employed hundreds of times to define relations between indigenous and colonial societies, many such pacts have continuing legal force, and many have been the focus of recent, high-stakes legal contests. The Power of Promises shows that Indian treaties have implications for important aspects of human history and contemporary existence, including struggles for political and cultural power, law's effect on people's self-conceptions, the functions of stories about the past, and the process of defining national and ethnic identities.

Foreword / John Borrows Introduction: Pacific Northwest Indian Treaties in National and International Historical Perspective / Alexandra HarmonI. Colonial ConceitsNegotiated Sovereignty: Indian Treaties and the Acquisition of American and Canadian Territorial Rights in the Pacific Northwest / Kent McNeilUnmaking Native Space: A Genealogy of Indian Policy, Settler Practice, and the Microtechniques of Dispossession / Paige RaibmonII. Cross-Border Influences"Trespassers on the Soil": United States v. Tom and a New Perspective on the Short History of Treaty Making in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia / Hamar Foster and Alan GroveThe Boldt Decision in Canada: Aboriginal Treaty Rights to Fish on the Pacific / Douglas C. HarrisIII. Indigenous Interpretations and ResponsesPerforming Treaties: The Culture and Politics of Treaty Remembrance and Celebration / Chris FridayReserved for Whom? Defending and Defining Treaty Rights on the Columbia River, 1880-1920 / Andrew H. Fisher Ethnogenesis and Ethnonationalism from Competing Treaty Claims / Russel Lawrence BarshThe Stevens Treaties, Indian Claims Commission Docket 264, and the Ancient One known as Kennewick Man / Bruce RigsbyIV. Power Relations in Contemporary Forums "History Wars" and Treaty Rights in Canada: A Canadian Case Study / Arthur J. RayHistory, Democracy, and Treaty Negotiations in British Columbia / Ravi de CostaTreaty Substitutes in the Modern Era / Robert T. Anderson ContributorsIndex