A critical question to ask: was the entity that the soil was stolen from called "Saskatchewan"?
Should that entity (similar to the Canadian Crown imagining the Alberta Crown into "existence" in 1905) have ever been granted claims to land and life (incorrectly thought of as "resources") that the Canadian Crown itself didn't "own" (even according to its own laws) and thus could never have sublet title to a Provincial Crown?
As I read this, I felt like I did reading the book "Don't Tell the Newfoundlanders: The True Story of Newfoundland's Confederation with Canada" by Greg Malone
I looked up the Saskatchewan Natural Resources Act from 1930. Its preamble records the province arguing that Ottawa had no legal right to control those Crown lands before Saskatchewan even existed in 1905. They accepted the transfer anyway. It raises the same ownership questions Malone flags in the Newfoundland Confederation story. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/T-10.49/FullText.html
Thanks for engaging. I note you changed the name for your account away from using the same name as the blog. Hello Mike!
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What you wrote leads in my mind to further questions:
* Which "ownership questions" did Malone flag? Did he miss most of the actual story, as I suggested in my review?
* Was it a domestic conceptualization of "ownership" being discussed, or a foreign one?
* Which "residents within the said area" were considered by the Natural Resources Act: the land title holding nationalities and their citizens, or only the males from the foreign worker program run by the Canadian Crown as part of its expansion of empire?
In the debate between whether it was a provincial or federal crown that "owned" that land and its inhabitants, the actual answer is: neither.
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In my mind, none of the Canadian Crowns, provincial or federal, have legitimate exclusive "legal rights" to land and life (resources) according to treaties and the Royal Proclamation of 1763 -- which itself was still foreign British law intended only to regulate settlers. That is not the law of this land.
The existence of the numbered treaties are themself proof that the Canadian Crown knew the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) didn't "own" that land, and thus could not "sell" it to the Canadian Crown (itself a nonsensical conflation of government title and fee-simple property, all within the foreign notion of Westphalian sovereignty still being violently imposed over domestic Genos/peoples/relational sovereignty).
As I wrote in my review:
"Imagine a book about Xinjiang (New Frontier) that spoke as if all human history on that area of land started in 1955 (When Xinjiang was made an autonomous region by PRC) and made absolutely no mention of the Uyghurs. The book would be entirely quotes and discussion of jurisdictional squabbles between individual groups of Han Chinese politicians/bureaucrats, other Chinese colonies/autonomous regions/provinces, and the central People's Republic of China (PRC) government."
A critical question to ask: was the entity that the soil was stolen from called "Saskatchewan"?
Should that entity (similar to the Canadian Crown imagining the Alberta Crown into "existence" in 1905) have ever been granted claims to land and life (incorrectly thought of as "resources") that the Canadian Crown itself didn't "own" (even according to its own laws) and thus could never have sublet title to a Provincial Crown?
As I read this, I felt like I did reading the book "Don't Tell the Newfoundlanders: The True Story of Newfoundland's Confederation with Canada" by Greg Malone
https://r.flora.ca/p/reviewing-dont-tell-newfoundlanders
I looked up the Saskatchewan Natural Resources Act from 1930. Its preamble records the province arguing that Ottawa had no legal right to control those Crown lands before Saskatchewan even existed in 1905. They accepted the transfer anyway. It raises the same ownership questions Malone flags in the Newfoundland Confederation story. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/T-10.49/FullText.html
Thanks for engaging. I note you changed the name for your account away from using the same name as the blog. Hello Mike!
----
What you wrote leads in my mind to further questions:
* Which "ownership questions" did Malone flag? Did he miss most of the actual story, as I suggested in my review?
* Was it a domestic conceptualization of "ownership" being discussed, or a foreign one?
* Which "residents within the said area" were considered by the Natural Resources Act: the land title holding nationalities and their citizens, or only the males from the foreign worker program run by the Canadian Crown as part of its expansion of empire?
https://r.flora.ca/p/alberta
In the debate between whether it was a provincial or federal crown that "owned" that land and its inhabitants, the actual answer is: neither.
----
In my mind, none of the Canadian Crowns, provincial or federal, have legitimate exclusive "legal rights" to land and life (resources) according to treaties and the Royal Proclamation of 1763 -- which itself was still foreign British law intended only to regulate settlers. That is not the law of this land.
The existence of the numbered treaties are themself proof that the Canadian Crown knew the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) didn't "own" that land, and thus could not "sell" it to the Canadian Crown (itself a nonsensical conflation of government title and fee-simple property, all within the foreign notion of Westphalian sovereignty still being violently imposed over domestic Genos/peoples/relational sovereignty).
As I wrote in my review:
"Imagine a book about Xinjiang (New Frontier) that spoke as if all human history on that area of land started in 1955 (When Xinjiang was made an autonomous region by PRC) and made absolutely no mention of the Uyghurs. The book would be entirely quotes and discussion of jurisdictional squabbles between individual groups of Han Chinese politicians/bureaucrats, other Chinese colonies/autonomous regions/provinces, and the central People's Republic of China (PRC) government."