Hansen - Riel’s Defence

RIELS DEFENCE

EDITED BY

Hans V. Hansen

McGill-Queens University Press
Montreal & Kingston London Ithaca

McGill-Queens University Press 2014

ISBN 978-0-7735-4335-5 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-7735-4336-2 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-7735-9046-5 (e PDF )
ISBN 978-0-7735-9047-2 (e PUB )

Legal deposit second quarter 2014
Bibliothque nationale du Qubec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free.

McGill-Queens University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Riels defence : perspectives on his speeches / edited by Hans V. Hansen.

Includes reprints of two speeches given by Louis Riel.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-7735-4335-5 (bound). ISBN 978-0-7735-4336-2 (pbk.).
ISBN 978-0-7735-9046-5 (pdf). ISBN 978-0-7735-9047-2 (epub)

1. Riel, Louis, 1844-1885 Criticism and interpretation. 2. Riel, Louis, 18441885 Trials, litigation, etc. 3. Speeches, addresses, etc., Canadian (English) Canada, Western History and criticism. 4. Forensic orations Canada, Western History 19th century. 5. Rhetoric Canada, Western History 19th century. 6. Trials (Treason) Canada, Western History 19th century. 7. Mtis Legal status, laws, etc. Canada, Western History 19th century. 8. Riel Rebellion, 1885 Sources. 9. Canada, Western History 19th century Sources. I. Hansen, Hans V., 1948, author, editor of compilation II. Riel, Louis, 1844-1885. Speeches.

This book was typeset by True to Type in 10.5/13 Sabon

At the University of Windsor, I am grateful to Dr Michael Sui, vice president of research, and to Dr Robert Orr, acting dean of arts and social sciences, for generously supporting the publication of this work. Additional support came from the universitys Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric, which took the project under its wing. Invaluable research assistance was given by Annette L. Demers at the universitys Paul Martin Law Library.

Thanks are also due to Professors Maurice Charland, Thomas Flanagan, Desmond Morton, and Jennifer Reid for their early support of this project. Indeed, all the contributors have been exceedingly supportive in putting this book together. Our initial submission was helped by good suggestions from three anonymous reviewers for McGill-Queens University Press and was brought to completion by the thoughtful and exacting copyediting of Robert Lewis. Sheila Flavel composed a very thorough index, Kerry Sloan helped with some of the more difficult passages in Riels speeches, and Heng Wee Tan designed the books perspicacious cover. I thank these people for lending their talents and goodwill to our project. But most of all, I am thankful to Jacqueline Mason, our editor at the press, who assiduously steered the project through treacherous shoals.

Closer to home I am grateful for discussions with friends Christopher Tindale, Carmela Patrias, and Wayne Thorpe, who gave both encouragement and advice in just proportions. Closest of all to home is Jane McLeod, whom I thank for never faltering.

HVH

Windsor, Ontario
December 2013

HANS V. HANSEN

The focus of this collection of essays is two speeches given by the Mtis leader Louis Riel at his trial for high treason. Nearly all Canadians have heard about Riel, and most people with an interest in Canadian history know about the speeches, but few have paused to consider them in detail. They are the last public statements of defence by a man who has an ineradicable place in Canadian history, who combined his personal vision with a national vision, and who left it with us under extraordinary circumstances.

Riels speeches interest us partly because of their autobiographical character: they give us a self-portrait of an intelligent, ambitious, charismatic, and conflicted man, the leader of the Mtis in the years when they began to assert their identity as a people and make their land claims in the North-West Territories. They also provide a first-person account of events by one of the principal actors who influenced the course of history as it unfolded in the 1870s and 1880s. In these addresses by Riel meant both for those present in the court and those beyond we find insights about his constitutional thought, arguments about the basis of the Mtis land claims, a record of grievances against the federal government, an outline of a plan for immigration in the North-West, and a personal plea for justice, all themes that are with us still. The tragedy of Riels life, and the drama of the speeches, is heightened by his courage in standing very much alone against the power of the Crown and his own lawyers both before sentence was passed and after, and in movingly arguing his own case and that of the Mtis.

Accordingly, the first part of this introduction outlines the background of issues and events that weighed heavily with Riel and that found their way into the speeches. The second part of the introduction gives a brief overview of the essays written especially for this volume, essays that aim to interpret, analyze, and explore the themes of Riels two addresses, the first to the jury and the second to the court.

After Confederation in 1867, Canada set about arranging to acquire the huge land area known as Ruperts Land, granted to the Hudsons Bay Company by the British Crown in 1670. Especially of interest was the area that lay north of the 49th parallel and west of the Great Lakes, known as the North-West Territories. Several reasons motivated the Canadian government to acquire the region, including (1) a need for more agricultural land, (2) the desire to connect with British Columbia on the West Coast, and (3) the pre-emption of any move by the United States to take possession of the land. The possibility of Canada admitting the North-West Territories was mentioned in the British North American Act of 1867. Canada bought the land from the Hudsons Bay Company for 300,000, and Britain transferred administration of the region to Canada on 1 December 1869. In preparation for taking possession of the region, and in anticipation of the arrival of settlers from Ontario, Ottawa sent an advance party to the Red River region to survey the land.

At the time, there were about 11,000 people living in the Red River region, most of them Mtis.

The Mtis were uneasy about the transfer of the North-West Territories from the Hudsons Bay Company to Canada. They feared they might lose their landholdings, and they were also wary that they would be swamped by the influx of Protestant settlers who would come to dominate the region politically and culturally. When the surveyors arrived, the Mtis resisted (II: 11). This led to a series of events beginning in November 1869 now known as the Red River Uprising led by the young Louis Riel and culminating in the entry of a small part of present-day Manitoba into Confederation as a province in the following year (II: 15).

Although the Manitoba Act of 1870 gave control over natural resources to Ottawa, it nevertheless appeared to give the Mtis much of what they had wanted, including land, language, education, and religious rights. Riel maintained that since the Mtis no longer felt secure in Manitoba, they had subsequently sold their land for much less than it was worth and had then moved west (II: 26).