Law Commons^™

Encountering Settler Colonialism Through Legal Objects: A Painted Drum And Handwritten Treaty From Manitoulin Island, Ruth Buchanan, Jeffery G. Hewitt

Ruth Buchanan

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries generated a trove of objects documenting the encounter between the Anishinaabe of the Great Lakes region and the British. Two such objects, a drum painted with Anishinaabe imagery and a treaty, handwritten by a British treaty commissioner, were created in close proximity in both time and location. This paper explores the encounter between the Anishinaabe and the British through a parallel engagement with both drum and treaty; placing them in conversation with each other. We consider the divergent paths taken by these objects by comparing the material, legal and sensory landscapes in which they were …