Big Bear's Treaty: The Road to Freedom

Foreword written by Gordon Gibson, Page 111:

"In what follows he [Allard] sets out the central determinants of Indian policy as it is and could be. He starts with a compassionate portrait of a people overwhelmed by an immigrant society, a people afforded nothing like the transitional assistance we routinely offer new immigrants to Canada today.

He describes how the rules of location and governance imposed on Indians over the 20th century effectively undermined patterns of traditional governance. The rules of Indian Affairs substituted first appointed elites (as agents) and then elected elites (as Chiefs and councils) - for the traditional consensual system. That suppression of ordinary Indians from influence even within their own communities constituted a second wave of interventions by the immigrant settler society. The psychological damage has been large, particularly for Indian men, already relieved of much of their raison d'etre by the operation of an insidious welfare system and a new industrial economy." Big Bear's Treaty includes seven chapters on the life, politics, advocation, and leadership of Big Bear, as well as the interactions between Big Bear and the Crown in the era of the numbered treaties." (111).