Talk:Haldimand Proclamation

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Wikipedia has indicated that publishing the Haldimand Proclamation is a copyright violation. It is not. This proclamation was published in 1784 and has appeared in books published before 1923 and is now in the public domain. Suggestions? BradMajors 01:43, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia has reversed the claim of copyright violation. BradMajors 06:57, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Original Size of the Grant

An excellent source of information regarding this whole topic can be found in the book:

The Valley of the Six Nations : a collection of documents on the Indian lands of the Grand River / edited with an introduction by Charles M. Johnston. Toronto : Champlain Society for the Government of Ontario, University of Toronto Press, 1964. xcvi, 344 p.

It consists of a compilation of the text of many of the original documents dealing with the subject, including transcriptions of the correspondence between the principle parties involved, as well as several maps. It is still consulted as a useful reference at hand during the current ongoing legal disputes involving the legal ownership of sections of the Grand Valley. My comments all rely on this book as their source and the page numbers cited refer to that volume. My main concern with the neutrality and accuracy of the article in its present form revolves around the definitive statement:

"The extent of the lands in the proclamation are not clearly defined and could encompass some 570,000 acres at the least and 675,000 acres at the most."

To the best of my knowledge it has never been disputed by anyone that the Six Nations have always taken the wording of the Haldimand Proclamation in a literal sense, "[...] allotting to them for that purpose six miles deep from each side of the river beginning at Lake Erie and extending in that proportion to the head of the said river [...]". My understanding is that what *is* disputed is whether or not the upper reaches of the valley had been legally acquired by the Crown from the Mississauga nation prior to Haldimand's granting of the valley as a whole. That argument puts forward the notion that if the Crown had not already taken full possession of the most northerly part of the valley from the Mississauga, previous to the issuance of the Haldimand Proclamation, that it had no legal right to grant that portion to anyone else. This is viewed in the sense that you cannot legally sell or give away something that you do not already legally "own". Aspects of the current dispute are not centred on what the proclamation itself actually said, in terms of the extent of the land that it describes, which seems quite clear in the original document, but rather whether or not Haldimand had a legal right to dispose of the *entire* valley in the way that he did. In my opinion this point is not clearly reflected in the current version of the article.

The other problem I have with the current version is the definitive statement that the lands *in total* consisted of "675,000 acres at the most". That figure appears to be exclusively derived from a map [1] reflecting the results of a survey conducted by Thomas Ridout for the Crown in 1821, which appears in reproduction form as an insert between page 128 and 129 of 'The Valley of the Six Nations : a collection of documents on the Indian lands of the Grand River'. On that map, which is labeled "Plan showing the lands granted to the Six Nation Indians situated on each side of the Grand River, or Ouse, commencing on Lake Erie, containing about 674,910 acres", the northern limit of the survey is clearly shown as being near the current location of the present day community of Elora Ontario, which is situated a full 25-30 miles south of the actual source of the Grand River. This map and its claimed total acreage figure, appears to consist as exclusively a reflection of the Crown's interpretation of the total area involved in the debate and entirely excludes the Six Nations literal interpretation of the proclamation as granting them the land from Lake Erie to the source of the river. Quite obviously, if the "final" acreage figure of 675,000 is obtained by the exclusion of the most northerly 30 miles of the river from the calculation, then that figure is bound to be too low, having only been achieved by completely disregarding the historic Six Nations interpretation of the proclamation. In the end, I am not attempting to make a final declaration of who is "right" and "wrong" in this situation, but rather I'm suggesting that the matter is not nearly as 'cut and dried' as the current version of the article seems to suggest. cheers Deconstructhis 20:37, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree there are some problems with the way the current article is written and I am glad someone else is interested in this topic. As for your items:

Extent of land: The wording of the proclamation is so vague the location of the lands on the lower Grand River is not clear. It is clear that a strip of land 12 miles wide is granted, but the land the Six Nations ended up having is not exactly centered on the Grand River. The exact position can not be determined until the land has been surveyed. The Six Nations did reject the initial land survey. I personally don't know if they ever disputed the survey on the lower Grand River. The Six Nations might not have disputed the lower Grand River survey simply because the exact location at that time did not matter.

Yes, it is not clear from the Proclamation where on the upper Grand River the land is intended to end, it is not clear what extent of land the crown intended to grant, and it is not clear what land the Six Nations would be legally entitled to. Hence, this land has been in dispute from 1784 to the present day. Yes, something along the lines you indicated above should definitely be added to the article on this subject.

I hope this article can avoid directly referencing the current land dispute. (There exists another article for that.)

Number of acres: The number of acres in the article comes directly from a reliable published source in which it states that the number of acres was at most 675,000. This source does not reference where it got this number from nor does it indicate what lands are referred to. I would recommend this source be replaced with your above source to indicate that the crown's position was the extent of lands in the grant were defined in the Ridout survey of 1821 which was of 674,910 acres. And it would be useful if the article stated the reasons why the Six Nations did not agree with the correctness of this survey.

If these are your only objections I don't see that there any major issues in dispute. BradMajors 02:43, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

No recent discussion. I have updated the article to correspond to above and removed the NPOV tag. If there are still issues as far as accuracy, please note them. The article needs citations from reliable sources to the Six Nations position on the accuracy of the land survey which originally appeared in contemporary (pre 1821) sources. BradMajors (talk) 00:44, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Just a quick note to let you know that I haven't "forgotten" this article and that I've been getting together some interesting quotes related to the pre 1820 Six Nations position on the legal extent of their holdings. I'll try and get those together on Sunday or early next week. Thanks. Deconstructhis (talk) 08:36, 23 November 2007 (UTC)