Who Controls the Hunt?

Who Controls the Hunt? is a valuable case study to which readers can bring as much as they take – and one I will remember each spring as we gather up the rods, the regulations, and the resident and non-resident permits we need to spend another season on the water.

Robert Flewelling, University of Guelph:

I would go as far as heavily recommending [this book] as a means of gaining a deeper, more nuanced understanding of hunting, fishing, and conservation policy in Ontario, Canada and abroad.

Mathieu Arsenault, University of Montreal:

"…this book is a welcome addition to the historiography of the difficult relationship between provincial wildlife conservation policies and Indigenous peoples in Canada."

Arlana Bennett (Redsky):

Calverley provides a detailed description of key events and conflicts that surround First Nations harvesting rights, wildlife conservation, and management in Ontario during this period.

Tracie Lea-Scott, Heriot-Watt University, Dubai:
Who Controls the Hunt… is an important resource providing a clear and lucid historical context as Canada and the provinces continue to wrestle with this question.

John Sandlos, Department of History, Memorial University of Newfoundland:
This book breaks new ground with its focus on wildlife conservation and Indigenous communities in Ontario, a surprisingly understudied area. The author’s exemplary archival work also sheds new light on the conflict between the federal government’s treaty obligations toward First Nations and a provincial government determined to restrict wildlife harvesting. Who Controls the Hunt? is essential reading for anybody interested in Indigenous history, legal history, and the politics of wildlife conservation in Canada.

Graeme Wynn, from the Foreword:
By tracing a particular set of struggles to reconcile First Nations’ conceptions of land, society, and treaty rights with the power of the (liberal) state through a century or so, Who Controls the Hunt? does much to reveal the ambiguities of liberalism as a political and social ideology – even as it reminds us why this matters for Canadians (and many others) in the twenty-first century.