Alexander Morris, Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba and the North West Territories in the 1870s, was the main negotiator of many of the numbered treaties on the prairies and has often been portrayed as a parsimonious agent of the government, bent on taking advantage of First Nations chiefs and councillors. However, author Robert J. Talbot reveals Morris as a man deeply sympathetic to the challenges faced by Canada's Indigenous peoples as they sought to secure their future in the face of encroaching settlement and the disappearance of the buffalo. Both Morris and the First Nations negotiators viewed the treaties as the basis of a new, reciprocal arrangement, but by the end of his appointment, Morris was seriously at odds with a federal administration that preferred inaction over honouring its treaty promises.

Robert Talbot's profile page

Robert J. Talbot is originally from the Treaty 4 area, having grown up in Regina. He first became interested in the numbered treaties while an undergraduate student, when a chance encounter with former Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations president Perry Bellegarde convinced him that the treaties were more significant than his high school history texts had let on.

Mr. Talbot is an Ottawa-based historian with an extensive interest in Aboriginal/governmental relations. He has been a researcher for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and Canadian Heritage, has presented papers on Aboriginal and Canadian history at a number of important academic conferences, and has published in Mens: Revue de l’histoire intelectuelle de l’amérique française on the topic of anglophone-francophone relations in Canada. He is currently working toward the completion of a PhD in History at the University of Ottawa, where he has also taught Canadian history.