Demanding settlers: Chandra Murdoch, ‘Colonization Off-Reserve: Settler Petitions, Anishinaabe Capital Funds, and the Department of Indian Affairs in Ontario, 1854–1910’, Canadian Historical Review, 106, 4, 2025

09Dec25

Abstract: Following treaties in Saugeen Ojibwe Nation Territory (the Bruce Peninsula, 1854), the North Shore of Lake Huron (1859), and Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island, 1862), the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) controlled land sales and the conditions for white settlement. The DIA sold land to fulfill treaty obligations, administering new capital funds that generated annuity payments for treaty signatory communities. This article argues that petitions from settlers in these regions influenced how the DIA managed the capital funds they held in trust. Anishinaabe funds subsidized the development of nascent settler properties and economies through DIA decisions influenced by settler demands. The department invested in settler infrastructures and economies through surveys and road construction and lowered land prices and timber dues at the expense of capital funds. These decisions often went explicitly against Anishinaabe demands. Drawing on twenty-seven settler petitions, political correspondence of Anishinaabe leaders, and capital fund accounts through Orders in Council and DIA annual reports, this article shows how the DIA used money in Anishinaabe capital funds to support settler communities. By situating DIA administrative and financial involvements off-reserve, the article demonstrates their orientation towards expanding settler economies at the expense of Anishinaabe wealth in the context of the imperial withdrawal of support for the DIA.