ABSTRACT
In this chapter I examine the historical context within which the proceedings examined in the next three chapters took place. This chapter explores the baggage that each of the personalities and player groups-First Nations representatives and parliamentarians alike-brought to the proceedings of the 1970s. The chronicles which follow begin with the Joint Committee on the Constitution of 1970. This overview will survey the historical background ending with the White Paper of 1969 and the Indian response to that statement of Indian Policy. (The reasons why I identify the White Paper with the preceding period rather than with this decade will be discussed later.)
The Indian witnesses and the academic witnesses whose testimony lent credence to the Indian witnesses were, by and large, far more aware of the historical baggage crowding the committee rooms than were most of the parliamentarians. This disparity of awareness-parliamentarians knowing so little about the subject matter under scrutiny by a committee on which
they are sitting-is, I suggest, peculiar to the history of First Nations relations in Canada.
