Rodeo season and specific claims (native land claims involve prime agricultural land given to European immigrants at bargain prices).

• Author: Fenwick, Fred R.

Well, it is finally summer and after the long hours indoors, the snow and ice and all the rest, with the changing of the seasons a young man's thoughts turn to.... RODEO. Tug on those jeans, strap on the chaps and hit the dirt. Hey ... is this LawNow or Western Horseman and what does this have to do with Aboriginal Law?

Most Indian reservations on the Prairies are rural, ranching, and agricultural based communities and people grow up riding and roping. In those old Westerns we used to watch, it was Cowboys versus the Indians. Now, to a large extent the Cowboys are the Indians. There is a busy and extremely vital native rodeo circuit and a bunch of professional rodeo associations including the Indian Rodeo Cowboy Association (IRCA), the Northern Alberta Native Cowboy Association (NANCA), in Saskatchewan the Prairie Indian Rodeo Association (PIRA), and in BC the Western Indian Rodeo and Exhibition Association (WIREA), just to name a few. There are many famous Indian Cowboys, both historical and modern. The legendary Tom Three Persons from the Blood Reserve in Southern Alberta was the first saddle bronc winner at the Calgary Stampede. He rode the famous and supposedly unridable bronc "Midnight" to a standstill. Jim Gladstone (also from the Blood Reserve), who is now practising law in Alberta was the World Champion calf roper and his father Fred Gladstone was the Canadian champion. You see, it is largely a family sport and for every national world champion there are hundreds of families participating in all of the traditional events plus barrel racing, team roping and even "wild and woolly" (sheep riding) for six year olds and steer riding for older boys. If you like that western heritage you owe it to yourself to see a local rodeo one day.

Right.

Thanks for the travelogue, but what about the law. Well, the rural base of many native economies is not a new story. When the West was settled, the native tribes, especially the buffalo hunting tribes already had considerable skills in animal husbandry (they bred, raised and trained horses and the harvesting of the buffalo required extensive practical knowledge of the habits of herds of grazing animals). And they knew the land. They knew where the water was and wasn't, when the water flowed, where the sheltered parts were, and where the cold wind blew and no trees grew (i.e.., northwest Calgary). Farming and ranching were necessities for them (they had to replace the buffalo economy). It was a natural...