Negotiating the Numbered Treaties: An Intellectual & Political Biography of Alexander Morris (Purich Publishing)

Alexander Morris, the main negotiator of many of the numbered treaties on the prairies, has often been portrayed as a parsimonious agent of the government, bent on taking advantage of First Nations chiefs and councillors. Talbot takes a different view. He sees 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 settlements and the disappearance of the buffalo. This is Morris’s story, but it is also the story of the prairie treaties and the western expansion of Canada.

Originally from Winnipeg, Talbot is now an Ottawa-based historian. He has worked as a researcher with the Department of Canadian Heritage and has taught at the University of Ottawa.