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Contracts, Treaties and Relationships: Collective Debt, Collective Responsibility and Contractarian Confusions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2025

Robert A. Sparling
Robert A. Sparling*
Affiliation:
École d’études politiques, 120 Université, Pavillon des Sciences sociales, Université d’Ottawa, pièce 7078, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5
*
Email: Robert.sparling@uottawa.ca
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Abstract

Aaron Mills (2017) has argued persuasively that to understand treaty relationships as contracts is to betray the spirit of those relationships. In this, he joins numerous Indigenous scholars who express wariness of contractualist understandings of treaty. This article inquires into the distinction between contractualist and relational understandings of treaty in order to think about the phenomenon of collective, transhistorical debt. Drawing out the distinction between relational and contractarian modes of thinking about long-term collective obligations, the article examines whether ongoing historical debts to Indigenous nations can be made sense of on a Kantian, contractarian logic. It concludes that the widespread colonial incomprehension of treaty as understood by many Indigenous nations was and remains tied to contractarian confusions. While contractarian thought can serve as a heuristic for articulating the injustices of colonial dispossession, it cannot capture the type of long-term collective responsibilities that treaties are supposed to represent.

Résumé

Résumé

Aaron Mills (2017) soutient de manière convaincante que c’est une erreur fondamentale de comprendre les traités avec les nations autochtones de manière contractuelle. Comprendre un traité comme un contrat, c’est trahir l’esprit des traités. Il partage l’opinion de plusieurs experts autochtones selon laquelle une telle compréhension contractualiste est une erreur. Cet article considère la distinction entre l’interprétation contractualiste et l’interprétation relationnelle des traités dans le but d’examiner le phénomène de la dette collective et transhistorique. Mettant en relief la distinction entre le relationnel et le contractuel, l’article examine si les dettes historiques envers les nations autochtones peuvent être comprises dans une logique contractualiste kantienne. Nous concluons que l’incompréhension généralisée des traités tels que conçus par plusieurs nations autochtones dérive de confusions liées au contractualisme. Si la pensée contractualiste peut servir d’heuristique pour articuler certaines injustices de la dépossession coloniale, elle ne peut saisir le type de responsabilités collectives à long terme que les traités sont censés représenter.

Keywords

contracttreatydebtgiftKantcontrattraitédettedonKant

Information

Type
Research Article/Étude originale
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , June 2025 , pp. 319 - 338
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Canadian Political Science Association (l’Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique

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