For more than a century, the vast lands of Northern Ontario have been shared among the governments of Canada, Ontario, and the First Nations who signed Treaty No. 9 in 1905. For just as long, details about the signing of the constitutionally recognized agreement have been known only through the accounts of two of the commissioners appointed by the Government of Canada. Treaty No. 9 provides a truer perspective on the treaty by adding the neglected account of a third commissioner and tracing the treaty’s origins, negotiation, explanation, interpretation, signing, implementation, and recent commemoration.

John S. Long is professor emeritus of education at Nipissing University and the author of Treaty No. 9: Making the Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905.

John S. Long's profile page

“This is a definitive work that makes a groundbreaking contribution to our understanding of Canadian Aboriginal Treaties, and sheds enormous light on the circumstances of the Indigenous communities presently living in northern Ontario. John Long’s understanding of both Western-based knowledge and Indigenous Knowledge, as well as the written and the oral traditions have enabled him to write a piece that will forever change our understanding of Treaty No. 9. This book is a labour of love which succeeds brilliantly.” David T. McNab, Professor of Native Studies, York University
"[Dr Long] brings decades of intense study and if loving in the treaty region to the task of unraveling what happened when the three government commissioners journeyed north in 1905. What he has done and the analysis he has produced is as mammoth as the territory about which he writes... There can be little doubt that state representatives made oral promises concerning continuing indigenous rights that are not reflected in the official, published, version of the events or in the treaty document. Dr Long has done the First Nations of far northern Ontario an enormous service, and shown scholars of Native-newcomer relations how ethnohistory should be done." J.R. Miller, University of Saskatchewan, Journal of Anthropological Research