Agreements Were Negotiated

By the mid-1830s, contracts covered most of Upper Canada`s arable land. These contracts included an initial distribution of goods and money, with the promise of small annual payments. It was only gradually that the principle that agreements should include the allocation of reserves developed. The conventions and protocols of contracting in Canada can be traced back to their origins in the Chavenantin covenant. This refers to a sophisticated diplomatic relationship that began between the Dutch and indigenous peoples in the early seventeenth century. Later known to the English as the “Covenant Chain,” several Anglo-American colonies and various indigenous nations in northeastern North America engaged in this partnership after 1676. On the Council`s website near Albany, officials from the colony of New York regularly negotiated with representatives of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), also known as the Longhouse League or Five Nations, and then the Six Nations Confederacy. In developing contractual relationships for peacekeeping and mutual economic and defence benefits, Crown officials have turned their eyes to an increasing number of Indigenous lands. Lawrence Susskind (Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) “Win-Win” has become a popular term in the field of negotiation, but many people have a misconception of what it actually means. In this blog post, Professor Lawrence Susskind, a member of the PON Executive Committee, points out that a “win-win” negotiation result.

[2] However, this sentence has never been fully defined. . . .