Negotiating Sovereignty through Taxation: Direct Taxes, Indigenous Peoples, and Settler Sovereignty in Upper Canada to 1850.

The article examines whether local taxes imposed by the Upper Canadian parliament from 1793 applied to Indigenous communities, concluding that only in 1850 did colonial legislation—the Act for the Protection of the Indians—explicitly exempt Indigenous peoples from taxes on real and personal property and statute labour, contingent on residence on "Indian" lands. Prior to this, Indigenous leaders consistently denied colonial jurisdiction over their communities, asserting self-government under customary law, which resulted in a de facto tax exemption amid unsettled colonial legal interpretations and growing settler resentment, especially regarding local infrastructure like roads. The 1850 act reflected contradictory forces: imperial humanitarian protection aimed at Indigenous "improvement" and Indigenous demands to preserve collective self-government against aggressive taxation attempts. This history reveals direct taxation as a key site where settler sovereignty, Indigenous legal autonomy, land tenure, and colonial governance intersected and were contested in Upper Canada.