Isabelle.Bouchard5 [at] uqtr.ca (Isabelle Bouchard) is a professor in the Département des sciences humaines at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, where she teaches First Nations history and the history of Quebec and Canada between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Her research focuses on the political and legal history of First Nations in Quebec. She has published articles in the edited collection Nouveaux regards en histoire seigneuriale au Québec (Septentrion, 2016) and the Journal of Canadian Historical Association.
Isabelle’s dissertation, completed at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2017, focuses on the exercise of political power in Kahnawake and Odanak after the Conquest. It underscores Indigenous integration in the sociopolitical space of the St. Lawrence Valley, the chiefs’ exercise of seigneurial prerogatives, the appeal to colonial courts in internal conflicts around land, colonial authorities’ attempt to take control of lands and revenue, and the influence of state formation on Canada’s “Early Indian Acts.”
Isabelle’s current research focuses on individual land ownership in Kahnawake and Odanak before the abolition of seigneurial tenure and the creation of Indian reserves.