Who are the treaty people?
Gila River Nation, Arizona
I’m here, being incredibly busy, working on the design team for the Food and Society 2008 conference for the WK Kellog Foundation. More about that soon.
On the way down here I was listening to a podcast of an addres by our former Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson that was produced for CBC Ideas (and which you can download for yourself here – mp3 podcast no longer available). In it she talks about how aware people about the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. She tells the story of looking a room full of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people on thepraries somewhere and asking who in the rom are treaty people. All of the Treaty Frist Nations people raise their hands, but no one else. THe next question is obvious. If it is just First Nations people who are treaty people, who did they make the treaties with?
As a Canadian, do you think of yourself as a treaty person, or has it truthfully never entered your mind? What do you think your rights and obligations are under the terms of the treaties Canada has signed with First Nations?
Hey Chris, I thought I’ll respond for good measure.
I’m not Canadian, and I’m not treaty.
The current “BC Treaty Process” is well, not really a treaty process. These Final Agreements are not treaties by international law. Extinguishment of Aboriginal rights and title for a Provincial defined title. Negotiating to surrender much? The relationship between First Nations in BC (Most of which are not really nations. More like First Administrations) is one sided. It’s the Master-Colonizer looking downward. Why should we prove we are from here? We know we are from here. Canadians should prove to us why they should stay.
So yeah…it’s true that you are neither Canadian and treaty. And the BC Treaty Process is what it is but THIS is the point: there have been agreements made over time between First Nations and settler governments, and these were made as a matter of honour. The prarie context is a good example. Treaty peoples in Saskatchewan and Alberta for example generally place a lot of stock in the treaties they have signed and believe that it is criucially important to adhere to them because they are an agreement about how people are to live together. The reason for adhering to them from teh First Nations side is that the setler governments break the treaties at every turn. Without SOMEONE upholding the integrity of what the chiefs an dthe governments signed, the whole thing is useless.
So my point is this. If there were two parties to a treaty and the descendants of one party believe themselves bound by the treaty, it’s really saying something for the other party’s descendants to simply forget that there was ever any dignity in the relationship.
It is clear that, even despite Delagamuukw, the onus of proof DOES rest on Canadian governments to prove their title to some extent. But it is more than that as well. Canadians themselves need to remember that they as individual members of a state have a personal stake in upholding the honour of any agreement with any nation or international body. My post here is a call for Canadians to realize that they are inexticably in relationship with First Nations people, and the land on which they live. As a “living treaty” but a visitor in Skwx7mesh Temix, I am acutly aware of all those angles.
And in international treaties, when a country violates or breaks it, doesn’t the treaty become void? I know it’s not the case with NAFTA, but that’s whats “supposed” to happen.
I don’t really know much about the Numbered treaties. Just what they taught me in school, and even then, I forgot it all.
A promise was made, and it should be kept.
My great grand parents homesteaded in the Chilcotin, and it has been passed down through our family that we should be grateful for the opportunity to share the land with others. Think most people never have the thought cross their mind though, it’s as if there was no such thing anymore as ancestral relationships amongst the non-Aboriginal people.
This is a profound line of questioning Chris. Opens my eyes in a new way.
The numbered treaties aren’t void – it is crucially important for treatied First Nations that the terms of the original treaties be kept. The rights guaranteed in those treaties re protected in section 35 of the Canadian Constitution. AS Constitutionally embedded rights, it’s important that neither side back off the original commitments.
More on treaty eight for example: http://www.treaty8.ca/upload/documents/T8_Elders_Resolution.pdf
Hi Chris, I came across this earlier post in exploring treaty people and the link no longer works.
Any ideas?
Carl
Aotearoa New Zealand
Yes Carl…seems the podcast has disappeared from the CBC archives, but here is a link to the text of that lecture she gave.
[…] are all treaty people Five years ago I wrote about a speech from former  Governor General Adrienne Clarkson who pointed out that all Canadians are treaty […]