[MUSIC] The events of 1885 represent the end to any hope that Indigenous peoples of the Northwest may have had in forging an equal partnership with the Canadian State. Having dispersed across the Plains after the Red River Resistance of 1869 to 1870, the Métis grew increasingly concerned as the government began to assert itself in the region and was doing little to address Métis land title. Coinciding with this growing state presence, the bison had disappeared, and Métis and First Nation alike found themselves without their main form of subsistence. Having established permanent settlements at sites like Saint Laurent and Batoche, the Métis settlements along the south Saskatchewan contained farms, churches, mills, and stores, and far outnumbered the non-Indigenous population. It was questions tied up with land that dominated the events leading up to the Northwest Resistance of 1885. Requesting title to the river lots, they also wished similar agricultural assistance as found in the Numbered Treaties. To this end, the Métis community drafted several petitions expressing these concerns, which were supported with warnings from missionaries and members of the North-West Mounted Police, who urged the government to deal with these outstanding issues. The conservative government of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald did not heed these petitions and warnings. While government motivation for this oversight remains contested, the ramifications were crucial for the Métis and the new Canadian nation. Riel, who had been in exile in Montana, was persuaded to return to Canada to assist in the Métis campaign. Drafting a petition outlining land concerns and demands for self-government, the government again denied these requests. The ongoing lack of government action saw discussion shift to the use of force. Seizing arms and ammunition in March of 1885, the Métis community elected a provisional government with Riel as president and Gabriel Dumont as military commander. They then issued a ten point Revolutionary Bill of Rights, asserting among other things, title to their farms. Métis forces initially claimed military victory against the North-West Mounted Police at Duck Lake, rallying Big Bear and several other Indigenous allies to their cause. In response, the Canadian government mobilized over 5,000 troops and moved them west on the just completed transcontinental railway. The final Battle of Batoche took place between the 9th and 12th of May, ending the Métis resistance. Following his surrender, Riel was tried for high treason, and being found guilty, was executed in Regina that November. Having signed 56 treaties with Indigenous peoples between 1760 and 1923, the Canadian government ended its treaty negotiations following the completion of the Williams Treaty in 1923, believing outstanding questions of Indigenous land title had been settled. By the mid-twentieth century, the hydroelectric power developments along James Bay and oil development projects saw a significant impact on the traditional livelihood of the area's Indigenous peoples. These projects precipitated a new conversation between affected groups and the Canadian government. The Office of Native Claims, created in 1973, within the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, seeks to deal with the unfinished business of treaty making in Canada. Today, these are now known as modern day treaties or comprehensive claims. This office accepts the legitimacy of Indigenous land rights, making its primary function to coordinate federal negotiations regarding claims that Indigenous peoples present to government officials. Compensatory agreements have been made in those territories not previously covered by treaty, and the government has agreed to honour obligations it made previously through the treaty process. Since 1973, twenty-six comprehensive land claims and four self-government agreements have been reached. As resource companies and the government look to the North, in the vast as yet untapped resources, one key example of modern treaty is in 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. In 1999, Nunavut, or Our Land, became Canada's largest land claims settlement to date. An agreement reached between the Tunngavik Federation of Inuit, the Government of Canada, and the Government of the Northwest Territories returned the central and eastern portions of the Northwest Territories to the Inuit. The territory contains over 2.2 million square kilometres. This agreement saw the Inuit surrender land title, but provided for Inuit private land holding of 350,000 square kilometres within their traditional territory, as well as wildlife management and harvesting rights, a share of resource developments on Crown Lands, land and water stewardship, and public sector employment. As a territory, Nunavut is self-governing, and the Nunavut Legislative Assembly follows a consensus model to reach decisions, becoming a fully independent government in April of 1999. Modern day treaties often involve the protection of land and resource developments within a particular area, preventing others from exploiting Indigenous traditional territory. These types of land claim agreements allow the government to use portions of the lands while Indigenous people still retain their treaty rights to the land. This includes the right to self-government, assertion of traditional laws, harvesting management rights and economic development, as laid out in each individual agreement. Modern day treaties resonate with many of the same Indigenous concepts of treaty making that we discussed earlier. These concepts rely upon ideas first introduced during the Peace and Friendship Treaties, including the ideas of respect, peaceful coexistence, and a sharing of the land's resources. [MUSIC] >> I'm Dr. James Dempsey. I came to the University of Alberta back in, yes, 1992, as the Director of the School of Native Studies, as it was called then, we're a faculty now. So I've been here almost twenty-two years. Originally from Calgary, I'm a member of the Blood Kainai Tribe in southern Alberta, and taught prior to coming here, I was at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, which is now the First Nations University of Canada. I was there for five years, again teaching, my areas are treaties, land claims, the Indian Act, introductory courses I especially enjoy doing. My own background is historian, so I also teach the history of Eastern Canada, Indians of Eastern Canada, history of Indians of Western Canada, and my own personal area of interest is Native war veterans. It is an interesting question of, if you really want to use the term, documented history of Native groups and the British Crown, but we also had the French Crown, and ultimately Canada. We do have in Canada, almost goes right back to the beginning, documents of grievance, relationships between Native groups, sure they started in Eastern Canada. The Maritimes have what are commonly called the Peace and Friendship Treaties that dealt with war, or the end of war during the 1700s between the Mi'kmaqs, the Malecites, and the British. There's about three or four treaties in that century that ended these confrontations. When we move into Quebec, we have a number of agreements—well, I don't want to use the term agreements— these were petitions by various missionary groups, Catholic missionary groups, to obtain land from the French Crown to entice Native groups to relocate there, to be assimilated. At that time assimilation meant Catholicism and these grants have now become called treaties, and are still relevant to seven reserves that are in Quebec that this is how they came about. If we move into Ontario, southern Ontario especially, we have a huge number of agreements for an acre of land, square mile of land. I forget, I think it's fourteen agreements that are in what became Toronto alone. And again, they're not seen, they are dealing with land, but they're not seen as treaties per se. But, you know, once Canada was formed, yes, they were transferred over to Canada's jurisdiction, and they are called treaties. There's about, probably about 400 of them in southern Ontario, and then we move into the sort of colonial era, and we have the Robinson-Huron and Superior Treaties in 1850. And these two are with the colonial government, not directly with the Crown, and are the first in which a large, and when we meant large we're talking hundreds of thousands of square miles of land, is being surrendered by the Native group to the colonial government in exchange for certain benefits, money, reserves, these kind of things. And essentially the federal government used the Robinson Treaties as a sort of template to deal with the Native groups in the former the Rupert's Land, or Western Canada. As they wanted to build a railroad, and join Eastern Canada with BC, and in order to do this process with as little trouble as possible with the Native groups, they followed this treaty process. Now, did they come up with the treaty process? No, of course not. Back in 1763, in the Royal Proclamation, a process was laid out that said if the Indians in question at any time wanted to sell or cede their land that there was a process, and there was four rules, the Crown was the only one who could accept the surrender from the Indians, the Indians could only surrender to the Crown, this process had to be done at a public meeting, so that was open public meeting, and the issue or the reason for the public meeting was for the surrender. And so, the federal government was following these rules and you can look at any of the eleven Number Treaties, and within the first two paragraphs there is reference to all of this in them. So, they are following this. Why was Canada doing this? There's different reasons and arguments, and I think a lot of them are quite legitimate. We know from documents and position of the government, you know pretty clearly what their intent was. They saw it as a moral gesture of dealing with the Indians, removing them from the land without forcibly, and giving them compensation for that. There is no doubt that the influence of what was going on in the United States at this time influenced them, and they figured that they could deal with the Indians on the Canadian side in a much better manner than what the Americans were doing. We can't ignore the reality, Canada didn't have an army. [LAUGH] So if that became necessary, we'd have a different issue. But it didn't. So the government negotiated treaties one to seven which are often called the Southern Treaties. These deal with where the railroad for the most part was going to go. Agriculture is emphasized as the way that from hunting and gathering to agriculture and the government was going to help in that exchange, reserves, annuity payments, these kind of things are all included. From the Native point of view though, it's not as crystal clear and I think we can't ignore the fact that different groups had different reasons for signing. And I am generalizing, but it does seem, for example, in Treaty Three, that they signed because, but they signed for where the railroad was going to go, the land and maybe the right of way. It doesn't seem clear that they understood that it was 300,000 square miles. But it does seem that they did have an understanding of what the government wanted, it just wasn't to the extent that it ended up being. When we move sort of farther west, the relationship between the Indians in the west and non-Natives is quite limited, really to, in many respects, the Hudson's Bay Company and fur traders. And so I think we see that influence there, especially when the Commissioner says the Company is no longer in charge, the Queen, the government is now in charge. And they say, okay, so you're replacing the Hudson's Bay Company, so we're dealing with you, what reason is there to deal with you any different then we deal with the Hudson's Bay Company? Especially when we see, as they say, in Treaty Six, in debates, if you want to call it that, over how many saws, how many cows, how much seed; almost like you're bartering with a fur trader. And, of course, the emphasis is on that, on what the Indians are going to get, as opposed to what they're giving up. Very little talk about surrender of title of the land and even less than we saw on Treaty Three. And so when we come to Treaty Six, it does seem that they understood non-Natives were coming and the agreement was to share the land with them, not to surrender. When we move again further west into Treaty Seven, even less contact with non-Natives. But, a very strong influence from the North-West Mounted Police. They came out in 1874, the Blackfoot in southern Alberta were very negatively affected by the whiskey trade. And the elimination of the traders back to the United States was very positive for them and they saw the police as a positive influence. And that influence was used by the commissioners, making Colonel Macleod one of the commissioners in the negotiations with Treaty Seven. But again, more of what they’re to get, not much of what they're giving up. The Blackfoot did have a little bit of experience of treaties with non-Natives, they signed a treaty in 1855 with the Americans. From their point of view, it was broken in 1870 when the Baker Massacre occurred, one of the Blackfoot camps was wiped out by Colonel Baker of the American Army, and this caused many of the Blackfoot to flee onto the Canadian side. So, the influence of the police, that kind of history, it seems that the general opinion of Treaty Seven from the Native point of view for them was a peace treaty. We won't kill whites, you won't kill us; we keep the peace. But again, that it was a land surrender, seems not likely. Now that's not to say that there weren't individuals at any of the agreements that seemed to have an indication. Poundmaker at Treaty Six, Crowfoot at Treaty Seven, seemed to have an indication of what the government wanted, Big Bear also, although he wasn't technically at Treaty Six. So they, we do have those, but generally speaking, that this idea of land surrender does not seem to be overall accepted in the seven Southern Treaties. [MUSIC]
