Read on Twitter
Did not expect this tweet to blow up. For those interested, here is a thread with some resources on Indigenous-settler relations, treaties, and the lack of treaties in what is currently Canada - and why this historical knowledge matters. https://twitter.com/SeanCarleton/status/1317519821542727683
I'll start with treaty in Mi’kma’ki, where conflict between Mi'kmaw and non-Indigenous fishers is escalating this week. Here is short, accessible primer of what is known as the "Peace and Friendship Treaties": https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/peace-and-friendship-treaties#Treatyof1752
I would pair this with Marie Battiste's edited book, "Living Treaties: Narrating Mi'kmaw Treaty Relations," which understands these treaties from personal perspectives: https://books.google.ca/books?id=QrzzjgEACAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions
Understanding the history of colonization, conflict, and treaty in Mi’kma’ki is essential to understand what is happening today, as @Pam_Palmater argues here: https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/mikmaw-treaty-rights-reconciliation-and-the-rule-of-law
Next, I would suggest folks learn more about the Royal Proclamation and the 1764 Treaty of Niagara, as the foundation of Canada's "nation-to-nation" relationship with Indigenous peoples. Here is more info, including videos with historian @AlanCorbiere: https://www.historymuseum.ca/history-hall/covenant-chain-royal-proclamation-treaty-niagara/
I also highly recommend John Burrows's chapter, “Wampum at Niagara: The Royal Proclamation, Canadian Legal History and Self-Government” in Asche, Michael, Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada: Essays on Law, Equity, and Respect for Difference: https://www.ubcpress.ca/aboriginal-and-treaty-rights-in-canada
In terms of understanding the "Numbered Treaties" on the Prairies and north, 1871-1921, there are a lot of good sources. I recommend Sheldon Krasowski's "No Surrender: The Land Remains Indigenous": https://uofrpress.ca/Books/N/No-Surrender
Other good readings include, Sharon H. Venne, "Understanding Treaty 6: An Indigenous Perspective" in M. Asch, ed., Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada (2002), and "The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7" by Blackfoot elders: https://www.mqup.ca/true-spirit-and-original-intent-of-treaty-7--the-products-9780773515222.php
These readings challenge the popular idea that, through the treaties, Indigenous Nations simply ceded their lands and resources to Canada forever - which is a bit how settlers think of the treaties, if they think about them at all. Instead, the emphasis was on cooperation.
Moreover, the numbered treaties were supposed to be living documents, continually renegotiated and updated - most have not. All of this means that Canada's relationship to these lands - and their original stewards - is dangerously out of balance.
Lastly, I'll recommend some readings on treaty, or more accurately, the lack of treaty in what is today known as British Columbia, where I grew up. We are NOT "all treaty people." Chief Dan George powerfully talks about the consequences of this in 1967: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/937471043585
Much of BC (like other parts of "Canada") do NOT have treaties - colonizers simply appropriated lands and resources, creating settlements. For more, see Tennant, "Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849-1989": https://www.ubcpress.ca/aboriginal-peoples-and-politics
See also Cole Harris's, "Making Native Space
Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia": https://www.ubcpress.ca/making-native-space. With an understanding of the lack of treaties and the aggressive methods of colonization in BC, it should be no wonder there is so much conflict.
Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia": https://www.ubcpress.ca/making-native-space. With an understanding of the lack of treaties and the aggressive methods of colonization in BC, it should be no wonder there is so much conflict.
In short, the history of "treaty' in Canada is complicated. There was/is no "standard" approach. Indigenous Nations and their citizens have differing feelings about/interpretations of treaties - as do different levels of settler government. Not all of "Canada" has treaty.
"Ceded" land does not mean settlers own land and can just do whatever they please; unceded land does not mean settlers just need to sign a treaty to gain access - or use "the law," or the RCMP, as a battering ram to force Indigenous Nations into one-sided agreements.
Treaty is about relationship - and is supposed to be about diplomacy, negotiation, and reciprocity.
I think most Canadians understand this when it is about international treaties; and that if a nation does not hold up its end of the deal there will be conflict and consequences. Well, same applies to Canada's "Nation-to-Nation" relations with Indigenous Nations.
Canada is the bad treaty partner here - and that needs to change.
What I was trying to get at in my original tweet is this: the lack of meaningful treaty education and historical understanding about Indigenous-settler relations only further fuels settler ignorance and anti-Indigenous racism...
And that ignorance and anti-Indigenous racism, which we are seeing on full display this year (with responses to Wet'suwet'en actions and in Mi’kma’ki), is threatening Canada's chances at reconciliation and (re)building meaningful relations with Indigenous peoples.
Finally, here is a great piece by Mercedes Peters that ties much of this together, about history, settler forgetting, and how it fuels ongoing colonialism and conflict. This is what we need to change: https://niche-canada.org/2020/10/19/settler-forgetting-in-saulnierville-the-sipeknekatik-mikmaw-fishery-as-reminder/
