Treaty 6 Essay

Alberta Treaty History

Treaty 6

Alexander Morris, a Canadian politician serving under John A. Macdonald, began the signing of Treaty 6 in August of 1876. Treaty 6 was signed in Fort Carlton Saskatchewan, near a river the Aboriginal people called ka-kisiskaciwan, with around two thousand Plains Cree, Woodland Cree, and Assiniboines peoples present (“Treaty 6”, 2005). Aboriginal peoples of the West were dying from smallpox and their buffalo were down to two known herds in the Cypress Hills (“Treaty 6 education”, 2015), this resulted in additional clauses unique to treaty 6; the Medicine Chest clause, symbolic as it represents Canada’s responsibility to care for the health and wellness of the Indigenous peoples in perpetuity, and the Pestilence

The Papaschase band was originally entitled to 124 square kilometers of highly sought after land, now known to be South Edmonton. That land was then reduced to 103.6 square kilometers, then lost entirely to a questionable document signed by three men in November 19, 1888. The band was forced to leave their land and join the Enoch reserve (“Aboriginal History Documents”, 2015) and the remaining money made from their land was given directly to the Enoch band. The Michel Band, who were entitled to 103.6 square kilometers northwest of Edmonton, was the only reported case of an entire band enfranchised in March, 1958 (“Aboriginal Rights”,

The Blackfoot interpreter, Jerry Potts, was replaced by a government interpreter, James Bird, due to overly summarizing the English language; translation issues continued with the lack of language equivalency (“Treaty 6”, 2005). With the signing of the treaty the government received 130000 square kilometers of Blackfoot territory for development, and the Blackfoot confederation relinquished their nomadic way of life for permanent reservation living and European style agriculture; it is in present day debate whether Aboriginal negotiations were drawn as there are no signed names of any chiefs on the official treaty document, and the spoken word history of treaty 7 contradicts a good portion of the legal document (Taylor,