Treaty 6 is a contract made in 1876 between Indigenous bands, including the Cree, Ojibwa and Assiniboine and the Canadian monarchy. The agreement overviewed the ownership and uses of land in Central Alberta and Saskatchewan. The indigenous people ceded their land to the use of the monarchy, in exchange for settlements including annual payments, farming tools, land reserves, and health supplies. It can be said that the written text of Treaty 6 conveys only part of its complex meaning. This notion is explored through the ideas and stories from Sharon H. Venne, Calvin Bruneau of the Papaschase Cree, and from the treaty text itself. On the surface, the Treaty appears to be a mutualistic agreement between two equal parties, with the best interest …show more content…
Although he had lived in the Edmonton area his entire life, he did not find out until the late 1990’s that he, along with many other Indigenous people, were living on a land that actually belonged to them. His initial lack of awareness of his rights indicates that entitlements of Indigenous people have been suppressed for a long period of time. After he further explored the treaty itself, he has found many issues with it, including him and his people not getting the benefits they are legally entitled to according to the treaty, including farming supplies and medical care. Although he has discussed these breaches in the contract with government officials, he mentioned that he has been unsuccessful in getting them to fulfill their legal obligation. Chief Bruneau also discovered that the Treaty 6 land that currently his people currently reside on is not truly the land that the Indigenous people picked for themselves, regardless of the fact that Treaty 6 specifies that the Indigenous people themselves could choose the land that they wanted to be their reserve. He later learned that this is because after the First Nations people had picked their land for the Treaty, Edmonton settlers didn't want to be near them so the reserve lands were moved without permission from the Indigenous
The Indian Act is a combination of multiple legislations regarding the Aboriginal people who reside across Canada, such as the Gradual Civilization Act of 1857 and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869 (Hanson, n.p.). The Gradual Civilization Act was the Canadian government's attempt to assimilate the aboriginals into the Canadian society in a passive manner, through a method they encouraged called Enfranchisement. Enfranchisement is basically a legal process that allows aboriginals to give up their aboriginal status and accept a Canadian status (Crey, n.p.). This process, while under the Gradual Civilization Act, was still voluntary, but became a forced process when the Indian Act was consolidated in 1876 (Hanson, n.p.). The Gradual Enfranchisement Act introduced in 1869 was a major legislation that intruded with the private lives of the aboriginals. First, it established the “elective band council system” (Hanson, n.p.) that grants th...
Steckley, J., & Cummins, B. D. (2008). Full circle: Canada's First Nations (2nd ed.). Toronto:
Unfortunately, this agreement was never reached at when two provinces, Newfoundland and Manitoba, failed to ratify it within the three year period that ended on June 1990 (Parkinson 1). These five conditions included the guaranteeing of Quebec a special status as a distinct society, increasing its provin...
To begin Sprague argues that the Canadian Government disingenuously mismanaged Metis land organization. Sprague states that evidence of this can be seen in the Canadian government not allowing the Lieutenant Governor Adams G. Archibald to make changes to Section 31 and 32 of the Manitoba Act. Archibald proposed the government grant outlined in Section 31 should allocate each person of Aboriginal ancestry an allotment of “140 acres” (pg.75) of land. Archibald also suggested that the location of these allotments be in close proximity so as to “not disperse families throughout the province” (Pg. 75). Lastly Archibald proposed a suggestion in carrying out Section 32 which insured that land owned was not jeopardized during the process of confederacy. He recommended that Manitoba be recognized as an independent province such that affairs including land ownership would be dealt with on a provincial level. Therefore as Sprague argues Archibald’s words were not taken into consideration by both the governments of John A. Macdonald and Alexa...
The Grassy Narrows (Asubpeeschoseewagong) First Nation is an Ojibwa First Nation located north of Kenora, ON. The community has been fighting against environmental injustices imposed on them from various actors over the last 40 years (Rodgers, 2009, para. 10), involving issues with mercury poisoned fish (para. 1) clear cutting of their lands (para. 27) and subsequent degradation of their land, water and food sources. This essay will detail the environmental justice struggles of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, point out the unfair treatment and environmental racism they have been subject to and will also question the role that authority, power and litigation have played within the community.
To start off, I’ll be writing about the life of people in British North America and its significance towards unifying Canada, as well as background knowledge of conflicts that existed. Life in British North America was changing at an alarming rate. New technology and services were being introduced such as railways and steamships. Industries such as building, producing and farming were being introduced. This was in part due to the many immigrants from Britain and France who’d settled. This was dreadful for the First Nations as their land had been taken away even more so than before. More resources were needed for the growing crowd so trade agreements were made. As more people came, the First Nations were even more distanced from the Europeans. Meanwhile, the French and the British wanted the other’s culture to be erased from the
Systems: The canadian Future in light of the American Past.” Ontario native Council on Justice. Toronto, Ontario.
The journey for the Aboriginals to receive the right to keep and negotiate land claims with the Canadian government was long but prosperous. Before the 1970's the federal government chose not to preform their responsibilities involving Aboriginal issues, this created an extremely inefficient way for the Aboriginals to deal with their land right problems. The land claims created by the Canadian government benefited the aboriginals as shown through the Calder Case, the creation of the Office of Native Claims and the policy of Outstanding Business.
“In about half of the Dominion, the aboriginal rights of Indians have arguably been extinguished by treaty” (Sanders, 13). The traditions and culture of Aboriginals are vanishing at a quick pace, and along it is their wealth. If the Canadian Government restore Native rights over resource development once again, Aboriginals would be able to gain back wealth and help with the poverty in their societies. “An influential lobby group with close ties to the federal Conservatives is recommending that Ottawa ditch the Indian Act and give First Nations more control over their land in order to end aboriginal poverty once and for all” (End First). This recommendation would increase the income within Native communities, helping them jump out of
This saw that the RP would be part of a treaty, an agreement made between two powers that would be acted under international law, between the Crown and Aboriginals in Niagara. But having all the paperwork written up by the Crown, the Aboriginals had little understanding of this, and so the crown was able to ignore First Nation participation since the First Nation community had used other methods such as speeches, physical symbols, and other conduct to interpret the RP. (Borrows,
Canada likes to paint an image of peace, justice and equality for all, when, in reality, the treatment of Aboriginal peoples in our country has been anything but. Laden with incomprehensible assimilation and destruction, the history of Canada is a shameful story of dismantlement of Indian rights, of blatant lies and mistrust, and of complete lack of interest in the well-being of First Nations peoples. Though some breakthroughs were made over the years, the overall arching story fits into Cardinal’s description exactly. “Clearly something must be done,” states Murray Sinclair (p. 184, 1994). And that ‘something’ he refers to is drastic change. It is evident, therefore, that Harold Cardinal’s statement is an accurate summarization of the Indigenous/non-Indigenous relationship in
which infers working towards a goal in harmony. The Maastricht Treaty sounds like an ideal proposal on paper, but in reality it can't work. In order to adopt the treaty several countries will have to make sacrifices. The sacrificial. Nobody likes to make sacrifices.
It was during this time that the first obstacles to the government's progress first surfaced. The Métis people began to fear for their culture, rights and their lands as colonists sta...
In international law, diplomatic negotiations are the primary means of peaceful settlement of disputes between states, which consists of direct discussions. In this research paper we are presenting these negotiations to reach to a fully understanding of the concept as well as its importance and the way things work in international politics.
The lives and prosperity of millions of people depend on peace and, in turn, peace depends on treaties - fragile documents that must do more than end wars. Negotiations and peace treaties may lead to decades of cooperation during which disputes between nations are resolved without military action and economic cost, or may prolong or even intensify the grievances which provoked conflict in the first place. In 1996, as Canada and the United States celebrated their mutual boundary as the longest undefended border in the world, Greece and Turkey nearly came to blows over a rocky island so small it scarcely had space for a flagpole.1 Both territorial questions had been raised as issues in peace treaties. The Treaty of Ghent in 1815 set the framework for the resolution of Canadian-American territorial questions. The Treaty of Sevres in 1920, between the Sultan and the victorious Allies of World War I, dismantled the remnants of the Ottoman Empire and distributed its territories. Examination of the terms and consequences of the two treaties clearly establishes that a successful treaty must provide more than the absence of war.