Treaty Relations

���WE���RE TRYING TO DEVELOP CRITICAL THINKERS,��� HENDERSON SAID. ���INSTEAD OF SAYING A LOT OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE ARE POOR, WE���RE SAYING, ���THERE���S AN ISSUE HERE, SOMETHING CHANGED, SOMETHING HAPPENED WHEN CANADA HAPPENED THAT FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE���. made in Treaties, students such as Mitchell Cunningham gained a greater understanding of how the Idle No More protesters feel. ���The thing that I found most interesting about the Indian Act is that if you look back throughout all the other Treaties, each one of them makes all these promises,��� Mitchell said. ���And as you go through time the promises get smaller and smaller and smaller and what���s being granted them seemingly gets eroded by people who said that they would give it to them, people with power. The Indian Act is just a culmination of all the mistreatment that First Nations people have had to��endure.��� The students found the differences between how Indigenous people and the Canadian government interpreted and continue to interpret documents such as Treaties has had long-lasting implications on the relationships between the signatories. ���What we���ve been learning about is the documents meant something completely different than how they���re interpreted now,��� said Fennell. ���When the Treaties were signed, they were meant as good will, almost as a sign of friendship between the Indigenous people and the settlers, though the settlers thought it was bureaucracy and a business deal,��� Stephanie said. ���To the aboriginal people it seemed completely different and I think that we���re still learning about that and dealing with that discrepancy between whether it���s friendship or if it���s just business.��� Studying Idle No More has helped the students at the elite school develop a more informed view of Indigenous people and the issues affecting them. ���We haven���t experienced these kinds of issues firsthand,��� Mitchell said. ���It was obvious based on the perceptions some of the students, when we started talking about this is- THE STUDENTS FOUND sue, that it might be THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN because we are SJR HOW INDIGENOUS PEOPLE students that we don���t necessarily AND THE CANADIAN see the issue as GOVERNMENT INTERPRETED real.��� AND CONTINUE TO INTERPRET Social studies teacher DOCUMENTS SUCH AS Matt HenderTREATIES HAS HAD LONGson sees the LASTING IMPLICATIONS ON emergence of the Idle No More THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN movement not THE SIGNATORIES. only as a significant historical event but as an amazing way to explore Canada���s complex and ever-changing relationship with its first people. beautiful opportunity to deconstruct ���We���re trying to develop critical something like this. If the problem is thinkers,��� Henderson said. ���Instead of between how the Canadian governsaying a lot of Indigenous people are ment and Canadians perceive the poor, we���re saying, ���There���s an issue relationship with Indigenous people, here, something changed, something that might be the problem, so then happened when Canada happened how do you fix it? How do you inthat fundamentally changed the re- clude Indigenous people into this enlationship between the government terprise we call Canada?��� and Indigenous people���. Henderson and his students��� ���This is unprecedented and it���s so work on Idle No More and complex. I don���t understand it, the other issues can be found kids don���t understand it, their par- on his blog at http:// ents don���t understand it and so it���s a hendersonsjr.blogspot.com. ��� Pursue CANADIAN MENNONITE UNIVERSITY For the Crown and its subjects, the Royal Proclamation provided legal principles for Treaty-making between the Crown and First Nations. However, First Nations had their own process of Treatymaking that had existed for thousands of years. Although, the ceremony and the items used within the First Nations��� Treaty-making process may differ from culture to culture it followed the general format of introductions, giftgiving, time spent getting to know each other, negotiations and the formalization of the Treaty through ceremony, usually involving the smoking of a pipe. After the pipe ceremony, the Treaty would then be seen as a tri-party agreement between the two parties with the Creator as a witness. These actions were seen as relationship-building by many First Nations��� cultures and were used by Western European traders, settlers and Treaty Commissioners in order to establish protocols between First Nation and non-First Nation parties. Seek Peace Justice FIRST NATION TREATY-MAKING cmu.ca 29 trcm.ca

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