Treaty making is older
than Canada.
Long before European contact, Indigenous nations engaged in diplomacy with one another — and with the land. This canon of diplomacy stretches back thousands of years and has been a universal phenomenon among Indigenous peoples. Given the scale and scope of Indigenous-led treaty-making, it cannot be captured fully in the Treaty Map — or any map.
It is important to contextualize Indigenous perspectives on the eras of treaty-making in the Treaty Map. This contextualization requires an understanding of Indigenous values, approaches, and expectations flowing from treaties made with the land, each other, and early settlers: a period of diplomacy with enduring influence, even through waves of colonization.
The first treaties were
with the land.
Our oldest stories are about relationships with the deer, the moose, and the beaver, among others.
The treaty between the Anishinaabe and the deer and the moose sought to repair the harm from overhunting; the treaty with the beaver was about knowledge exchange around childcare. Each ascribed agency and self-determination to these animals, as treaties between equals designed to promote sharing, respect, and mutual autonomy.
This type of treaty informed Indigenous political, social and economic organization more generally and would inform the treaties Indigenous people made among themselves.
As long as the grass grows,
as long as the world stands.
With conflict on “national” scales occasionally emerging, the primary tool to address that conflict was the treaty.
In the Great Lakes region, the Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee managed waves of friction with well-worn diplomatic concepts such as the “mat” or the “bowl,” which made their way into treaties, such as the Dish with One Spoon, covering what’s now Southern Ontario.
Treaties reflected a world where diverse communities would share a geography if they collectively worked towards co-managing the contents of the bowl or dish, “as long as the grass grows” or “the world stands.”
These types of treaties were graphically represented on wampum belts, beadwork, as well as birch bark scrolls, pictographs and petroglyphs, masks, totem poles, “winter counts,” and so on.
Treaties affirmed self-determination and mutual support.
As settlers arrived in the Maritimes and Great Lakes, Indigenous treaty-making was extended in the form of ceremony, gift-giving, and adoption.
The Mi’kmaq and Haudenosaunee each recorded dozens of agreements in the late 1500s and early 1600s – perhaps the most well-known of which was the Two Row Wampum between the Mohawk and the Dutch and the Covenant Chain between the broader Haudenosaunee and the English.
Like the earlier examples of Indigenous inter-national treaties, these agreements affirmed self-determination, mutual support, and sometimes economic and military alliances.
As colonization proceeded westward, agreements between and among Indigenous people against settler encroachment became increasingly common.
Indigenous treaty alliances
The Iron Confederacy, also known as the Nêhiyaw-Pwat, emerged in the late 1800s to unite the distinct Plains nations – Cree, Saulteaux, Assiniboine, and eventually Stoney, Nakoda, and Métis – to defend their shared and exclusive lands and resources.
Lasting nearly 100 years, the Confederacy governed via an inter-tribal Council and upheld a balance of mutual autonomy and shared responsibility for land management.
In 1850, the Heiltsuk and Haida Nations worked to resolve conflict among themselves - exacerbated by colonial encroachment - and turned their attention to defending and sharing the management of their collective lands and waters.
Resisting colonial interpretations
These latter examples unfolded simultaneously with the pre-Confederation and Confederation treaty eras but stood in opposition to them.
They reaffirmed Indigenous expectations of treaties – expectations that were excused, rejected, or intentionally misrepresented to push a vision of Canada based on exclusive sovereignty, dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ lands and resources, and an ignorance of the land’s agency.
Indigenous treaty-making
endures.
As the Treaty Map demonstrates, Indigenous people have continued to challenge narrow, colonial interpretations in each of the treaty eras and push for alternatives. They also continue to make treaties among themselves and the land in contemporary Canada and beyond.
In 2014, thirteen nations across the USA and Canada negotiated “The Buffalo Treaty,” with the shared goal of restoring buffalo habitat on over six million acres of land and through a governance framework that privileged a reciprocal and spiritual relationships between people, buffalo, and the land.
In 2000, Blackfoot Nations divided by the Canada-US international border sought to renew their historic relationships and to re-establish a united political community.
Also, in 2000, nine B.C.-based First Nations came together to establish a collaborative governance framework to support the conservation of the Great Bear Rainforest.
There have also been efforts among the Cree and Inuit, Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabeg, and many others, to revitalize Indigenous treaty-making and diplomatic protocols.
What is our Treaty Future?
Whether historic or contemporary, Indigenous treaty-making has always been rooted in long-term commitments to shared responsibility and shared sovereignty — principles repeated by Indigenous negotiators through treaty diplomacy. Despite Canada's failure to honour these principles, they are the foundation of our treaty future.
CREDITS
TEXT
Hayden King
Anishinaabe
Beausoleil First Nation
ILLUSTRATIONS
Tsista Kennedy
Anishinaabe Onyota’a:aka
Beausoleil First Nation and
Oneida Nation of the Thames
STAR ILLUSTRATIONS
Michelle Sound
Cree and Métis
Wapsewsipi Swan River First Nation
DESIGN & ANIMATION
Anita Sekharan
Anita Sekharan
PRODUCTION
Kelsi-Leigh Balaban
Métis
Kelsi-Leigh Balaban
Métis
Yumi Numata