We Are All Treaty People

Overview

Many people think of treaty rights as “special” indigenous rights however, all people living in Canada are treaty people with their own set of rights and responsibilities.

Treaties are a foundational part of Canadian society. Every road, house, building or business that exists today in a treaty area was made possible because of a treaty.

The existence of treaties is proof that the first settlers of what is now Canada respected First Nations as sovereign people and negotiated Nation to Nation.

By understanding the colonial history of Canada we can renew our relationships with each other and move towards meaningful reconciliation.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this module, learners should be able to:

Describe a treaty and how it benefits indigenous populations and Canadians/settlers, diasporic populations and newcomers.
Detail their own rights and responsibilities as a treaty person and understand the conditions upon which they have agreed to share the land with the Nations who were here first.
Understand the settler role in colonialism and how Canadians today are still benefitting from it.

Module Topics

You will explore the following topics in this module:

1.What is a treaty? Who are treaty people?
2.Treaties pre-contact
3.Treaties early contact
4.Treaties in the Colonial era
5.Treaty Relations Today
6.Suggested Activities
7.Resources for further learning

Resource List

Module indigenous worldviews plain text file
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 – http://apr.thompsonbooks.com/vols/APR_Vol_7Ch2.pdf
New Map of Quebec after Royal Proclamation of 1763 – http://data2.archives.ca/nmc/n0021405k.pdf
White Paper on Indian Policy – http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/301/inac-ainc/indian_policy-e/cp1969_e.pdf
White Paper on Indian Policy – http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/the-white-paper-1969.html

Indigenous Education Resources by Jean-Paul Restoule is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/abed101/. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/abed101/.