My Grandmothers, Laura and Lavine, were both born in 1911 in Minnesota to Norwegian immigrants who then applied for homesteads in Southern Saskatchewan: the Johnsons, my dad's grandparents, moving to Ongre; the Jelsings', my mother's grandparents, moving to Blooming in the Lake Alma area. Grandma Lavine's relatives found us after Grandma and Grandpa made two trips to Norway looking for them. Since then, the cousins have visitied us in Canada, and Mom, Dad, Ian and Andrea have been to Norway a few times.
My Grandpa Pete Muirhead, Dad's dad, his mother was a Macdonald. She was the first white baby born down in the Estevan area, I'm thinking in the late 1800's because Grandpa was born in 1909. For sure there is Scottish in this lineage, but I'm not sure when they entered Canada. I remember Uncle Jack saying something about Pennsylvania Dutch from the States, but I'm not always good at remembering the facts. Grandpa Pete's father was straight from Ireland, and again, I'm thinking he came to Canada in the late 1800's. I visited our County Antrim Moorehead relatives in 1988 and saw the 1600 and 1700 graveyards with the original spelling, Muirhead, which our Canadian relatives have kept.
My Grandpa Cecil Bailey, his people have been in Canada, specifically Ontario, for at least six generations. We have County Antrim, Ireland connections on the Bailey side. We have Southern England on the Cann side. One of Grandpa's grandfathers -- Reynolds, I think -- was an Anglican minister and highly educated; he was also black. I don't know his story.
So here's my evidence that I am a treaty person. Grandmas Laura and Lavine and Grandpa Pete all entered Canada under the rights of Treaty Four (1874). From some quick internet research, it looks like Grandpa Cecil's people, whose farm bordered Thessalon First Nation, were part of the Robinson Huron Treaty (1850). Our identity as Canadians is rooted, deep like wheat roots, in treaty.
Just this morning, I've read through Jim Sinclair's speech on the "Current State of Treaty Implementation in Saskatchewan". His words, especially in the following quote, have touched me deeply. "The Treaty should be like an old family bible whose pages are worn and hard to read because we should look at it on a daily basis and consider how to build a future on our Treaties." I think about my Grandparents, four strong. Each of them were students of the bible. Each of them were blessed by treaty. As a devoted Granddaughter, how do I walk my treaty road?
Current State of Treaty Implementation in Saskatchewan
Jim Sinclair:
Treaty 4 Elders Council
What happens if we don’t have a bureaucracy to carry on the good things
that the Chiefs bring forward? We become
less than governments and become regimes. Every time you bring in a new regime, especially
if you have elections every 2 years, they could throw out everything the last
Chief and Council did and start brand new. I always wondered why we do that because every
Chief that comes into power has something good to say and something good to do.
As we move on to the next
administration, we should carry on and build on those good things.
We have had enough of consultants and advisors. Our consultants are our people on the reserves
and in the urban centres. That’s who we
need to engage and to talk to for advice.
That will make or break our future. That’s who we have to talk to in order to
rebuild, not lawyers and consultants.
I’ll tell you why we have to rebuild. When you look at the Indian Act that was passed shortly after Treaty was made, you will
see that it was meant to destroy First Nations people. That was never the spirit and intent of the Treaties.
We were meant to continue our way of
life, which included self-government. That
was taken away by the Indian Act, the
Indian Agents and the North West Mounted Police. We must reclaim that right of self-government.
What we are really here to talk about today is how the Treaty terms
respect rights and our sovereignty. Treaty
was never about real estate and selling land. It was a about sharing our lands and
resources, but never giving them up.
And then they turned this into a prison system. Those of you out there who believe we are not
living in a prison system should take a look at what the Indian Act has done to us. They
took our traditional lands and put us on small reservations and those
reservations became like prison camps. Those
that didn’t sign Treaty were literally thrown out from the land. It was people like me and my great
grandparents who had to live in the road allowances. Those were the half breeds and they said: “You didn’t sign Treaty, we don’t know you,
you’re nobody, you’ll never be anybody, we don’t recognize you, you’re not in
existence.” Of course a war came and all
of a sudden we became a people who they could depend on and we went to war
beside the Treaty Indians.
So the Indian Act became a set
of prison regulations. It allowed the
Agent, the priest and the Northwest Mounted Police to take our children away
and force them into the boarding schools. They did not educate them. They brainwashed them to work in the barns
and the gardens or wherever they needed them, but did not provide an education. The Northwest Mounted Police/RCMP picked up
the children who were crying and hanging on to their mothers. The Indian Agent was there with the Farm
Instructor, forcing them to school. Many
children died trying to run away from the school. Many others died from sickness in an
overcrowded, unhealthy institution.
That was the worst prison system in Canada. The worst part of it was the fact that they
took our economy away from us. They
killed all the buffalo first and took our economy away from us. They said you can hunt and gather anywhere you
want, and then they took our land away from us. Then we had to live on welfare. Welfare created dependency and is one of the
worst thing that happened to us. How do
we get out of that prison system when they took away all our resources? That’s the struggle we have today. How we going to gain our liberation and freedom?
Our people have been floundering for many years because our Leaders sort
of put our Treaties aside. People told
us the Treaties are of no value and that the Indian Act is going to look after us. We pushed the Treaties aside and had to live
under the Indian Act. They started to feed us and you know what
happens when someone starts to feed you. You become dependent on someone else. So we recognize our problems and now know that
we have to build our own governance structures, regain whatever we can, including
the use of our lands and resources.
Canada has no right to go internationally and brag about how well they
treat our people. They go and talk about
human rights in other countries but they don’t practice them here. They took away our economic rights, which is
the worst kind of racism. Canada should
be brought before the International Court for violation of our rights. They should be the ones answering about crimes
against humanity because they have committed those crimes and we let them get away
with it.
So we have a lot of building to do. We have to build an economy. In order to build an economy we have to have
control of our resources. People talk
about wealth distribution. That’s what
we hear from governments. Wealth
distribution for us today seems to be the prison system and the welfare system.
Other people are getting wealthy on the
misery of our people. We want to get to where we have wealth
creation, based on building our own wealth from our own resources and our own
economy. We have to do that to look
after our own people, to build our own institutions and to do the things Sol is
talking about.
I have great concerns about the federal budget when there is a lot more
money allocated to building more prisons to support a new crime Bill that
experts from around the world have said will not work. They tried it in Texas and California. Those people wrote to Harper and said that “getting
tough on crime” Bill is a costly failure. There is precious little money for education,
training and economic development but there is money to build more prisons.
We have a job to do and the only people that are ever going to do it are
us. The problem I have is that many of
us don’t trust our own people and without trust in our people, the people in
turn will never trust our organizations. The people we want to talk to are the Chiefs
that are around here, but also those people at the back of the room who we need
to get involved. This is a small meeting
but the people that are here today are very, very important because these are
the people that are going to build a road to the future.
When we first met Trudeau he gave us the finger. In the end he said go home and make your own
laws, don’t come crying to me. Do you
know why he said that? He said that
because we educated him. He wouldn’t
have said that if we didn’t go bang on his door, stand on his doorstep and
speak to him. We educated him through
meeting after meeting with him, his ministers and other Prime Ministers after
him.
That door was always open for us because we had power from our own
people. Now we need that power back from
our people sitting back there. How are
we going to get it? We’re going to get
that power by opening the door and taking this meeting and broadening it out to
a bigger room where every one of our First Nations people from Saskatoon and
other communities can come in this room, talk to us and tell us how and why we
should be supporting them in bettering their lives. We must give them reason to support us. That’s what we have to do. The people sitting back there – Jake Pete,
the Treaty 4 Elders Council, George Munro, Marian Meadmore – have great
experience and are willing to help. Somebody
has to open that door and bring them around these tables.
We’ve had several meetings over the last 10 years where we talked about Treaty
implementation. The Treaty 4 Chiefs
Council and Elders Council talked about our own governance model. The Treaty 4 Governance Center should be a
place where we debate the issues, where we make laws, where we put those laws
in place and where we live by those laws. Then we’ll become the Nation we’re supposed to
be. The Treaty was never meant to be
hidden away somewhere after it was made. The Treaty should be like an old family bible
whose pages are worn and hard to read because we should look at it on a daily
basis and consider how to build a future on our Treaties. We have to do that with our young people and
with our members.
I was on an Advisory Council with Denton George, Irvin Starblanket,
Richard Poorman and Isadore Day from Ontario. We had guys like Lawrence Tobacco
and Sidney Buffalo sitting back there who spoke up. Many of our Elders are gone, but their words
and thoughts still guide us in our work.
We also had some meetings in the west where we talked about Treaties 1
to 11. There was a round table in the
east where they talked about the Peace and Friendship Treaties. The AFN organized those forums. Then we had As Long As The Sun Shines conference in 2008 in Saskatoon. That’s the first conference we had based
entirely on Treaty. The Minister of
Indian Affairs came here to Saskatoon and for the first time had to speak on Treaty.
That was set up by Chief Lawrence Joseph
and all the Chiefs of the province and Chiefs from across the Nation were
invited. That put us on the road to the
next step – our Treaty Principles.
We wrote these 10 Treaty principles – Dr. Dave Ahenakew, Rodney Soonias,
Sid Fiddler and I. We still have these
discussions today when I get up and speak about Treaty implementation. Somebody says that’s the wrong word. If I speak about Treaty protection – I don’t
like that word either. But if you notice
in this book of the 10 principles, whenever someone couldn’t understand, it was
put into Cree words. Rodney reminded us
at that time that if you build on this in the future, it has to be more than
one language so that we clearly understand the principles and our people
understand them. This is our vision and
we can build on that.
Then comes the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples. I know people that have worked
on this for 30 years. I worked on this. I went to Geneva and saw people camped out and
demonstrating. They included members of
the old AIM movement but also some of your neighbours, grandfathers and uncles.
Those people worked hard to make our Treaties
international again and to keep them alive.
After the As Long as the Sun
Shines conference, we began sitting down with the AFN and having serious
discussions on Treaty implementation. The FSIN became holder of the Treaty file at
the national level so that is now passed on to Vice Chief Watson, who is in
charge of that file. That was part of
the Crown-First Nations gathering. Our ideas from that conference went into the
presentations to the Prime Minister and into Ovide’s presentation to the
country on behalf of Treaties 1 to 11.
We had a very important meeting in Edmonton a few years back. There were 500 Elders there to speak. The Elders told the Chiefs to work with the
AFN because we don’t need fighting at this time. If we fight each other, we’re committing
suicide on the way to the gallows. We
want to stay alive and we want to support our Leaders. We want to be sharp. We don’t want to be running down each other. We want to debate the issues in a good way.
So we decided to go to the AFN to work out a solution so that Treaty 1
to 11 could be recognized. Ovide made it
very clear to Shawn Atleo that the AFN cannot speak for the Treaty people, but
that Treaty chiefs have to speak for themselves. Atleo sat back, thought about it for a while,
and said, “You’re right, the AFN is not a holder of Treaties.”
I thought, well, we got a truce, let’s move on. Shawn said, “I will open the doors for you
wherever I can but I will not speak for you.” Ovide and I felt that was fair. So when the Crown-First Nation gathering was
held, our spokespeople did very well. Matthew
Coon Come talked about the economy and how it should be Treaty controlled and
how it’s ours through our sovereignty. Jody
Wilson from BC told us how to put things together from the perspective of
self-determination. Ovide spoke about Treaty
1 to 11 and why we have to move on Treaty implementation, to take control of
our future for our own good and to benefit all of Canada.
I listened to APTN after the meeting. I heard we’re going to come back next year and
have another meeting. I thought, that
wasn’t what we said. We said we want a
process where we will continue to talk about how we exercise our sovereignty,
how we will put the economy into place, how we will have regional tables on
health, education and justice. Chiefs
and everybody will build those tables over the next year so that when we all go
to Ottawa and meet with the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, we’re not going to
go there and fight with each other about who’s going to be the spokesperson
because everyone will have input all this summer at various meetings and tables
throughout this country. That will
include minsters from Ottawa, from Saskatchewan, wherever we need them. It may include the Governor General,
hopefully, when we meet in Manitoba at the next Treaty 1 to 11 meeting in
September.
We need that system to keep the Treaty alive. We have to do that and if we don’t do it we’re
dead. You can’t get from point A to
point B without a process. And if we
have to argue about something it should be the process not the principles. The process must be about how we’re going to
make our rights happen from that Treaty and how we’re going to put them into
action.
We need to keep unity now. To be
a leader you need to get support from the people. You have to give them reason to support you. Youth will present ideas. In the past, it was the college students that
put pressure on the establishment when they had the opportunity to speak up.
There’s no way out of our poverty and out of our misery unless we build
an economy. The First Nations can help
each other build an economy by sharing experiences, resources, and best
practices and by making agreements with each other. We must build the economic institutions,
whether they are training centers or investment funds. We have to get out and begin making laws. Every year we need to have a progress report.
We have to listen to the people. We have to sit down with our learning
institutions and the corporations that have the jobs must come and talk to us. They must put their money in our training
institutions to train our people for the jobs.
Obama wants the corporations to come in and train the people. What the hell is the premier of Saskatchewan
going to Ireland for? Premier Wall spoke
a few months ago and said very clearly, “I recognize the First Nations as
sovereign Nations.” No one acted on
that. He said FSIN is not a party to Treaty.
Ok, so what? They’re still spokespeople for the First
Nation Leaders, delegated that responsibility by the Chiefs-in-Assembly.
We have a lot of work to do. Before we leave, we must at least have a framework for where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. The Prime Minister opened the door on January 24. We have 8 years to educate this Prime Minister so we can advance our rights. The other suggestion that I hear people saying is to bypass this Prime Minister and this government and go straight to the international arena. If we do that we’re bypassing our Treaty partner and we can’t do that either. We have to deal with the state. We have to deal with Canada. Let’s deal with them from a position of strength based on unity and planning. We can’t call direct action by the term “civil disobedience” because that means we are subjects of Canada. Direct action means developing our laws and asserting our jurisdiction and sovereignty. We can get support from the corporations.
page 32-36, excerpt from
Chiefs' Forum on Treaty Implementation
Dakota Dunes Casino and Conference Center
March 29 & 30, 2012
shared as public document with permission from
Dan Bellegarde, Executive Director, Treaty Governance Office
CD of Chiefs' Forum on treaty Implementation available for $5.00
or free transcript is available
by contacting Dan Bellegarde at Dan.Bellegarde@fsin.com
