Trust, Truth and Treaties (ep 276)

Hello, I'm Rick Harp. From Winnipeg, this is Media Indigenous Episode 276. On this week's Indigenous Roundtable, closing the gap. No, not that slogan once popularized by the AFN, I'm talking the gap, the gulf, really in understanding between settlers and first nations people when it comes to treaties. Are they a profound living covenants and trining the respective rights and mutual responsibilities of two autonomous parties or B, irrevocable terms of surrender and subordination, extinguishing forever any and all Indigenous claims to their lands, waters and independence? Well, if you picked B, you might have a future working for CBC Kids. The Junior Wing of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Yes, sir, the state funded outlet sure riled some folks up the other day when it hosted a debate about whether Indigenous peoples should even get land back. In the process, asserting treaties were all about first nations losing their lands and rights. In a moment, we'll discuss the persistence and perils of such noxious notions if the ideas internalized by kids of all ages. But first, let's thank those who make our program possible, our patrons on Patreon. And that includes newer patrons like Cindy, now pledging $5 every month and lending. Now coming in at $7 each and every month. So coming in with their one time contributions via Interak are Nadia and Gervier, each sending in $50, contributing $100 each, or Cassandra, someone who prefers to remain anonymous, as well as the tag team of Brian and Rebecca, who at this note, we learn a lot from your work and are very appreciative. Well gang, we appreciate you. And as you can see, there's lots of ways to keep our podcasts going. Find out how by heading over to mediaindiginat.com/support. And joining me at the round table this time around are in Edmonton, its Ken Williams, assistant professor with the University of Alberta's Department of Drama, Kenneth. Hello Rick. And joining us as our special guest from Saskatoon, its Sheldon Kuzewski, author of No Surrender, The Land Remains Indigenous. He's also Director of Research at the Office of the Treaty Commissioner in Saskatchewan, as well as adjunct faculty in Indigenous studies at the U of S. Sheldon, dancing. Our topic this week takes us to the Land of CBC Kids, specifically CBC Kids News. Self-described as real news for real kids. You're trusted daily source for the news, pop culture and sports stories that Canadian kids want to know. And among the recurring segments, something they've entitled Why or Why Not. Here's how it works. Quote each week we present you with a question based on a topic in the news and showcase the best answers on our website the following week. Once your answer featured, read carefully, think thoughtfully, and write us your best answer. So for example, they've asked kids questions like, do you wear a poppy for Remembrance Day? Why or why not? Do you think about where your gifts come from? Why or why not? Well, guess what they asked kids to weigh in on a couple of weeks ago. I'll tell you what they asked, should land be given back to Indigenous people? Why or why not? Now just before we get into the guts of this debate, as constructed by some of the I presume grownups behind CBC Kids News, the story did not come with a byline attached. I thought we might start by just getting into how the question itself was framed and posed. Ken, let's start with you. What were your thoughts on that? Well, it's one of those things that's really reductive. You're trying to, you know, break it down to something extremely simple and simplistic. And in one sense, it's actually, it does actually talk down to children in a way when it does that because it's like, hey, if someone stole your lunch, should they give it back, yes or no? What would the children's answer be? If someone lied to you and said they're going to share your lunch, but they didn't, should they give it back to you? Yes or no? I'm pretty sure the answer would be also be pretty clear, you know, but, you know, maybe that is that that is also me being reductive. I'm guilty of that, but it's insulting and how they try to approach it because I do believe children should be involved in this conversation, but you don't go yes or no questions immediately. You know, it's a children do understand complexity. They do understand nuance and, you know, give them that and let them discuss it. I think would have been a far better approach, but this whole simplistic yes or no land back is not conducive to that. Yeah, it does certainly raise the question, a perennial question. Do some questions lend themselves to, to such a debate format, you know, in this reductive way, yay or nay? I mean, that said, they could have asked should Canada continue to forcibly occupy unseated indigenous lands, but, um, Sheldon, how about you? How, um, helpful did you find the way this question was posed? Yeah, not helpful at all. I'd have to agree with, with Ken. Initially, I thought it was quite disingenuous. The whole land back isn't even really a thing since the beginning of specific claims in Canada and things like tree land entitlement, which we had in Saskatchewan, and we also had in Manitoba. Whenever there is an issue with land and indigenous peoples, it's always dealt with through compensation. It's never dealt with specifically for land. And the compensation is always paid for the purchase of land, and it's on a willing cell, a willing buyer system, but, um, yeah, appropriation or land back, it just isn't a possibility. All right. Now, of course, it's not just the question people took issue with, uh, to help their readers along. CBC Kids staff also wrote the following short supporting text, much of which we should note is somewhat straightforward. And yet, portions of which are maybe not as careful and thoughtful as it like kids, uh, responses to be. And, uh, despite the story's subsequent removal from CBC's website, more on that later, I did manage to find an archived copy via a handy dandy tool, uh, known as the way back machine. Here's how the piece starts. We've all heard about land acknowledgments in school, recognizing and honoring the land known as Canada that was originally occupied by indigenous peoples. But what about giving that land back? It's something that some experts and politicians are suggesting non-indigenous people do in order to heal the broken relationship between First Nations, Inuit and MAT, and non-indigenous people in Canada. Then there's a subsection called the back story. The country now known as Canada was originally inhabited by indigenous people, many of whom entered into treaty agreements with non-indigenous people. These treaties meant indigenous people lost their land, and many of their rights in exchange for money and other privileges. So why don't I pause here? Because, uh, I think that line I just read is the one that really seemed to raise the iron of folks, not least UBCIC, whose comments we may get into later, but Sheldon, you literally wrote a book about seven such treaties, uh, those negotiated between 1869 and 1877, known as, oddly enough, treaties one through seven, to what extent does uh, CBC's characterization of what treaties entail, comport with what you've documented in your book? Yeah, that's a good question, um, that when, when I first read this, red flags were popping up all over the place because, um, this is kind of at its most base is like the epitome of the bias that most Canadians have about treaties and the surrender clause. And my research was really looking into, uh, the land, um, basically how land was dealt with during these treaty negotiations, treaties one through seven, and reading that sentence in the, in the CBC kids piece, um, yeah, red flags were going off. And even little things like, um, the country now known as Canada was inhabited by indigenous people, and, um, we're actually taught to use other peoples as, or nations, and it's kind of a small thing, but, uh, one thing that I notice when we read, uh, pieces like this is, um, we don't get, uh, nations, we get communities or we get people. And so a little things like that jump out, but, uh, but the, the text on indigenous people losing their land and many of their rights in exchange for money and privileges is really, um, it is really incorrect and goes against a lot of the, the more recent scholarship on treaties that starting to come up. Well, including yours and, you know, not, not to make you reductive and, and turn 350 plus pages into, you know, a couple of sentences, but I mean, did indigenous people lose their land? Absolutely not. My book was inspired by a lot of the oral histories that I basically working through the Office of the Treaty Commissioner and taking indigenous studies at the University of Saskatchewan, I heard a lot of elders speak of the late elder Gordon Oaks would always make two fists, put one fist over the other, and he was a unilingual crease speaker. He didn't speak English, but whenever he did that and, and put his hands out, I knew he was speaking about the depths of a plow. And what he, he was saying like, like all the elders that I listened to were saying is that, uh, they never, uh, agreed to surrender their land. They agreed to share their land in exchange for a relationship with newcomers. And so, um, when I went out and did my research, I'm a non-indigenous person. My, um, grandparents came from both Ukraine and Germany. But when I took indigenous studies at the University of Saskatchewan, I really wanted to look into the archival on the historical side of that indigenous oral history that I learned at school. Keep going, Sheldon. [laughter] You got five more minutes, dude, keep going. I will say that, uh, the idea, and it's interesting, the idea of no surrender, like I said, it comes from really the, uh, the oral histories. Uh, and they, they follow right, right from the treaty period in the 1870s, consistently all the way to present day elders have consistently said we did not surrender our land. We agreed to share the land. But I wasn't the first, um, academic to take that on and realized that what the elders had always said was supported by the historical evidence. There was a historian by the name of John Leonard Taylor that noticed that exact same thing in the Treaty 6 record. He noticed that in the historical record of the Treaty 6 negotiations in 1876 that the treaty commissioners never once mentioned seed surrender and release. And the text of treaty says that the Cree and Soto peoples do hereby seed release surrender and yield up to her majesty, the government of Canada forever, all their rights, titles, and privileges. And that's in the text of treaty. But as John Leonard Taylor noted, that was not read during the negotiations. So if it wasn't discussed orally, how is it that it ended up in the text? Well, this is the thing and a lot of like this CBC comment about indigenous peoples losing their land and their rights through treaty is kind of a more extreme example of what historians have explained in that their explanation of the treaty relationship and treaty negotiations was that it was just common misunderstandings occurred. The crown, the treaty commissioners sought a surrender of lands and first nations peoples sought only a relationship, a sharing of the lands, a sharing of the resources, an economic partnership. And the two sides didn't understand each other and that's too bad and here you go. But unfortunately, what my research and research by John Leonard Taylor and Michael Ash and Sarah Carter and all kinds of other different historians has shown is that the treaty commissioners and Canada actually misled first nations. On purpose. They misled the chiefs that treaty six on purpose about treaty and especially about the surrender clause. The only thing that I did differently in my book is that rather than looking at just treaty six or just treaty four, I looked at like you mentioned in the intro, treaties one through seven and I applied this idea of a treaty bundle approach. So I looked at all the references and all the historical records for all seven of those treaties. And one thing that I noticed is that the Canadian government basically had a strategy and that strategy was to mislead the chiefs, mislead the indigenous leadership over the surrender clause in order to include that clause that I mentioned in the text of treaty. But the oral history of course and then the supporting literature does not support that. Now you didn't, I don't know, dig a thousand miles under the surface and come across a box that had been mysteriously missing forever. You had access to the same possible sources of corroborating or contrasting material. You looked at diaries, for example. You looked at other sources of writing and journalism. Something that was readily available to other historians, the ones who put forth this idea that there was a cultural misunderstanding or maybe that Indians were kind of too stupid to understand what they're putting their ex to. So how do you account for the different interpretations of those historians, the establishment historians we might say, and what you and other historians like you were able to come up with? Well there's probably two explanations for that. The first is that common misunderstandings is just so convenient. And we still see it today, like after reading the CBC Kids piece, I went and I looked, I was actually in the provincial archives of Alberta and I saw a little reference for the teachers federation in the province of Alberta and they had a post or it went right where you walk into the provincial archives and it talks about treaties and it's basically the same thing it's common misunderstandings. It's the crown, sawdust surrender of land, first nations wanted to share the land, and then these differences occurred. And it's just so convenient, it's such a simple explanation. But unfortunately treaties are very complex, they're very complicated, you have all these different sources, you have all this different history. But people like simple solutions and when I say that the crown misled the indigenous leadership over the surrender clause that it wasn't mentioned, they actually had all these other plans in place in order to focus the negotiations on only the benefits of treaty and none of the liabilities of treaty. The story of course gets much more complicated and then you get my book which is really more of an academic work. But it becomes necessary in order to get all the background and the proof and it's kind of interesting in my when I submitted the manuscript for no surrender, I originally submitted it to a different press and it was rejected because it did not pass peer review. Many of the many, when you submit an academic work to a press, many of the people who review it for the publication's board are those same historians who have been promoting common misunderstandings. No pun intended. And so it was actually incredibly difficult. I had to go through seven peer reviews in order to get the manuscript accepted for publication and two different publishing houses. So this idea of common misunderstandings and this idea that each side just didn't understand each other and you know this is what we got so we're going to have to make the best of it. It's just very, very easy for Canadians to accept. Much more easy than the land you're on right now. You have no rights or title to it and it was obtained illegally. Well, can of course notwithstanding everything Sheldon just said, I think it's a safe bet that vast majority of Canadians would believe what the author or authors of that CBCP student namely treaties, mantenditions, people lost their land and many other rights in exchange for money and other privileges. I know those privileges probably bias you. What are your thoughts of what you've heard so far? I mean some of it I'm sure is very familiar. Some of perhaps some new wrinkles in there. Well, one of the many, many jobs that I did after I graduated from university was I was a treaty land claims researcher for the treaty and Aboriginal rights research branch of what used to be the Indian Association of Alberta. And I was actually doing active research into a land claim for the frog lake people. And yeah, it's the narrative that the Canadian government has sold because that's the narrative that's comfortable for them to say that we're better than the Americans. We didn't go to war with our Indians and we treated them better. And therefore we made treaties and these treaties meant that we were going to share everything. But the reserves were for the Indians and the rest was for us. And I use the Indians on purpose because that's the language they were using in the treaties. And that's the legal definition that we still actually live under. So it's hard when you, because you run it not just everyday Canadians, but you run it to like the various technicians who worked for then in the fairs and for the justice department who would use the exact same language. They would use the body of the text of the treaty to base their legal arguments on. And that was the position they were going to take and that's where they were going to stay. So it was always very difficult when you started talking about like illegal surrenders. Even after reserves are created and how quickly a lot of Indian agents would then at the direction or nudge nudge wing direction of the federal government would then coerce those people on reserves to surrender to their land or remove chiefs who were troublesome and everything like that. It's quite a paternalistic system and it's again, it's the one that most Canadians accept because that's the one they were sold and that's the one that comforts them the most about their place in this country. I 100% agree with that. A lot of the oral history that I read and learned about treaties from is from that original unit of the Indian Association of British Treaty and Aboriginal Rights Research. When you go back those interviews were done by Cardinal and a whole bunch of different elders and historians in the 70s and they match what elders were saying today and they match what elders were saying in the immediate post treaty period. Canada's right in that the land claims all the surrenders and Canada's position has always been surrender. In fact, today they still have the same position. They still go by that piece of the treaty, that one bit of two lines in an 11-page document of what we call the siege release and surrender which as I mentioned, not only was it not read out at Treaty 6 and any of the Treaty 6 negotiations, it wasn't read out in any of the number of treaty negotiations, not Treaty 1, not Treaty 7, not Treaty 8. So this idea that Canada misled First Nations people over the surrender clause is really clear but Canada still stakes their position to that surrender clause and I think that really has to change and that's why we kind of see that idea bleed into like curriculum which I don't like in these CBC kids things and I think to go back to the CBC kids piece again, I think it is really damaging because that sentence is just so blatant, gave up lost their rights in exchange for money and other privileges is really a blatant misrepresentation and I just don't like kids reading that because it just puts that vivid image in their heads and as far as exchange for money, it's true that First Nations people receive annuity payments for agreeing to treaty but that's $5 and it's interesting that annuity payments even though First Nations did agree to share their land with newcomers and there's been an immense amount of money made from the resources especially Alberta, Saskatchewan as well, Canada has kept those annuity payments at $5 per person as long as the grass grows sun shines and rivers flow since 1876. So other privileges again, as far as treaty goes, the treaty really sets a treaty relationship and some of the privileges I guess that were requested by the chiefs for things like medicine chess clause, things like agricultural assistance and even those, we know we've had all these claims which people refer to as cows and plows because Canada didn't come through with these promises and agricultural supplies were not provided. The First Nations community is to assist with farming, seed was not provided. The education clause is probably the most ominous because of what we know about residential schools now. Treaty six sets schools will be provided on reserves for those who desire it, but right at the close of treaty instead of having schools for those who wanted them within First Nations communities for their children, kids were taken away forced into the residential school system. So to say that First Nations people accepted these privileges in which were similar to what I mentioned and this money which I mentioned was $5 per person is really disingenuous. And the thing about the $5 figure is, in fact there's a lawsuit happening right now which basically posits that they have $5 then, but that should rise with inflation over time. It should be whatever the equivalent is in $20, $21. Absolutely. Yeah, I know that court case there's a treaty one one and there's also a Robinson here on Robinson Superior and it's interesting that 1850 treaty that proceeds treaty one, it did have what it called an escalator clause. And the text of treaty acknowledged that if the lands became more valuable that a new repayment would increase, but it never did in the Robinson treaties. And again, the same thing for treaties one through seven that a new repayment was supposed to assist families and it was supposed to help them with the transition to agriculture help them with the transition to the new economy in the face of declining bison herds in the face of the impact of disease that was happening right around the treaty period. 1869 was a huge smallpox epidemic. First Nations were really suffering and when newcomers came in you also had much more competition for resources. And yeah, I 100% agree with annuities, First Nations people did agree to share their land with newcomers, but not for five dollars. They agreed to share it for a much larger piece of compensation. And so I mean, basically not only is the text of these treaties you looked at contain fraudulent sections that were added after the fact and never discussed verbally with First Nations, the terms that are there correctly were they were either ignored or never fully honored. So yeah. It really questions those entire two sentences and the CBC kids story and that's why it's so aggravating. Okay. Now there is or I guess I should say was a companion video to the story we've just sort of raked over the coals, but like that piece it's now been scrubbed or at least made private on YouTube. So alas, we cannot share any audio clips from it, but there was one notable facet I wanted to share and that is one of the so called experts CBC kids included on the video. And again, I'm assuming this was done by the adults in the room making the video, I'm not going to implicate the young woman who, you know, the presenter on the video. So let's be clear about that. And so who is this expert? Well, it's none other than Tom settler shenanigans flanagan. And can is there is there a succinct way to describe Mr. Flanagan's stick when it comes to what he might call the Indian land question? Yeah, I would call it Pierre Trudeau 1970. He's basically, he's an altered term, he's using the exact same language as lawful obligation, which was the phrase in the white paper to say that Canada had fulfilled its lawful obligation to the treaties and therefore Indians should no longer exist as a separate and distinct group. But he just like, he likes to like pick and choose his history to sort of verify and of course he's all written history settler centered and oriented and is also designed to like fulfill the colonial narrative of Canada. That's what he does. He's the, he's, he's their hitman. Yeah, he likes to be the hitman when I was, and my joke was, you know, when I found out that Tom Flanagan was the one being the mouthpiece for Canada, I said, what was this? Barbara K. Busy? Well, she's not taking even vocals. She loves to talk to children. So Sheldon, my impression about Mr. Flanagan is, he's actually been thoroughly discredited thanks to Duncan Kinney at an organization called Press Progress in Alberta. On their latest podcast, they talked about how he was effectively eviscerated in federal court as an expert witness on indigenous matters, in fact, neither expert nor witness is true. Back in 2002, I'm, I'm now exciting from windspeaker here, an article about how he was compelled on the stand. This is Flanagan to admit he has never done research on reserve, has never spent any time working directly with native people, Flanagan who holds a PhD in political science from Duke University also admitted he has never taken a single course in Canadian history or Canadian Aboriginal history. That's back in 2002. So that's why some of that dated language is there. I'm not sure 19 years later he's remedied any of that stuff, but what might be his reputation? I know I'm putting you on the spot here potentially, Sheldon, but what do people have to say about good old Tommy? Yeah, I tried to ignore Thomas Flanagan, because he's also very aggravating, but it's interesting that he's actually still, we see him, he does go to the mail columns. He was teaching at the University of Calgary until maybe five or seven years ago. He was also completely discredited by idle no more, but a few years later he's back, he's writing columns. So he just doesn't seem to go away. He's kind of like the cat that came back a little bit, I guess, or the cockroach. He's the living proof that cancel culture doesn't exist. Exactly. That's true. But it's interesting, the critique that you mentioned, because when he first started doing research, and he really was, I guess, Canada's golden boy in terms of an expert witness going against indigenous rights, and especially the use of indigenous oral history in the courts. And so when he was first employed as an expert witness for Canada, there was no oral history. There was no emphasis on having worked in indigenous communities before. You mean in terms of courts allowing it's standing as correct, okay, yeah, it's only after 1997 and Delga MOOC that oral history is even being used in the Canadian court system. So it's interesting that between 1997 and 2002, he did know oral history research or he did no research in communities. So this is the devil's advocacy section of our conversation. I love these. Yeah, I know you do. And so can I don't want to go too much further without getting to a point that I imagine some critics of our critique might say, and I'm thinking it might go something like this. Jesus Christ, you know my guys, it's a **** kids website. Do you seriously think this age group can grasp the legal subtleties and political permutations of these documents? I mean, even if we agree, CBC messed up, what's really at stake here? And then maybe adding in for good measure, don't we have more important things to discuss? I mean, like get a life. I think I'm a little too good at channeling this voice, but how would you respond to such a person can I respond to such a person by saying had the ever actually tried to entertain young people as someone who's worked in theater a lot and worked with theater for young people. I have been again and again impressed by how quick and smart they are and how much they catch and perceive as adults, we tend to like, talk down to children too much. They're far more clever and aware than we give them credit for their capable of nuance, their capable of understanding the complexity of things and how things are messy. So yeah, I think it is age appropriate. I think you can start talking about this at any point, you can start talking about fairness and justice right away. That's the first thing children start to comprehend is what's not fair and what is. It tends to be from a selfish point of view, but that's where the basis of how these start understanding justice comes from, but at the same time too, indigenous young people have understood this since they were children. Like if we can grasp it, anyone can grasp it, I mean, it's not really that hard. Like we, it was kind of a running joke, I used to say that how many kids before the age of nine, new hundred pronounced fiduciary responsibility, you know, we understand it. We understand it as children and understood it as children. Children can understand this if we are and but I am all I'm about, I mean, agreeing with how Sheldon was saying is that how it's presented is essential because you can easily dislodge the argument or presuppose or prejudice, the discussion immediately just by how you ask the question, right? So yeah, I again, this is something children would easily get and I think would enjoy and I think would have an insight that would shock and amaze the adults in the room. And it's because I think adults don't want their kids to come up with empathetic understandings of the treaty relationship is why, you know, we get it simplified the way it does and and distorted on purpose. So that's my two cents on that whole thing. Children understand children are smart children empathetic. It's just that adults are the ones who are getting the way in this one. Yeah. Yeah. We have a debate right about how soon is too soon to teach kids about colonialism and we've even talked about it here on this podcast. But no one asks how soon is too soon to teach kids to be colonially minded by yeah, indoctrinating them in the idea that treaties are, you know, outright permanent land surrenders. Bingo. That's your mic drop right there, right? Sheldon, any chance you're probably just putting together a kids version of no surrender pop up with colors. No, not so much. I keep thinking I need to write one, but I've spent too much time in academia and it's actually a really hard work to write for a general audience. So I'm hoping somebody else will put something out that will be more approachable. Hmm. Now, it's funny, right? Thinking about what we've discussed and done some debunking of it, it occurs to me that if, if we adhere to the idea and we're still in the devil's advocacy phase, so just a warning there, it occurs to me that if we adhere to the idea that giving back something that was never yours to begin with is impossible, does it follow then that the phrase land back is strictly speaking incorrect, because, you know, Ken, sometimes, sometimes you just got to go with what's pithy and most resonant, right? But I'm just, you know, at the risk of being a pedantic tool here, might we risk unintentionally contributing to the confusion ourselves? It is one of those things where, you know, we have to deal with the English language. This is the one big problem that I think we're not addressing here, is that English in itself sets up certain paradigms, and the way it works is that, you know, you have to discuss things in certain absolutes, right? So it's not about the land theft, it's not about as indigenous people have been saying, you know, that you don't actually own this land. We have to deal with the reality of people on the land. And English says, you know, there's English is the language of law, English is the language of, you know, how do we argue and how do we make a debate? Because in Cree, that doesn't exist as much, right? How we speak and refer to land because that's the one of the big problems right there. How Cree people refer to land is not the same way as people who speak English as a mother language. Something you could own. Right. Yeah, right. The concept of ownership and properties is built into the English language. The concept of that doesn't exist in Cree. So right away, the discussion is got an issue of translation. So using land back is saying, okay, let's use English against itself as a tactic, you know, it's a language tactic. And it's, and if you said, pithy phrase is unfortunately, pithy phrases will carry a lot further than a nice nuanced argument that requires complexity and, and, and understanding and, and active listening on all parts. So land back gets people's attention, land back gets people's backs up, calling them settlers really irritates them. And that's kind of stuff that you need to do, right? It's so, so it's English, using English against the English people who speak English. So that to me is why, yeah, it make in, in terms of long term contribute to the confusion, but I think in a short term, it gets the discussion rolling. It gets the job done. And the children, it's interesting to go back to language because one of the intriguing parts of your book were how when translators were used because the English side didn't speak a lick of Cree, some of the translators, in this kind of, tell me if I mischaracterizing it, it's almost like the, the translators wouldn't always literally translate what the Canadian side was saying out of a fear that it would scuttle the negotiations, correct, can you expand on that? Yeah, that is correct. No, that's a, that's a very succinct way to put it because it is very complicated and it differs from treaty to treaty. So the probably you're referring to treaty six and it was Peter Rasmus. And I remember, I used to teach out at Satellake First Nation and Blue Quills College up there. And that's where Peter Rasmus was kind of from, he was, he was Meti, but he had connections to Satellake and, and those communities. And I remember hearing elders and different people say that they never trusted Peter Rasmus, they never trusted his translations. And it was an adopted son of his Peter Shirt. There's a bunch of oral history about how Peter Rasmus, because he was in favor of settlement because he wanted to hold land, he wanted to really, he had a vested interest. Yeah, he had a vested interest. Yeah, he really wanted to become more economically self-sufficient and he saw that through the arrival of settlers. And so when he was negotiating treaty, what the oral history said specifically was that Peter Rasmus told each side what they wanted to hear in his translations. Oh, wow. And so that is actually from, like I said, it's from, from the oral history. And a lot of it is validated in Peter Rasmus's own book, His Accounts of the Treaty Six Negotiations, Republished by a journalist, Henry Thompson, who was from Edmonton. And you kind of get that sense when you look at Peter Rasmus, his own account of the negotiations. He also doesn't mention seed and release and surrender the land. He talks about his disagreements with other interpreters. So the interpretation question, like, like all aspects of the historical treaties is really complicated, the other part of the puzzle, of course, is that Canada, in their speeches, they're carefully processed. They know they don't want to discuss the land at all. And so, you know, you can't blame an interpreter for not interpreting something that's not mentioned, which is the case in Treaty 4 and the case in Treaty 3, to a certain extent, where you have different interpreters. Sometimes it's James McKay, who is interpreting treaty, even though he's also a treaty commissioner who happens to be fluent in Greek, so that's highly problematic. So it's just part of Canada's, what I call, their strategic plan to mislead First Nations. So in some cases, interpreters assisted in that plan, and that was the case with Peter Rasmus. Even though Alexander Morris did not know, Alexander Morse was a treaty commissioner for Treaty 6. He did not know Peter Rasmus, and that he was in favor of settlement. But because he was, it was definitely in the Crown's favor for Treaty 6. So you can't disagree with what you don't hear, and the Crown deliberately omitted references to certain concepts. Exactly. And that's what there's a really great book in Treaty 7 by the Treaty 7 tribal elders about Treaty 7. And the same thing, they said, well, you can't blame us for accepting a treaty with a surrender clause when we did not know the surrender clause was there. We were, and for the Treaty 7 people, they always say, what we entered into was a peace treaty. It had no surrender. It had no other clauses. It was just a treaty of peace. Sheldon, that's just a cultural misunderstanding, dude. It's interesting because the interpreters at Treaty 7, there was like three of them. And none of the interpreters for Treaty 7 worked out, so they really struggled. But again, that was in the Crown's best interest. It's almost like another strategy that they had is at Treaty 6, they invited Chief Sweetgrass to the Fort Pitt Treaty 6 negotiations, but they did not invite Big Bear because they knew Big Bear was against Treaty. And this wasn't just a Treaty 6 example, they did this for all the number of treaties. Whenever there was a chief that they would have difficulty getting to agree to Treaty, they just focused on the chiefs that they felt would accept it. And then they added treaty adhesions later, in which case chiefs like Big Bear and Little Pine. And even Poundmaker to a certain extent, all these chiefs could come in after and they could adhere to treaty, but they couldn't change the text or change the treaty in any way. So you know, one strategy, too though, is once you've been sort of exposed as having engaged and dirty dealings, you kind of soften it. And so I wanted to get to the way contemporary observers try to spin how treaties were implemented or how they should be seen in the light of 2021. And you, Sheldon, shared with Ken and I, a review of your book, published in the magazine "Canadian Dimension," which opens thusly. The dialogue about treaty negotiations in Canada was once dominated by colonialist apologetics, claiming that cultural misunderstandings between Euro-Canadian and indigenous negotiators caused the latter to fail to comprehend that they had given up most of their lands to Canada. The not-so-hidden message was that the Canadian negotiators behaved honorably, but unfortunately, their indigenous counterparts were none too bright. Unquote. And so that reminds me of something I kept thinking as I read your book, Sheldon, that in a similar fashion, there are those today who would no doubt assert that when it comes to the content of the early number treaties, that is, these international agreements, of the late 1800s, that such content is, you know, by today's standards kind of quaint and to quated almost anachronistic because they're quote-unquote less sophisticated than the more modern agreements that have been negotiated more recently or to put this more bluntly. Why would we put any stock in these deals cut over 150 years ago, much less abide by them in 2021? Is that a critique you've ever come across suddenly or otherwise? Absolutely. Yeah, people talk about them all, they're over 100 years old. I hear that all the time. They don't have any residents for today or they don't have any meeting for today. And it's kind of, I think it's similar to something that Ken mentioned earlier when he's talking about like the white paper, that whole idea. So the white paper was Pierre Elliott Trudeau's attempt to remove all special status for First Nations peoples, remove treaties, remove any kind of treaty rights from Canadian policy. And it's, I think it's part of the same idea of treaties are 100 years old, treaty rights are archaic, we don't need them anymore, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's highly problematic, especially like when you study treaties, one thing that you really focus on is the treaty relationship. And a lot of this goes over my heads, but terms like what to win, what to win, what to win, what to win. Yeah, thank you, all the different creatures that kind of define relationships. It's almost like when Ken was talking about free terms for land, it's like me as someone who studied a treaty, a great deal, but not indigenous languages, it's a definite barrier. And so we have this idea of land from a Euro-Canadian concept, and it really becomes difficult to understand exactly what the treaty relationship is for most Canadians. And like I said, I'm just starting to learn it, I'm just starting to learn some of the free terms, but a lot of it deals with solemnity, a lot of it deals with ceremony, and a lot of it deals with how we interact, actually at every level day-to-day how we interact with each other, how our governments interact, how we interact in terms of the economy. And another preterm like Pastahel and I was taught is a lot of what's gone wrong through treaty is because of the implementation, because of the natural resources transfer agreement, because non-indigenous people have taken all the resources, it's caused a lot of negativity. And I only understand these things at a very superficial level, but I think it's important for people to not use that idea of treaties being archaic, but to look at them more in terms of the treaty relationship, the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, and really try to think about what that is. And I'll just jump in on that, too. It's these ancient treaties, so-called ancient treaties that they want to rip up, but you know, it's treaties that, like the Treaty of Paris that ended the war of independence, defines borders between British North America and the former British colonies, then that started to become the United States. It's the Treaty of Gant from, you know, the War of 1812 that defines the border along the 49th parallel. These are real treaties that are still in enforced today and defined our countries as they are and their physical boundaries today. You know, if we start ripping those treaties up, we start ripping up treaties that are like essential to the foundation of this nation. And I think that's one of the things that the Canadians have to understand is that these treaties are foundational to the existence of this country. It doesn't exist without these treaties, and it is an agreement between nations. That's why it's called a treaty. It's not a bill of sale. It's not a rental agreement. It's an actual friggin' treaty. It's in the title right at the top. So, you know, it should be treated like a treaty and look at, you know, historical treaties that have defined the world, some of them are quite, quite old and they still hold weight. So they're legal documents. You break a treaty, you start a war, that's what happens, you know, so that's how it should be looked at. You want to say treaties are old, well, there's much older treaties that define us, so. So, the point that more contemporary agreements dwarf the original number of treaties in terms of the number of pages and the number of sub clauses is that best moot if not malevolent or manipulative. Yeah, you're talking about the comprehensive land claim treaties, right? Yes. Like the Crenus Copy Act. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, those are, those are without problems as well, because I remember as someone who did, like I said, I was doing a lot of treaty land entitlement work and we looked at the comprehensive land claim agreements and we looked at their, for lack of a better word, their formulas for determining, you know, land bases and access to land and all those other things. And again, the Canadian government takes an extremely reductionist point of view on those treaties and would say that, well, we had, we negotiated and had consultation with the community and the community would go, wait a second, no, no, no, you just showed up for one day, put up a table in our hall and then left that, you know, and they said, well, that's what's considered consultation in our books. And so, you know, and then again, the other problem we have is that with those comprehensive agreements is that Canada is both the judge and defendant in all situations. So there's no independent body that can oversee these, whatever disputes or, you know, never dispute arises and, and settle these things fairly because one side is literally holding all the cards. I mean, we've said it on the podcast ad nauseam, it's an international dispute. Why is it being adjudicated in one of the side's legal apparatuses? But, you know, again, just to be mischievous, in terms of this idea that indigenous people's capacity to make treaties is somehow shown by the quote unquote simplicity of the treaties that they entered in. And I think you've made some great points, Ken, but I mean, look at the U.S. Constitution, right? It's from the late 1700s. It totals 4,500 words, Treaty 6, and the late 1800s, 2,500 words. So I guess the U.S. Constitution is just, you know, too unsophisticated and maybe we should get rid of it. But at the same time, I mean, this idea that indigenous peoples were either too weak or too stupid, so too bad, it's contradicted by the actual history because, as your book, I thought, documented super well, Sheldon, Canadian authorities got really mad at negotiators for giving away too much to, to savvy indigenous negotiators. Absolutely. When Alexander Morse, who I mentioned was Treaty Commissioner for Treaty 6, when he added the Medicine Chess Clause and the Famine and Pestilance Clause, he was basically fired as Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba and Indian Commissioner because he was, it's an incredible letter that the Pravee Council office sends to him and is angry with him for committing candidate to this and Alexander Morse's reply was that assistance in Famine and Pestilance is provided by all modern governments, didn't matter, for Treaty 7, 1 year later, he's replaced with David Laird. So yeah, they are, to go back to your point, I find that the text of Treaty 1-11, I do find them to be quite complicated and one of the things that I focused on in my research, it's another misconception of treaties, what some people have argued that Canada showed up with the Treaty text and the negotiations were just a sham and that's always been difficult to disprove because Canada did show up with a Treaty text, it was always based on the previous Treaty. A fill in the blank, section 2, right? Choose your adventure treaty. This is exactly why it's so difficult to explain because they had the template and it had like for the amount of the annuity there was a line and it was blank and for the amount of the one payment it was blank, but they also included blank pages and blank sections and so the negotiations did actually inform the text of Treaty. So for me, the text of Treaty is problematic because it has the surrender clause, it has a lot of stuff that shouldn't be in there, but it also has things like medicine chess clause and some things that were actually requested by the chiefs during the Treaty 6 negotiations. But when we talk about treaty history, I really try to steer people away from the text of Treaty and so for me, people say, well, what is the treaty? And for some people, indigenous peoples, it's one thing, non-indigious peoples, it's another thing for everyone, it's kind of different, but for me, it's kind of the negotiations. It's those verbal negotiations, it's what's agreed upon, and it's the treaty relationship, like I mentioned before, what people sometimes talk about as the spirit and intent of Treaty. And I think it's important for non-indigenous peoples to really kind of think about that. Well, what does the spirit and intent of treaty mean to you? It's not enough to just say spirit and intent. For me, the spirit of the treaty is that it's a land sharing treaty and the intent is that it's for a treaty relationship that's supposed to be based on equality. So that's one thing that I always focus on. It's a relationship, not a receipt. Exactly. So the idea about focusing on like the text of Treaty 1876, is that archaic and all that kind of stuff really takes away from that idea of what Treaty is. And it's definitely not the treaty text. Yeah. Also, the other thing you said earlier, Rick, quoting from that review of the book that said that the Indigenous nations weren't savvy or capable of negotiating a treaty. And that's just absolutely wrong because we negotiated a treaty a lot between ourselves before the settlers arrived. Our nations had treaties with each other over and over again, and those were sometimes very hard, discussed, hard fought negotiations over treaties between nations. The Cree and the Blackfoot made treaty, the Cree and the Shnabi made treaty and so on and so forth, right? Sometimes you made treaty because you had a fight going on that you wanted to end, sometimes you made treaty because you were about to both share something. So there was always negotiation. So it's a surprise to me that the Canadian treaty negotiators came out west and were surprised by the how good the First Nations negotiators were. Because it's almost as if, oh, we're coming here to discuss something they've never talked about before. So we've done this for thousands of years already, you know, you're just coming here with a different language and a different people. Well, something I also admire too, though, is how the baseline for each subsequent treaty would go higher and higher because, you know, the moccasin telegraph would send the long news of, yeah, this is what we managed to get out of treaty too. Treaty three have added and do a little better because they were learning from each other, which is why it's all the more reason to call it a treaty bundle, as you do, Sheldon. And absolutely, yeah, both of the indigenous negotiators were incredibly savvy because of what Ken mentioned about that tradition of treaty making. Canada also had a tradition of treaty making and they weren't, of course, as savvy. They didn't have the same tradition, but they weren't completely out of the woods either. They knew what they were doing. They were savvy enough to mislead the indigenous negotiators. But this idea of non-Savvy indigenous negotiators and maybe naive new Canadian negotiators just fits in with the common misunderstandings paradigm. So if neither side really knows what they're doing, then it's more likely that they misunderstood each other. So, Sheldon and Ken, let me ask you, when it comes to the profound ignorance of non-indigenous people and what we presently call Canada, how much of it do you think is genuine? They don't know what they don't know. And how much of it is a kind of what we might call willful ignorance, just one of many comforting lies, Canadians like to tell themselves, because you know what's funny, I'm tempted to call this CBC kid's content propaganda, but the thing is it's almost like the oxygen Canadians breathe. So why should anyone who works for the state broadcast or be immune? What do you weigh on this Ken? Oh, I believe in like as someone who's a professional storyteller, I believe in narrative as a very powerful form of myth building and something that unites people or divides people. And Canada has created this narrative of comfort that allows Canadians to feel this sense of superiority in a lot of ways and a sense of purpose. Yes, I believe it's not willful ignorance. I believe it's actually state created ignorance that serves the state. This is done on purpose. It allows for a stall. It allows for disruption of actually honest and earnest negotiation between First Nations and Canada. It gets in the way of that. It allows for misunderstanding for a pipeline to go through traditional lands that didn't get the agreement from the traditional leaders. You know, it then it creates a moving object that is hard to stop because it is such, it is built on ignorance and it's hard to crack that ignorance. I see it cracking. I see it being a display. I see people beginning to understand the true history of Canada. But it's still kind of like an awakening that hasn't happened fully yet because people will rather hang on to a pretty little lie than a really complex truth. And so yeah, the narrative is built into this country and the narrative is fed to Canadians and the narrative is their problem and it helps them grow up and have healthy, strong colonial bones. So to break that ignorance takes a lot of work. But it is essential and it does essentially, I think, I think it is happening in this country. Yeah, well, that's really well put. I always kind of try to take the pulse of the non-indigenous society in terms of indigenous rights. We've had reconciliation recently and I'm realizing that it's not like a progression of non-indigenous people starting to understand indigenous history treaties, residential schools. There's more of a pendulum that swings back and forth. That's why the CBC Kids article is kind of scary because from a non-indigenous perspective, it seems like there has been progress lately. Like people are starting to be more open about indigenous rights. People are understanding residential schools a bit more. There were starting to be some a little bit of push back and then with the discovery of the unmarked graves, you can kind of see the pendulum shifting more toward the progress side. But with stuff like the CBC Kids article and trees, I kind of see the pendulum swinging back. Well, I mean, these kinds of ideas are formed from a very early age, which is why this is something I was trying to get out with that devil's advocacy earlier. I was like, "Ah, it's just a bunch of kids. What's the big deal?" But it's like, no, no. The gravity of it is, once you root those ideas, they become hard to dislodge as you go on. And it's almost like a fairy tale of Canada, right? So staying with CBC Kids, I want to talk about how they handled this. And as I say, they took the items down, which some say is pretty rare for a media outlet. And then they followed that up with a statement by means of a tweet thread, because that's how everybody does it now, responding to a complaint first tweeted by the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, aka UBCIC. And that statement reads, "Thanks to all who shared concerns, after speaking with internal and external stakeholders, we have taken down both pieces. We recognize that our approach to complex and indigenous topics can be better informed to ensure that we are part of the reconciliation process, not working against it. We commit to continue to work with stakeholders to grow and learn and ultimately do better as a new service for kids." Ken and Sheldon, does that go far enough? Why? Or why not? See what I did there? Anyway, okay. Sheldon, do you want to go first? Sure. That's not good enough for me. Like, I viewed that code in the whole article as kind of a pushback. And I almost kind of see it coming from Thomas Flanagan. You can imagine someone who's part of, I guess, the ivory tower has made his whole career arguing against indigenous rights. And now we've really seen indigenous rights grow and grow more awareness of the place of indigenous peoples in Canadian society, as nations, as treaty partners, all those different things. And you can kind of see how that would be irksome to someone like Thomas Flanagan. And I kind of view it as almost a pushback coming from that type of mentality, I guess. Just let me, you know, because we weren't able to be treated to Mr. Flanagan's views, I just wanted to share something he said recently to epoch times. This is a newspaper you get free in some big cities, or maybe it's just Toronto, anyway. Here's what he had to say in a piece about land acknowledgments. I think a lot of these people who want to give the land back are perhaps more confused than anything else. They may not fully realize what they're dealing with. There are so many different legal situations. You get all these little local battles about particular areas. I don't think there's going to be any kind of major national transfer of lands. So Ken, would you like to see CBC kids say we are never going to have that prick Thomas Flanagan on our videos ever again? I mean, what's a tonement here if that's even what's called for? I really don't know to be honest. This is a question that I really can't answer because one, I'm catching up to this because I don't do Twitter, I don't do Instagram, I, I, I'm sourcing this way after the fact. You made me aware of it and so I have to be honest with myself when I look at a circumstance like this to make that kind of call and go, okay, are there actions afterwards beneficial to what went on? I would have to say, no, they're not looking at why they make those decisions in the first place. What led to that thinking to create the question that way to bring in someone like Tom Flanagan as your like expert to just put it this way, it again speaks to why I used to call the CBC the colonial broadcasting corporation in that indigenous people aren't allowed to speak for themselves as experts of themselves in no disrespect, but it tends to be that we don't get believed until we get believed by white people, by white people with credentials who can back up what we've been saying over and over again. No one believes the stories of famine on the reserve until we get clearing the plains. No one believes about them, about the unmarked graves outside of residential schools until we get radar that locates them. No one believes these things until their hand is something with a, guess, a person who looks like themselves like them says, yeah, in fact, why verify what they have said? And it's those things down because we aren't believed. It's those things down because the disbelief is allowed to fester and our statements, our truths are allowed to be challenged without credibility like people like Tom Flanagan. But you know, and again, I really appreciate the work of this scholar should go in and go, you know, this is what Flanagan is saying is bullshit and we have the proof here because we've looked at this stuff in a more, you know, actually looking at the record is written not as that people wanted to be remembered. Okay. Well, tell me what you would think of this. I was thinking maybe CBC kids could go further by keeping the piece and the video up, but inserting a critique alongside it because arguably by their kind of ghosting the piece, maybe that kind of leaves intact and unaddressed. What we've been talking about, the lazy, if not harmful idea that indigenous peoples voluntarily consented to forever forfeit their lands and their rights for some cash and some stuff, I mean, shouldn't they maybe go out of their way to categorically disavow such thinking instead of saying, okay, we took it down. Whoops. Well, maybe it's okay, we don't want this to keep causing harm, but you know, if they want to do something about it, get a hold of a childhood educator, get a hold of somebody who works in young adult theater and address it, go back and look at the question and look at the whole complexity of the question and just rework it so that children are allowed to think about it critically, not have some person of authority go, no, that's not how that's going to happen or yes or no, or that's good, Johnny, that's bad, Johnny, you know, not any of that kind of thinking, but actually get in there and allow them to organically work out the problem themselves. Again, I go back to my own inspiration from children from my experience has always been that they are far wiser and craftier and smarter and sneakier and then human adults give them credit for. So let's conclude if we may, by citing a popular slogan, I see repeated on social media from time to time and it's basically truth before reconciliation, which is pretty apt here, obviously in this discussion, and somewhat leadingly, but not entirely rhetorically, might the truth of treaties then be the truth that must be fundamentally determined and established before we can make any progress on all the things that seem to make the relationship so fraught today? You think you mean yes or no question, because I don't think you can do that yes or no, why or why not? Okay, I guess let me put it this way, I think a lot of people would not indigenous people would be scratching their head going treaties, why do we have to revisit treaties, there's more important things to do in order to get reconciliation underway, because I'm thinking here of call to action number 45 by the TRC, which you will recall, saw the TRC call up on the government of Canada to jointly develop with Aboriginal peoples a royal proclamation of reconciliation to build on the initial one from 1763 and the Treaty of Niagara of 1764. You know those old dusty archaic documents, and the subsection three of that call is renew or establish treaty relationships based on principles of mutual recognition, mutual respect and shared responsibility for maintaining those relationships into the future. I guess what I'm trying to say is it would make total sense to start with the treaties, go back to them in order to go forward with these relationships, I should pluralize them with indigenous peoples and this thing currently called Canada. What do you lads think? Well, you're trying to end the conversation on that, okay, how would you end it, smart guy? Well, you know, because that's a really complex, that is also an complex discussion and one that's necessary, and yeah, I think one that should be engaged in it, it's, it's, yes, simple answer. Yes, I do believe that we should find that way to go back to the trees. But the thing is again, it's like we should go back to understand what the treaties meant and also with what Sheldon had mentioned also the spirit and intent of the treaties. I don't think doing Canada's predilection for a surrender first talk later, any discussion towards, you know, creating a new proclamation would definitely wouldn't happen without Canada insisting that surrender of rights, abrogation of rights would be in the list. It's because I don't trust Canada. I think that, you know, as, as, as idealistic as that call to action is, I don't trust Canada. Yeah. Well, they've certainly done everything to, to not deserve your trust, but I mean, that's what it comes down to. We need truth and trust and to me, it starts with the treaties again, a little too pithy, but well, I like that it, I would 100% agree, you have to go back to the treaties, but I think as what Ken is hinting is it's highly problematic. It's like if Canada is going to keep saying that the surrender clause is part of treaties, when they know from not just my research, but other people's research and all history research and even what's been going through the courts, that that's not the case, then that rings hollow, right? It's highly problematic in order to get truth for treaties, the crown needs to do much more, much more work on the same scan. I don't, I don't trust them as long as surrender clause is part of policy, then I'm not sure how we can get, get back to, to truth before reconciliation. Definitely much work needs to be done. Sheldon, thank you so much for sparing so much time to sit down with, with Ken and I. Uh, thank you, Rick, and, and thank you, Ken. I learned a lot. It was a great, a great afternoon, always happy to discuss treaties. I, I thank you both. Hey, it was great. And that's it for Media Indigenous Episode 275, recorded the afternoon of Tuesday, December 1st, 2021. Thanks again to Round Table regular, Ken Williams, assistant professor with the University of Alberta's Department of Drama, as well as to Sheldon Krasowsky, author of No Surrender, The Land Remains Indigenous. I'm your host and producer Rick Harp. Thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again soon. Have a good day. [Music] Our theme is "Nesting" by Barrocratic.