DIFFERING INTERPRETATIONS OF THE TREATIES
In her book Breathing Life into the Stone Fort Treaty,
Indigenous lawyer Aimée Craft explains that, even during the negotiations, settlers (represented by Crown negotiators) and First Nations people (represented by their Chiefs) had fundamentally different interpretations of Treaties One and Two.
Craft explains that First Nations people understood the Treaties in the context of previous trade Treaties concluded with the Hudson’s Bay Company, as well as Treaties settled amongst First Nations themselves. These Treaties did not entail giving up land or sovereignty but rather laid out agreements on how to share the land and its resources. Treaties often relied upon ties of kinship — such as marriage and adoption — to forge bonds among nations. In seeking to interpret Treaty, Craft points out that ceremony, symbolism, verbal promises, and objects such as peace pipes and wampum belts carried the same weight for the First Nations signatories as the written Treaty documents did for the Crown negotiators.
Treaties One and Two described in geographical terms the ancestral lands of each signatory First Nation and allocated a certain amount of land within each of those territories as “Indian Reserves,” in the amount of 160 acres (64.7 hectares) per family of five. Yearly payments from the Crown to each family were defined. Verbal assurances were made during the Treaty negotiations that First Nations people could continue to practise traditional pursuits, including hunting and fishing, in their ancestral lands. Throughout the negotiations, the Crown negotiators referred to Queen Victoria as “the Great Mother” to the First Nations people, invoking ties of kinship and a duty of care.
Relying exclusively on the written Treaty documents, Canadian governments have interpreted the Treaties to mean that First Nations people “[did] cede, release and surrender” all of their land except the “Indian Reserves” to the Crown. Craft explains that First Nations people did not, and do not, share that interpretation. From the First Nations’ perspective, the Treaties are nation- tonation agreements laying out how to share the land and its bounty.