Th
and topics surrounding Indigenous people in Canada.
And they all tie back into one word.
Treaties.
A treaty in the most simple terms
is a legal agreement between two governments or nations,
but in this video, we're going to be talking about agreements
between the Indigenous peoples and the Government of Canada.
But actually, it's not that simple, like, at all.
So I'm going to break it down for you.
This is KN Explains Treaties.
Treaties go way back before Canada became a country,
before Europeans even came to North America.
It actually is founded on an Indigenous form
of relationship development between Indigenous nations,
and they're made through not just
international law or European law, but also
made through Indigenous law.
When Europeans started arriving on the continent,
or settlers as they're often called,
Indigenous people used treaties to say
how they would share land.
There's a very important treaty that was made in 1764,
and that treaty involved about 2000
Indigenous leaders coming to Niagara Falls
to meet with the British.
It is called the Treaty of Niagara.
This treaty is not officially recognized
by the Canadian government, but it
is viewed by Indigenous people as the foundation
for all future treaties.
From there, all kinds of treaties
were made between European settlers
and Indigenous people.
So there's all of the historic treaties.
So in the Maritimes, you might recognize
them as they're called Peace and Friendship Treaties.
Most of them are called Pre-Confederation Treaties.
They happened before Canada became Canada.
Then there's the ones known as the Numbered Treaties,
and it's literally Treaty Number 1, 2, 3, 4.
All these treaties vary, but there is one big thing
about many of them that the governments and Indigenous
people do not agree on.
There's this big misconception about treaties
that it was about just native people signing away
their land, and that is not the case
at all, because there was never any intention
to sign away land.
But it was meant to share.
The language used in the written documents
of these treaties is called cede and surrender language,
aka, hand over your land or territory,
like a real estate deal, right?
It's not a deal.
It's not a bill of sale that's created between two nations.
It's a relationship.
It's certain obligations are promised by either party.
But if it is written right there in the legal documents,
why is there disagreement?
Well, it has a lot to do with how treaties
were recorded by both sides.
Like we mentioned, Europeans recorded these treaties
in written documents, but in many cases,
Indigenous people recorded them differently.
There could be oral records, where
what was agreed to in the treaties
could be shared by spoken language.
And symbolic records.
An example of this is the wampum belts
that were made for treaties.
They are the only form of treaties
that were drafted, so to speak, by the Indigenous Nation.
So, for example, there is a wampum belt that represents
living separately but working collaboratively together,
and no nation would bother the other nation
in terms of its own governance and economies in the ways
that they want to govern each other.
It's why many people argue the written documents are not
enough to fully understand these treaties,
and it's at the heart of disagreements over them.
There are many Indigenous nations across the country who
feel like Canada isn't upholding
their end of the bargain, and not all of land in Canada
has treaties.
For example, the Inuit did not sign historic treaties.
The Metis didn't even exist when some of the earliest
treaties were signed.
There's lots of First Nations in British Columbia,
for example.
No treaties were signed with them.
Which brings us to what is called modern treaties.
They are...
A self-government agreement signed
between a province, the federal government,
and a First Nation.
That's now considered a Modern treaty.
So literally the number of treaties here in Canada
changes every time they sign a new treaty.
The Nisga'a Treaty came into effect on May 11, 2000
and was the first modern treaty in British Columbia.
And these modern treaties look a little different
than the historical ones.
Compare and contrast that treaty with my treaty, Treaty
3, you'll see that the written document,
it's a few pages written in 1873.
The Nisga'a Treaty looks like what a set of encyclopedias
look like.
You know, 20 volumes of books.
But there is even disagreement about these modern treaties
being negotiated.
Nothing about this is simple, and all those topics
and issues that flooded the screen at the beginning
of the video, they're all struggles that Indigenous
people had to face because of the historic relationship
between Indigenous peoples and settlers.
And that all ties back to treaties.
It's a complicated puzzle that Canadians hope
to solve through reconciliation,
but that's for another video.
And check out this graphic next
to me if you want to find out more
about who we spoke to and where we got
our research and information from.
That's it for KN Explains.
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