[Title: The views expressed by Treaties Recognition Week video participants are
solely their own and are not intended to reflect the position of Ontario, nor do they
constitute any admission or limit Ontario's rights in any way. The Government of Ontario
disclaims all responsibility for any errors, omissions, and inaccuracies in these videos.]
[Title: Treaties Recognition Week]
[Title: Brenda Collins, Knowledge Keeper, Treaty 94] Brenda Collins >> I'm going to introduce myself in my mother's tongue. She is Odawa from the
Sheshegwaning First Nation reserve on Manitoulin Island. [Brenda speaking in Nishnaabemwin]
Aaniin everyone. My mother married a Frenchman. My grandmother married a Frenchman. Because
they married a Frenchman the government said, "Oh, you're no longer native."
And treaties have helped me to understand how much precious culture that I have lost.
My five times great-grandfather, Chief Jean-Baptiste Assiginack, once stood up and
spoke for 14 hours about the 1764 Niagara Treaty. Can you imagine all the information that he read
from that Wampum Belt? Reading the belt, reading the information, taking all the little icons
and understanding what they mean and transferring that knowledge to the next generation.
Treaties are our history textbooks. We have them, they would have been orally
handed down from generation to generation. Just because you cannot read the written word does not
mean to say that they are not legal. It doesn't matter that they agreed to them 400 years ago.
The people that made these Wampum Belts, mostly the Haudenosaunee,
are the ones that started with the Wampum Belts and these type of shells - the quahog shells.
And they would break a piece off and drill it with a little stick or whatever they could find
that they would drill it from one side to one side and try and meet it in this tiny
little section. And they would put a hole and then they would send string sinews through it.
Now sinew is, you know when you peel a banana, you see the little white strings that you have,
you have that inside your body. The animals have that inside their body.
Those are our ligaments and tendons. You have to peel them very quickly and you
let them dry and that becomes the thread. So, you can see how long that would take.
Then you also have to get elk hide. You wouldn't use moose hide, it's too thick. You would use
elk or deer hide. You have to tan that - that's weeks and days and hours and hours and hours of
effort. Then you have to cut it all into strips.
You have all your shells ready the white ones and the purple ones because they have
different meanings. Think of hours and hours and hours it takes to make a Wampum belt
to represent the treaty. Is it any wonder why we treat Wampum belts with so much respect?
They're sacred. They have meanings. Here's the Two-Row Wampum Belt. This one is really cool,
because it's between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch at the beginning in 1613.
And what they did was they had two vessels, one was the Indigenous canoe and the other
one was the European vessel. This is the white represents the river or the water
what they want back in is the same thing that they want right now.
So even though this was made over four or five hundred years ago doesn't matter,
it's still valid. It still counts. What they want is that they want people to be able to live in
their own culture, their own clothing, their own beliefs, their own language, their own
knowledge - but to live side by side with other people. Sharing their own knowledge.
What this Wampum belt means today is all of that information, but also to live your life
in balance. This Dish With One Spoon Wampum belt has this idea. Just take what you need,
leave some for the others, and don't forget to clean up before you leave. You want to
make sure that you leave our land in the same condition that you it was when you arrived here."
To understand treaties, you don't have to be intimidated, you don't have to be
worried that you're going to have to know hours and hours and hours of knowledge.
You have your whole lifetime to learn what the treaties mean.
Look at me - look at my white hair - I'm still learning and seeing about treaties and Wampum
belts. How I can interpret them into my life and share that with my children, and then share it
with my grandchildren, then share my friends, reintroduce my mom to those cultures. Treaties
don't have to be intimidating. Everybody can live some part of the treaty to best help mankind.
[Title: The views expressed by Treaties Recognition Week video participants are solely their own and are not intended to reflect the position of Ontario, nor do they constitute any admission or limit Ontario's rights in any way. The Government of Ontario disclaims all responsibility for any errors, omissions, and inaccuracies in these videos.]
[Title: Ontario.ca/treaties]
[Title: “Breakwall” Performed by Ansley Simpson, Gizhiiwe Records, 2017]
[Title: Archival photographs provided by Library Archives Canada]
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