Critical Review of "Treaty 7"

        The Euro-Canadian signees of Treaty 7 saw the treaty much differently. The government also had a number of goals in mind when they entered into Treaty 7. First and foremost they wanted to acquire legal title to the land inhabited by the First Nations of Treaty 7. Second, they wanted to remove Aboriginal and Métis title to the land while incurring minimal expense. Third, they wanted to encourage immigration to the West through establishing a lasting peace in the area. They also wanted to stop American incursions into Canadian territory. And, lastly, they wanted to respond to Aboriginal requests for treaties. The last objective was pursued less vigorously than any of the others.  

The discrepancies of the two interpretations of Treaty 7 is one of the main focuses of  The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7. The book provides accounts of what the different Aboriginal peoples involved in Treaty 7 thought they were agreeing to when they entered the treaty as well as more the more ‘mainstream’ accounts of the treaty making process in addition to the actual text of the treaty. Treaty 7 gives a number of explanations why the First Nations of Treaty 7 and the Canadian government have such different interpretations of the same treaty. The information given Treaty 7 gives a number of factors which contributed to the dual understandings of Treaty 7 including cultural both misunderstandings and the deliberate withholding of information from the Aboriginal leaders on the part of treaty commissioners.

        An example of the type of cultural misunderstandings which happened during treaty negotiations is the cultural practice of the Bloods to say “ah, ah” when someone is talking. They do this “not to indicate agreement with what is being said but simply to acknowledge that the person is speaking and has the floor to say his piece”.  It is possible that the treaty commissioners may have interpreted this as the Bloods agreeing with what they were saying. It is possible that treaty commissioners may have misunderstood any number of Aboriginal cultural practices.

        Another issue that led to the dual understandings of Treaty 7 is the poor quality of interpreters employed by the government to translate the text of the treaty and to  interpret the negotiations.  According to Former Stoney chief Bill McLean, the “interpreters were not proficient to fully comprehend legal wording to interpret them properly. All they did was interpret only parts of the wording”.  John McDougall was the interpreter for the Stoneys and according to McLean, he only knew a little bit of Cree, although he claimed to be fluent in Stoney. He “did not give a full explanation of the implications of the legal wording because he could not”. Jerry Potts and Jimmy Bird were also interpreters during the Treaty 7 negotiations. Potts has been “valorized for his work as a translator, [But] it appears that he was not regarded as a competent translator by the First Nations people who were present’. Peigan elder Paul Smith does not believe that they would have been able to effectively interpret and explain terms like “cede”.  Smith believes this because “the Indian leaders would never give up territory that they used for their everyday survival”. Potts’ translations “led to errors of both omission and commission”; he had trouble pronouncing names “never mind explaining the more complicated issues to them”. Blood elder Adam Delaney echoes this when he states that “because of the way we hold this land I do not believe that our Indian leaders at Blackfoot Crossing gave up this territory”. He believes that they, instead, offered to share it with the newcomers in exchange for “peace and friendship between each other and among other tribes”.  It is “clear that they [the Bloods] did not understand words like ‘cede’ and ‘surrender’ and that the meaning of many such words were never properly conveyed to them”. The meanings of many of these words only became clear “when restrictions began to be imposed [on them], long after the treaty was made” What also contributed to the problem of the great number of misunderstandings at the signing of Treaty 7 was that “no single person present [at the signing] could speak all of the languages of the people in attendance”.  Since no one spoke all the languages there was no one to make sure that vital information was being transmitted correctly to every Nation.

        The oral histories of the Treaty 7 First Nations also support the claim that the Aboriginal leaders who signed the treaty never agreed to a land surrender. Crop Eared Wolf recalled how the Blood leader, Red Crow:

pulled out the grass and gave it to the White officials and informed them that they will share the grass of the earth with them. Then he took some dirt from then earth and informed them that they could not share this part of the earth and what was underneath it, because it was put there by the creator for the Indians’ benefit and use

        But, the main reason that there is a dual understanding of Treaty 7 is that there are, essentially, two different versions of  Treaty 7; the oral and the written. That there are essentially two versions of treaty 7 is emphasized throughout The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7. According to Commissioner Alexander Morris, Treaty 7 was presented to the Aboriginal peoples of the Northwest to accept or reject”. According to Morris “he did not have the authority to negotiate any major changes to [the treaty]”, he emphasized that on the major issues the treaty was “a take it or leave it” deal. At the same time the Aboriginal peoples claim there was extensive negotiation at Blackfoot Crossing. The Aboriginal claim that negotiations took place is supported by “considerable evidence” including both Aboriginal oral histories and mainstream accounts. Unfortunately, almost nothing of what was said was written down; “the Stoneys had said much more in the treaty making process than was recorded; the Stoneys had been able to say what they wanted ‘but no one wrote it down’”. Elva Lefthand remembers that her ancestors “had talked of Bearspaw having said ‘if I sign this treaty, everything I say now will have to be honored. And there will be no more fighting”. The elders of Treaty 7 say that “the treaty presented to them a year after the negotiations does not contain all of the agreements concluded between the commissioners and chiefs”. Treaty 7 “does not fully represent what was agreed to at Blackfoot Crossing. This is one of the major points brought up in Treaty 7, that how the written document is interpreted is not the same as the “spirit and intent of the Treaty 7 negotiations that the First Nations would remember”. Snow believes that the government representatives “were well aware that in the future only the written statements contained in the documents would be honored and upheld in court if there were any disputes”. That the written document would become so  privileged was unknownable to the leadership of Treaty 7 First Nations. But the Treaty 7 First Nations, who had an oral tradition, and “who had honored verbal agreements in the past, thought that the government would also honor what was spoken during the treaty making [process]”; the Aboriginal peoples believe that what was said during the negotiations is as valid as what was written down.   “There was never  a reconciliation between what was actually discussed at Blackfoot Crossing in 1877 and what was included in the written text of the Treaty 7 document”. An example of this is the fact that the agreement about the incoming settlers being allowed to use two feet of topsoil for “growing things” was never included in the written treaty and is therefore not acknowledged. They wanted this clause  to be included in the treaty because they wanted to prevent the gold rush scenarios happening elsewhere. In fact “Treaty 7 First Nations still claim ownership of the sub-surface resources”.

        The main issue with the negotiations not being reflected in the official treaty document is that the issue of land surrender was never addressed. The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7 focuses much of its attention on the issue of land surrender. This is where the issues of the deliberate withholding of information by treaty commissioners from the Treaty 7 First Nations is the most obvious. As stated above the Aboriginal leaders of Treaty 7 would never have willingly surrendered their traditional lands to the Canadian government. While it is possible that the surrender was due to inept translators it is also possible that the issue of land surrender was, deliberately, never raised during the negotiations. This is supported by Treaty 7 elders who remember “that there were translation difficulties at the treaty negotiations and that many issues were left unexplained or vague”. It is now believed by present day elders that “this was done on purpose so that the Treaty 7 people would be misled into believing they were signing a peace treaty when all along the government was hiding the main clause from their attention”. The First Nations agreed, during the negotiations, “to give the Whites access to the land for settlement” and not to surrender it. Lefthand recalled that Bearspaw was remembered as having stated “I do not give up this land. I will only share it”.  There is no indication that the issue of ceding land was ever brought up by the treaty commissioners during the negotiations. There is no doubt that “if the issue had been raised in their language it would have been opposed by the leadership of these nations”. David Laird, the Lieutenant Governor of the Northwest Territories at the time Treaty 7 was entered into, was so apprehensive “about the prospect of making a treaty with such dangerous tribes of ‘natives’ [that it may have] led him to decide against raising ‘surrender’ issues for consideration”.  Also it is possible that missionaries, like Father Scollen and John McDougall, “knew about Blackfoot resistance to land surrender issues and therefore probably sent warning to the commissioners about the potential for disagreement” if it was brought up, this may be a reason of why the issue of land surrender was never discussed at the negotiations.. In his letter to Major Irvine in 1879, Father Scollen indicated that the ‘First Nations did not believe they were agreeing to a land surrender and thus provides further evidence that the issue of  ‘cede, surrender, release and yield up’ had never been discussed”. The written accounts of what was said during the negotiations focus on what was the First Nations would receive in exchange for signing the treaty and “barley mention what was to be given up by them”. Treaty 7 emphases the fact the Treaty 7 First Nations were not informed about the land surrender clauses in the treaty, through inept translators and through the deliberate withholding of information; “the government slipped the land surrender clause … into the written treaty”.  It was much later when the actual terms of the written document became clear to the First Nations of Treaty 7.

The reason this gross betrayal of trust took place was because the government approached the treaty making process as “superiors” dealing with “inferiors”. This was “ a major disadvantage for the Aboriginal leadership, who came to negotiate in good faith”. The First Nations leadership was “allowed to feel that they were negotiating as equals” but in actuality the government “did not respect their culture and saw their nation as inferior”. The numbered treaties show that the government was willing to only pursue its own goals; “the government did whatever it had to in order to assure the success of its economic and national agenda…the government cared so little about some treaty negotiations that that it only haphazardly recorded the wishes and demands expressed by Aboriginal groups during the negotiations”. It is possible that the government also did not mention land surrender during the negotiations because of fear. They “were allowed to believe that their demands had all been met” because the government  feared that the same type of problems that the American authorities were experiencing from the Lakota and the Nez Perce could happen in the Canadian west if they were informed about the land surrender clauses in the treaty.

All the secrecy and dishonesty on the part of the Canadian government during the treaty making process makes one wonder why they even bothered to create the treaties, which they appear to have violated almost immediately after entering them. Not only do they appear to have violated what the Treaty 7 First Nations hold the treaty to be, what The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7 refers to as the ‘spirit’ of the treaty, they also appear to have violated the written document.  As sated above they wanted to acquire legal title to the land and expedite settlement in the West through the establishment of a lasting peace. Treaties were the most efficient way to accomplish both of these goals. In the light of this information treaties appear as a way to get the First Nations out of the way and not as a peace treaty. Once the government had gained the trust of the First Nations and access to their lands it was soon flooded with settlers and the Aboriginal peoples found themselves being  “ ignored or put off without much consequence”.  Historians John Tobias and Sarah Carter state that “for a time the government seemed willing to acknowledge responsibility for the subsistence of Aboriginal people by granting them fishing and hunting guarantees as well as assistance in agriculture” and honor their treaty agreements. But in the late nineteenth century “the government unilaterally stopped honoring its treaty obligations”. Doris Rollingmud elaborates on why this may have happened;  ‘“treaty rights came along with the signing of the treaty’ but soon these rights were taken away, especially the right to hunt and fish: ‘rights and laws laid down by White settlers […] eroded treaty agreements”’. The supplies promised to the First Nations of Treaty 7 were, according to Wallace Mountain Horse, “often inadequate or not forthcoming” That such agreements were so poorly followed “suggests that the government never intended to help the First Nations become self sufficient, but primarily intended to keep them out of the way of settlers and under control”. It is believed by many that the treaties were viewed by the government “as [an] expedient means of beginning the process of assimilation through which (they believed) aboriginal peoples would eventually disappear”. The government also violated the treaty when they changed how rations would be distributed. The government made rations “contingent on work preformed” without consulting the Aboriginal leadership.

Another issue that was deliberately withheld from the First Nations who negotiated Treaty 7 was how the Indian Act would be employed to “control their lives”. The Indian Act which had been passed in 1876, the year before Treaty 7 was entered into. The Treaty 7 First Nations “were not told how the Indian Act would serve to dominate their lives”; they found themselves governed by an act “that had never been discussed rather than by the treaty they entered into”.

The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7 illustrates how, contrary to popular belief, “it appears that it was not so much that they [the Aboriginal leadership] did not understand the treaty but that the clauses and consequences of the treaty were intentionally left vague and unexplained”; they “did not misunderstand what was said to them at the treaty negotiations. They were told that this was a peace treaty”.  What elders have said about the process involved in making Treaty 7 has been “substantially corroborated by a number of historians and academics”; they “support the position that the Aboriginal people were either deliberately or unintentionally deceived” and that “it does not appear either from evidence given at the time of the treaty or from subsequent analysis that a land surrender was agreed to or explained’.  

The True Spirit and Original intent  of Treaty 7 deals with the issues related to Treaty 7, the Aboriginal perspective on the treaty, the actions of the government during the treaty making process and the effects of the treaty, in an extremely effective way. Elder testimonies are supported by both primary sources, like Father Scollen’s letter, and historical analysis. Its utilization on the work of Aboriginal historians provides a unique perspective of the events surrounding Treaty 7.  Most of the writing done on Treaty 7 “assumes the tone of truth, of finality: that we (Euro-Canadians) are right and their (the Aboriginal peoples’) opinions are of no consequence”. But, thankfully, this attitude is starting to change. People are beginning to recognize that there is more than one side to this story; “academics have come to recognize that a dialogic […] perspective is needed to understand historical events such as Treaty 7”. The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7 helps fill this void which exists in the mainstream understanding of Aboriginal history in Western Canada. The Aboriginal perspective on Treaty 7 has always existed but, “the history of Treaty 7, as Treaty 7 people understand it […] has not been a part of the mainstream story of Canada”. It has begun to become a part of that history only as of now. It is only recently that “non-Aboriginal Canadians have been willing to listen to what First Nations have to say about their history and to acknowledge that official histories may have to be changed”.  Treaty 7 has the ability to opens one’s eyes and greatly enhance one’s understanding of the events that surround Treaty 7; it provides insight and information in a format rarely seen elsewhere.

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