The President of the Manitoba Metis Federation, David Chartrand, and Chief of Staff, Al Benoit, sat with Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister, Gary Anandasangaree and member of Parliament, Dan Vandal, on November 30, 2024, for the signing of the first modern-day treaty between the government of Canada and the government of the Manitoba Metis people. This treaty declares that the “Red River Metis have an inherent right to self-government and law-making powers over their own citizenship, elections and other operations,” Chartrand said at the ceremony in Winnipeg. This was a significant day for Manitoba Metis, an historic day, one filled with hope and renewal, a path toward reconciliation.
We are urged to remember that similar events in this country’s history promised many things. The signing of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 by Britain’s King George III was such an event, guaranteeing “Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom we are connected, and who live under our protection should not be molested”, setting the legal framework for future treaties. Murray Sinclair spoke of the Proclamation in detail in 2016, calling it “an arrogant document” that a leader from across the ocean would think he had the right to make such a declaration over lands inhabited by Indigenous people for thousands of years. Indigenous leaders from across North America were brought together and the Royal Proclamation was explained and assurances given. The Proclamation “influenced the subsequent treaty-making process that occurred after Confederation when the treaties were signed in the 1870s, beginning with Treaty 1 in Manitoba.” Indigenous leaders were assured by the Proclamation of their right to self-government and the right to maintain their culture, language and institutions. These guarantees were not included in subsequent treaties but had been previously provided for. Legislation after Confederation took away the rights of Indigenous peoples to ownership of land and to self-government and interfered with their ability to educate their children in their own way and interfered with their fundamental rights as a family, took away their ability to use the resources, to maintain incomes and economies, Mr. Sinclair explained. Canada operated in a manner contrary to the Royal Proclamation. Laws made it illegal for Indigenous peoples to gather and express their disagreement with the government’s legislation.
I wrote of the work of Louis Riel in a column in 2023, detailing Riel’s commitment to the rights of Indigenous people and other minority groups before Manitoba joined Confederation. He drafted the List of Rights that became the basis of the Manitoba Act signed May 12, 1870, bringing Manitoba into Confederation, the fifth province. The Act dedicated 1.4 million acres for Metis residents in the province when it joined Confederation July 15, 1870. Treaty 1 came into force August 3rd, 1871, disregarding the List of Rights.
First Nations have been living under the Indian Act since its creation in 1876, though the Metis and Inuit were not included. The Indian Act was the distillation of several colonial laws, created to control and assimilate Indigenous Peoples into a culture that was not their own. The Canadian government then had control over the definition of who was an Indian, over the management of resources on Indigenous lands, obligating them to “civilization”, controlling their access to intoxicants, intoxicants which had been used to control their actions during the fur trade.
The National Centre for First Nations Governance (NCFNG) provided a brief history of self-governance in 2007, some of which was written by Kent McNeil, a specialist in Indigenous rights, those especially of Canada, the United States, and Australia. The introduction to the NCFNG document said: “For thousands of years, the aboriginal people of what is now Canada organized themselves as sovereign nations, with what was essentially governmental jurisdiction over their lands, including property rights. Those rights — of governance and property — were trampled in the stampede of European settlement, colonization and commercial interests. But they were never lost or extinguished.” Prior to contact, to the arrival of Europeans during the fur trade, etc, the first peoples were organized as sovereign nations, each with their own cultures, governments and laws, with exclusive use and habitation of specific and defined territories. The 36-page document succinctly describes the rights of Indigenous people to self-government, available online, and is well worth the read.
“We can’t change history, but we can change the future,” David Chartrand said at the November gathering. We are moving in the right direction.
wendistewart@live.ca
