Living Treaties
Living Treaties
Narrating Mikmaw Treaty Relations
Marie Battiste, Editor
CAPE BRETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
SYDNEY, NOVA SCOTIA
Copyright 2016 Cape Breton University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Cape Breton University Press recognizes fair dealing uses under the Copyright Act (Canada). Responsibility for the research and permissions obtained for this publication rests with the authors.
The editor and contributors wish to thank the many contributions and funding provided to make this book possible, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through the Animating Mikmaw Humanities Project, Mikmaw Kinamatnewey and Unamaki College of Cape Breton University.
Cover Image: Empowerment (detail), by David Brooks
Cover design: Cathy MacLean Design, Chticamp, NS.
Layout: Mike Hunter, West Bay and Sydney, NS.
eBook: tikaebooks.com
First printed in Canada.
Second printing 2016
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Living treaties : narrating Mi'kmaw treaty relations / Marie Battiste, editor.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77206-053-9 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77206-054-6 (pdf).
ISBN 978-1-77206-055-3 (epub).--ISBN 978-1-77206-056-0 (kindle)
1. Micmac Indians--Claims. 2. Micmac Indians--Land tenure.
3. Micmac Indians--Government relations. 4. Micmac Indians--History.
I. Battiste, Marie, 1949-, editor
E99.M6L59 2016 971.5004'97343 C2016-902111-4
C2016-902112-2
Cape Breton University Press
PO Box 5300
Sydney, Nova Scotia B1P 6L2 Canada
Distributed by
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Narrating the Treaties
Contents
Marie Battiste
Narrating Mikmaw Treaties: Linking the Past to the Future
Educating Canadians to their treaties and their meanings is long overdue. Negotiated and signed by our Mikmaw traditional chiefs with the King of Great Britain and his representatives in the early 18th century, the Mikmaw treaties are a significant part of the history of Canada and of the United Kingdom, yet marginalized in the Canadian education curriculum and in the minds and hearts of Canadians. Treaties were central to the legalization of the settlements of early Europeans and later immigrants in Canada, and to the acquisition of land and resources that today are still being contested.
Most Canadians think the treaties are irrelevant and most politicians and resource-extracting corporations view them as inconvenient, but they are still relevant and will continue to be. The treaties have a textual message that is clear enough; they articulate a shared relationship of peace and friendship, as well as negotiated principles and outcomes, yet governments, lawyers and judges are constantly reinterpreting them for contemporary contexts from various perspectives, few of which are focused on the Mikmaq. Mikmaq are also contesting interpretations, urging the courts to hear and understand our ancestors understandings and meanings of the treaties through our knowledge systems and oral traditions. It is significant that the Supreme Court of Canada has admitted oral testimonies affirming the knowledge systems are a key to understanding treaties; their negotiation and subsequent implementation continue to reside in memory and in stories that remain part of the Mikmaw knowledge system. Sometimes our stories and testimonies offer different words and meanings that contest what lay in written text and beyond court decisions.
Treaties between the king of Great Britain and the federated districts and tribes of the Mikmaq nation (1630-1794) impart relationships of sharing based on negotiated peaceful settlements and shared resources that enable Mikmaq and the settlers to live together peacefully as friends. Through treaties, settlers from foreign lands become beneficiaries of Canadian settlement though settlement did not give land to newcomers as is often thought. King George III in his Royal Proclamation of 1763 assured the Indians that all lands needed for settlement had to be purchased, and with their full consent (RSC 1985). The treaties, then, are a silent constitutional affidavit connecting us to the past, to agreements and to an oral and written history, one that is often forgotten among those who arrive on the shores of this country or across southern borders.
The imperial treaties are often also viewed by the Canadian public as irrelevant to contemporary relations, negotiated powers and resources, and that the source of power ended with Canadas independence from Great Britain. They fail to comprehend that the Mikmaw chiefs delegated authority to the King and Canada, accepting those treaties as the very foundation of Canada. That is why aboriginal and treaty rights are delegated to a separate section in the 1982 Constitutionsection 35.
The administrative arm of the government, however, either ignores the Mikmaw treaties or constantly contests them, making Canadians believe over time that treaties are not an important issue for civil society, but only a political issue to be resolved by the government of Canada through their administrative methods or the courts. Superiority and indifference have flowed throughout colonial history through the relations of the government with the Mikmaq nation andbased on attitudes of entitlement, denial or bad faiththey have little to gain from the impoverished Mikmaq nation contesting the big powerful government. Regardless, the Mikmaq nation has continued to take their complaints and submissions to the federal government, sometimes to the Monarchy, sometimes to the Pope, leading to a long trail of correspondences that are often dismissed or ignored. The trail seems to end invariably with yet another long trail of court cases that are similarly lost or wonand those summarily dismissed and ignored still by Canada, the provinces and their citizenry.
To the Mikmaq nation, treaties are sacred pacts and legal covenants that are held as the fundamental source of their relations with successive waves of colonists and colonial governments. The treaties are the resource that they depend on for their present and future. Regardless of Canadas governmental attitude of entitlement, First Nations, Mtis and Inuit lands and resources are still tied to treaties and other documents negotiated in good faith with the King or Queen with an objective of shared benefits to both parties and members. So it is important to know about them, to read them, to hear them, and to comprehend their constitutional significance in contemporary life.
It is a duty and a requirement of Canadian citizens in Atlantic Canada to know their own constitution and history; most schools provide this foundation. It is their duty to include the perspectives of the Mikmaq nation on treaties as the courts have continuously affirmed. Mikmaq have always held the treaties to be an important part of our oral tradition and, while many of our traditions have been eroded by colonial education and residential schools, such traditions are still held in memory.
