The Treaties

Canada and the United States have a lot in common. It may not seem like that today in the year 2026 but they do. For sure. And "a lot in common" may be selling the situation way short. It might be "a whole lot" to "a ton" in common. And yes, a ton is more than a lot or a whole lot.

Shall we review a little? Think about it. Both nations were former British colonies that achieved independence from that nation. Both countries had Atlantic Ocean to Pacific Ocean nation-building ambitions that were ultimately quite successful. Both countries courted the British colony of British Columbia to join their nation in the mid-1800s (although only one was ultimately successful). And both countries absolutely decimated the livelihood of those people who were on the North American continent before Europeans started landing on these shores and started taking every piece of land for themselves.

Didn't see that last one coming, maybe? Didn't think Canada and the United States had that in common? Oh they did. There's no doubt about that. There can be no understating just how brutal the conquering of this continent was by the white man both above and below the current Canada-United States border. The lives of those who were here before Europeans arrived in what is now North America were completely upended in absolutely the worst and most destructive way. 

Can't quite wrap your head around that one? Think about it this way. What if a heavily armed group of people with skin color a lot different that yours showed up at your door today, took possession of your house and all your belongings and money, handed you a snow shovel and told you that from now on you just needed to figure out how to survive with the clothes on your back and your snow shovel. Oh...and you can't sleep or take up residence on any public lands. How long would you last? Not too long, I'm guessing. I know I wouldn't. 

I don't know why I picked a snow shovel by the way. It just popped into my head. It could have been a set of andirons or a rechargeable leaf blower or anything, really.

The Forks, at the confluence of the Red River and Assiniboine River, Winnipeg.

Let's do a quick (and I do mean quick) historical overview of relations with First Nations (yes, I know that's typically a Canadian-only term) peoples north and south of the United States / Canada border, shall we?

Both the United States and Canada gave their federal government the right to regulate indigenous affairs. The United States did it through the Constitution; Canada did it through Royal Proclamation. That's cool, right? Countries passing laws and rules to allow them to govern people who happened to be living on land "owned" by the newly established nations without the say so of those people. Sounds good to me.

Both the United States and Canada negotiated treaties with indigenous peoples to define land owned by people of European descent and land designated for indigenous use. The catch on most of those treaties was that the governments of the United States and Canada either just didn't honor the conditions of the treaties or called for the treaties to be renegotiated when the government "made a mistake" in the original treaty (like not realizing there was gold in the Black Hills in what is now South Dakota when the original Treaty of Fort Laramie was signed).

Both the United States and Canada tried to systematically destroy indigenous culture particularly by (1) imposing western notions of land ownership on indigenous peoples; (2) causing the near extinction of the bison to remove food, shelter and meaning from indigenous life; (3) introducing deadly diseases into native communities for which there was no protection; and (4) forcibly removing indigenous children off reservations to attend special schools designed to foster assimilation into western society. These schools (called Residential Schools on both sides of the border) removed traditional clothing, required western haircuts and conferred western names on children while also prohibiting indigeous languages and religious practices. 

Know when indigenous people were granted the right to vote? In the United States, it was 1924. In Canada, it was 1960. 

Dog sledding with Wapusk Adventures, Churchill.

Having said all that, there are some differences between how those two countries view that history today.

I can't remember ever traveling within the United States anywhere and being apprised of how the land I was standing on was ceded to the United States government by treaty with an indigenous tribe. Maybe my memory is faulty here. I know I've seen land acknowledgements written in National Park properties and (of all places) in multiple buildings in downtown Chicago. But the specific treaty? And talked through it? Don't think so.

In Canada this summer? Different story. Our tour that took us to Churchill and Riding Mountain National Park started off with a spoken land acknowledgement and we talked about the treaties that conveyed the lands we were visiting pretty much every time we went somewhere new. Maybe it was the specific places we visited. Maybe it was our tour company's choice to emphasize this information. Maybe it's that we were traveling for a time with someone of First Nations ancestry. Maybe this sort of thing only occurs in Manitoba and not in other parts of Canada. 

But all that's not true. Because last summer when we were in Alberta we ran into the same thing, particularly at the Calgary Stampede and the Elbow River Camp set up at that event. We heard speeches listing various treaties (all numbered) acknowledging just how land was removed from First Nations control and handed over to Canada. It all seemed very civil but to me, it was somewhere between eye-opening, shocking and refreshing. Although after this year, I'm not sure it was as healthy a history as it was portrayed at the Elbow River Camp.

Elbow River Camp, Calgary Stampede. 2025.

So how many treaties were signed between Canada and First Nations people? 11. Treaties 1 through 7 were negotiated between 1871 and 1877 and the other four followed from 1899 to 1921. On our August trip we traveled over lands covered under Treaty 1 (1871), Treaty 2 (also 1871) and Treaty 5 (1875). 

Negotiated may be a term that's very generous to the Canadian government.

Know what Canada got out of all those treaties? A whole lot of land, that's what. And some other strange things like guarantees around violence towards Canadians and restricted alcohol use and control of all schooling on First Nation Reserves. Those last two things are just control measures, right? They are just oppressions. In exchange for all that land, the First Nations got a whole lot of land taken away, a little bit of cash, farming tools (for people who weren't generally farmers), the right to fish and hunt on lands they gave up and some schools. But they only got schools when the government of Canada decided it was appropriate.

So what does this effort to inform us about various treaties do? There's not really any context around the Treaties described when we are told what land we are standing on. We are just told we are now on Treaty [insert number here] land. The exact conditions of each Treaty aren't really described to the visitor. But at least it's a start. At least there's an acknowledgement that at one time, the country we are visiting negotiated an agreement (likely one-sided) with the people who were here before European people where the Europeans got the land in exchange for something which really ended up being nothing much.

Canadian history seems to be full of retroactive actions around the treatment of First Nations peoples and I guess from a certain point of view, it's better late than never. In 2008, the Canadian government launched a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to research and document the effects of the Residential School system. The finding of the Commission was that the Residential Schools amounted to cultural genocide and they issued recommendations to apologize for and correct the effects of those Schools. 

Of course most of the recommendations really amount to nothing much more that promised apology. There is nothing the government of Canada can do to un-do what they did. They can't go back and populate the plains full of bison; they can't un-kill all the people that we were wiped out by disease or just killed by white people; and they can't un-destroy all the culture that they tried to eradicate along the way. Apologies, unfortunately, are about all these are or can be.

The interior of the Itsanitaq Museum, Churchill. The Museum collects Inuit carving and artifacts.

Even if all of this stuff is an apology. I believe talking about all this is important when we travel. Even if we don't get into all the details. Even if we get biased versions of the truth, at least we are discussing it. We can go research the history on our own later if we want to, which is exactly what I have done to write this post. At least it's something different than we do in the United States. 

On this trip, we deliberately engaged with places and people that have been affected by the Numbered Treaties. A lot of this was decided by our tour company on an agenda which was handed to us. But we also visited other spots that maintained the same theme and we did it before we started our tour. This is something we care about engaging with so we appreciated our tour company's efforts to supplement the themes of our one day on our own in the Winnipeg area before the tour started.

All told, our engagement with the First Nations of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Riding Mountain National Park and Churchill included two museums; two historic properties; two cultural talks or activities; a couple of walks around towns or parts of cities; and some time on a dog sled. If the dog sled based on the picture above seems like just a ride in the woods on a sled pulled by a team of dogs (which it was on some level, and all rescue dogs by the way),  the business is First Nations / Métis owned and that's how First Nations people got around at one time. I mean it's not like there are roads all over Manitoba even today (it's actually impossible to drive to Churchill). Dogs pulling sleds over snow is far safer and more efficient that pretty much all other methods of transportation. 

We spent time listening to or in conversations with Anishinaabe, Sayisi Dene, Inuit and Métis peoples and we probably learned something from absolutely every talk whether it was who the Métis people were and are or how many calories a sled dog burns or how long it takes two men to build an igloo or something else. Horizons were broadened, which for me is most of the point of travel. 

And 12,000 calories per day is the answer to the dog question and less than an hour to build an igloo. But only if its the right kind of snow.

It is likely impractical to relay everything we learned talking with First Nations people so I'm picking one thing each from the three places we visited, starting with Riding Mountain National Park.

Pemmican

On one of our two afternoons in Riding Mountain National Park, we ventured over to Turtle Village, an off-the-grid camp which offers overnight accommodations and afternoon and evening storytelling sessions, including one to introduce visitors to pemmican, a kind of bison jerky that was created by drying out meat from a hunt; pounding it into powder; supplementing the powder with melted animal fat, fruit and spices; and then consolidating the mixture into what was described as the first ever power bar. If stored right, pemmican could last years (the timeline offered here was "decades") and was essential for survival during times when hunting wasn't possible.

We didn't actually make pemmican (that would have been a longer process than the hour or so we spent at Turtle Village) but we did each cook up a customized, personal mixture of dried fruits, nuts and spices based on our selection from a buffet table of local ingredients or ingredients that would have been available to First Nations people through trade, including dried saskatoon berries, peppercorns and maple syrup. I guess we ideally would have fashioned our personal concoction into a bar of some sort and taken it with us on a hunt but since we weren't hunting elk or bison or anything else on this trip, it became an afternoon snack eaten out of a tray. 

I'd never had saskatoons (which are blueberry-like) and I was surprised how soft both hazelnuts and peppercorns become when cooked quickly over a high-heat open flame. The demonstration emphasized the point of the necessity for drying out ingredients when plentiful to preserve foods for times when nothing was available. But it was also interesting to think about how First Nations people would have ingredients like cinnamon and peppercorns from far away available to them. It was also probably the healthiest food we ate all week.

The Métis

One of the differences between the United States' persecution of indigenous people and Canada's persecution of the First Nations people was that Canada managed to do their southern neighbors one better and extended their discrimination not only to First Nations, but anyone who actually interfaced with them in a positive way. Enter the Métis, a group of intermarried First Nations and European settlers with a distinct and unique national culture. 

The Métis became a thing when early fur traders in the new world (mostly French and Scottish) married First Nations women (primarily Cree). Over time, the descendants of these first marriages evolved into a community of people with their own language, music, flag and system of farming. Their farming was unique. It was based around long, narrow lots providing each property both with river access and close proximity to their neighbors. The Métis settled on land in Manitoba which was part of a massive area called Rupert's Land, which was basically the drainage basin of the Hudson Bay over which the Hudson's Bay Company had exclusive trading rights.

In 1868, the entirety of Rupert's Land was conveyed to the Dominion of Canada which then set about dividing the land into settlements, including the land already occupied by the Métis. The Métis leader, Louis Riel, led a series of resistance efforts to hamper the Canadian government's efforts to enforce various Proclamations, including those around land redistribution and (perhaps unbelivably) the sale of pemmican. Yes, there was a war waged over pemmican and restrictions on it's distribution. Insane, right?

We learned a little about the Métis at the Riel House National Historic Site in Winnipeg (shown above) including the events of the Pemmican War and the hanging of Louis Riel by the Canadian government. The Métis are still around today as a distinct and proud part of the population of Canada. They are remarkably visible if you look, which I guess is encouraging.

English, French and First Nations syllabics. On a commercial airline flight. 

Broken Promises

Our conversations with First Nations and Métis people in Manitoba was littered with acts of ethnic violence and promises by the Canadian government that were never fulfilled. We heard these stories in Riding Mountain National Park (the Anishinaabe were burned out of their homes by white settlers) and Winnipeg but we heard them most notably in Churchill from Florence Hamilton in a cultural presentation one night in Churchill. 

The thread of our discussion with Florence included a serious lack of personal cultural identity, pretty much all at the hands of the Canadian government. The Dene were forcibly relocated to the Churchill area and prohibited from participating in their annual caribou hunt starting in the in 1950s. The land they were assigned was leftover land and by the mid-1970s it was abandoned by the Dene. By that time, their ties to their past way of life was destroyed. As if that wasn't bad enough, Florence's mother was a Residential School survivor and she took the teachings to heart, raising Florence without connection to her people's background. I think that sometimes, we think people can recover from something like forced re-education. Apparently not.

It is difficult for those of us who are in the majority to understand these types of concepts sometimes but it's important to listen and see that other perspective. When asked if there was anything that the Canadian government could do to make things better going forward, she pretty much acknowledged that there was no fix. But she did hope that the government would just stick to the agreements that they already negotiated rather than ignoring them. It's not encouraging when your only hope for things not to get worse is for people who have historically broken promises to start keeping them.

An inuksuk, a traditional Inuit landmark, in front of the Itsanitaq Museum, Churchill.

I believe there is value in preserving what is unique and special about every place on our planet. I don't want everything to be the same wherever I go. Sometimes I feel I'm being selfish about this issue because I usually think of it in terms of food. By that I mean something like...I don't want KFC to be in every neighborhood in the whole world that I travel to but if people in Japan or Botswana or wherever it is want KFC, who am I to deny them?

It's a little more complicated for me when I move off the food analogy. But if our time in Canada this summer taught me anything, it's when the United States and (in the case of this post) Canada, imposed their sameness of dominant culture from coast to coast, it almost or completely destroyed some things that are valuable to not just tourists like me but others as well. And in this case, those others are the people who actually still remain from the culture that is conquered or overwhelmed or bypassed or whatever you want to call it and still feel there is value in being different.

So maybe everyone doesn't need access to pemmican so they can survive the winter when there's no hunting. Although with this summer's outbreak of diseased produce of all varieties here in the United States since we stopped apparently inspecting food, maybe I should be eating pemmican. But there IS value in being connected to our ancestors and the past whether that manifests itself in dog sledding through the woods or being able to hunt caribou or being able to farm in a way that's different than most people farm or even gathering fruits and nuts. We shouldn't destroy things just because they are not important to us personally. Eventually, it will matter to all of us.

The cover picture of this post is a detail from a painting called Arctic Apocalypse #2 by Abraham Anghik Ruben, an Inuvialuk Canadian artist. We found this work in the Winnipeg Art Gallery in downtown Winnipeg on the first full day of our trip. I think it makes a good cover post.

Eating healthily. Saskatoons, hazelnuts, peppercorns, maple syrup and a few other things.