Treaties

"With emigrants of all Nations flowing into the country [the prairies] we are in constant danger of an Indian war . . . This may be prevented only by an early organization of a mounted police."
Sir John A. Macdonald, 1871

"We heard our lands were sold and we did not like it, we don't want to sell our land; it is our property,  and no one has a right to sell them. [But we need] cattle, tools, agricultural implements, and assistance in everything when we come to settle – our country is no longer able to support us."
Sweet Grass, 1871

"What I trust and hope we will do is not for to-day and tomorrow only; what I will promise, and what I believe and hope you will take, it to last as long as the sun shines and yonder river flows."
Treaty Commissioner Alexander Morris

"THE MANITOBA INDIAN TREATY
The making of a treaty with the Indians of Manitoba marks an era in the history of the settlement of that Province. But for the peaceful arrangement of the Indian claims the progress of settlement might have been interrupted by such scenes between the Indians and the Whites as have disgraced the Western States of the American Republic, and Canada would have forfeited the good name it had previously acquired for dealing fairly, and even generously, with the Red Man. . . It effectively puts an end to all danger of trouble with the Indians."
Canadian Illustrated News, 9 September 1871

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/treaties-from-1760-1923-two-sides-to-the-story-1.1081839

"The truth of the matter is that Indigenous Peoples did not for a minute believe they were giving away their rights to use the land and its resources in return for tiny reserves and what would become broken promises. The spirit of the treaties is that they were peace and friendship treaties. Indigenous Peoples were agreeing to share the land with settlers, not to disinherit themselves."
Michelle Good, Truth Telling

"The Canadian federation was formed at the high tide of European imperialism, when white people. . . believed fervently in their racial superiority and . . . the 'obligation to rule subordinate, inferior, less –advanced peoples.'"
Peter H. Russell, Canada's Odyssey, p.150

"The Indians believed that no one owned the land. The whites were bound by their view of the world as something to be owned and conquered."
 Robert Fulford, Saturday Night, July 1985

"Our hearts have been wounded by the arbitrary way the Government of B.C. has dealt with us in allocating and dividing our reserves . . .  For many years we have been complaining of the land left to us being too small . . .  We have felt like men trampled on, and are commencing to believe that the aim of the white men is to exterminate us as soon as they can, although we have always been quiet, obedient, kind and friendly to the Whites."
Petition to Ottawa, 1874

"Dispossession and displacement were everywhere, and so was Native protest in the form of letters, petitions and editorials."
Emma La Rocque

"The purpose of making treaties was not to establish a continuing relationship of mutual help and the sharing of the country, but to pave the way for British settlers by isolating groups of Indians on tiny reserves, denying them the possibility of carrying on their traditional economy or the opportunity to participate in the new economy on the off-reserve lands they were considered to have "surrendered."
Peter H. Russell, Canada's Odyssey

"In Canada, relocations were employed ostensibly to further the official goals – protection, civilization and assimilation – of Canadian native policy."
Thomas King, The Inconvenient Indian

"Progress – railways, the telegraph, mechanized farming, immigrants from Ontario and later Europe, and an organized government, police and legal system – was inevitable, and neither the Métis nor the Indians could continue to live in their traditional ways."
Richard Gwyn, Nation Maker Sir John A. Macdonald

"These [treaties] were permanent nation-to-nation agreements with obligations on both sides. To this the governmental negotiators committed the Crown legally, ethically and morally. And over the last four decades that reality has led the Supreme Court to rule repeatedly in favour of the Aboriginal position and against that of Ottawa, the provinces and the private sector. Anyone sworn in as a Canadian citizen today or tomorrow inherits the full benefits and the full responsibilities – the obligations – of those treaties."
John Ralston Saul, The Comeback

"We all know that the treaties involved a massive loss of land for First Nations. What most of us pretend we don't know is that this remarkable generosity was tied to permanent obligations taken on by colonial officials, then by the Government of Canada; that is, by the Crown, that is, by you and me. So we got the use of the land – and therefore the possibility of creating Canada – in return for a relationship in which we have permanent obligations. We have kept the land. We have repeatedly used ruses to get more of the land. And we have not fulfilled our side of the agreement."
John Ralston Saul, The Comeback

"What I offer you is to be while the water flows and the sun rises."
Alexander Morris, 1 October 1873

"There are only two things I want from Indians–the first is peace–second is their land."
President George Washington

"Just suppose that all supplies were cut off from Montreal: all factories closed because there was nothing to manufacture; the markets forsaken because there was nothing to sell; in addition to this neither building material or fuel to be attained; how sad would be the condition of the tens of thousands of your great city! Now, the situation of these prairie tribes is exactly analogous to this state. For ages they have lived upon the buffalo; with its pelt they make their wigwams; wrapped in the robe of the buffalo they feared not the cold; from the flesh of this wild ox they made their pemmican and dried meat; while they possessed the sinews they needed no stronger thread; from its ribs they manufactured sleighs . . . The manure of the buffalo is all the fuel they had – in a word they were totally dependent on the buffalo."

George McDougall, 1875

"I speak directly to Poundmaker and The Badger and those others who object to signing this treaty. Have you anything better to offer our people? I ask, again, can you suggest anything that will bring these back for tomorrow and an the tomorrows that face our people?
I for one think that the Great White Queen Mother has offered us a way of life when the buffalo are no more. Gone they will be before many snows have come to cover our heads or graves if such should be."
Chief Mistawasis, 1876

"But my people, who had an oral tradition and had honoured verbal agreements in the past, thought that the government would also honour what was spoken during the treaty making. . . Given the difficulties in translation and the different cultural attitudes toward the use and ownership of land, our forefathers did not realize that they were ceding land to the whiteman for all time. . . If my forefathers had known what all this would mean to our people: the disappearance of the buffalo and diminishing of other game, the restrictive game laws, the plowing and fencing off of all the lands, more whiteman's diseases, attacks on our religion, culture and way of life, the continual eroding of our other treaty rights; if they could have foreseen the creation of provincial parks, natural areas, wilderness areas, the building of dams, and flooding of our traditional hunting areas, they would have never signed Treaty Seven. But they relied on the missionaries, who said, 'The Queen's government will honour the promises in the treaties.'"
Chief John Snow, These Mountains Are Our Sacred Places

"The Indian reservation is a parcel of land that is set aside for the exclusive use of the Indian, and is surrounded by thieves."
 General William Tecumseh Sherman

"This is our land! It isn't a piece of pemmican to be cut off and given in little pieces back to us. It is ours and we will take what we want."
 Poundmaker, 1876

"We want none of the Queen's presents; when we set a fox trap we scatter pieces of meat all round, but when the fox gets into the trap we knock him on the head.; we want no bait, let your Chiefs come like men and talk to us."
Chief Big Bear

"Before the white man came, the Indians had everything they wanted; now that the Government has taken their land, it should provide for them."
 Chief Big Bear

"Our land is more valuable than your money. It will last forever. It will not perish as long as the sun shines and water flows, and through all the years it will give life to men and beasts. It was put there by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not belong to us."
Chief Crowfoot, speech, 1870s

"A little while and I will be gone from among you. Whither I cannot tell. From nowhere we came, into nowhere we go. What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

Chief Crowfoot

"One of the primary reasons why Chief Crowfoot . . .  chose to sign Treaty 7–and to tolerate and humour the North West Mounted Police, Father Lacombe, and the Canadian Pacific Railway¬ was because his people were suffering desperately from deadly diseases, starvation, demoralization, confusion, and despair, even before they lost their lands though treaties and the Indian Act."
Emma La Rocque

"The Indian Act caused chaos in the lives and cultures of the Aboriginal people. Despite all the assistance Aboriginal people had provided the newcomers, despite all the Aboriginal contributions to the rest of the world, despite any intelligence shown by any individual,  through the paternalistic Indian Act, "Indians" were put in the category of children and the mentally diabled. . . It was instituted without any input from Aboriginal people."
Bev Sellars, Price Paid The Fight for First Nations Survival

"One of the most persistent myths that Canadian historians perpetuate is that of the honorable and just policy Canada followed in dealing with the Plains Indians."
John L. Tobias, Canada's Subjugation of the Plains Cree, 1879-1885

"If the Police had not come to the country, where would we be all now? Bad men and whiskey were killing us so fast that very few indeed of us would have been left today. The Police have protected us as the feathers of the bird protect it from the frosts of winter. . . I am satisfied. I will sign the treaty."
Chief Crowfoot, Blackfoot Crossing, 20 October 1877

"The whole theory of supplying the Indians is that we must prevent them from starving. In consequence of the cessation of the buffalo and their not having yet betaken themselves to raising crops, they were suffering greatly. Parliament has been liberal in making grants and it was the duty of the Government to see that the Indians were not allowed to fatten in idleness . . . we prevented them from starving but at the same time every effort was made to save the public stores and induce the Indians to become self-supporting."

David Mills, the Liberal Minister of the Interior

"In the spring of 1879 for Treaty 6 signatories in the area of Fort Carleton, Prince Albert, Battleford, Fort Pitt, Victoiras Plains and Edmonton 20,000 pounds of bacon were ordered in addition to 300,00 pounds of flour and 100,000 pounds of beef. . . By 1881 Edgar Dewdney established that he was providing rations for up to 18,000 people for treaties 4, 6 and 7. The United States government, meanwhile provided no food. Leif Crozier of the North West Mounted Police at one point provided nourishment for as many as 5,000 people."

Patrice Dutil, Sir John A. Macdonald

"My people were hospitable and generous and shared what we had with the newcomers. We were quite prepared to share  the land as well. But the newcomers were not satisfied with just sharing it. Despite the fact that many of them arrived preaching the Christian virtues of brotherhood and understanding and Christian emphasis on spiritual things over material things, their actions proved that what they wanted was to own and control the land and to control the minds and actions of my people as well."
Chief John Snow, These Mountains Are Our Sacred Places

"The Indians were faced with the sudden onslaught of a totally foreign agrarian culture. Because of the railway, the impact was instantaneous."
Pierre Berton, The Last Spike

"If the Dominion Government intends to carry out a starvation policy with the Indians, then we will be no better than our cousins across the line, whom we condemn so lustily for their 'extermination' policy. We cannot allow the Indians to starve in our midst."
Prince Albert correspondent for the Saskatchewan Herald, 9 February 1880

"What for the Europeans was the gradual growth of settlement, economic expansion, material success, was for the Indian peoples a slow contraction of their country, social disintegration, a growing subjugation and the erosion of hope."
Stanley B. Ryerson, Unequal Union

"[Indigenous reserves in BC were located] in many small reserves rather than a few large ones for a variety of reasons: the provincial government argued that small reserves would force Indigenous peoples into the workplace, there to learn the habits of industry, thrift, and materialism, this becoming civilized; and also to provide cheap seasonal labour for burgeoning industries . . . places that were most precious to Indigenous peoples such as their villages, grave sites, cultivated fields, and fishing sites – none of which requires much space."
Cole Harris, A Bounded Land Reflections on Settler Colonialism in Canada

"The great aim of our civilization has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the inhabitants of the Dominion, as speedily as they are fit for the change."
P. M. John A. Macdonald. 1887