TREATY 5 STATEMENT RECITES GREVIENCES CALLS FOR AN INDEPENDENT TREATY DISPUTE TRIBUNAL MINISTER BENNETT COMMITS TO A PROCESS

BLACK RIVER FIRST NATION, TREATY 5 TERRITORY: Tucked into a snug pocket of 's boreal vastness, Little Black River is a convenient 90-minute drive north of , and yet it is far enough away that its rural location on the east side of combines the big sky country of the prairies with the rocky outcrops of the Canadian north.

Geography alone would have made it an ideal location for the 2019 annual Summit of the Treaty 5 Sovereign Nations, held on the Anishinabe Black River school grounds June 9-11. It is the Treaty 5 First Nation closest to the provincial capital and the home of one of two treaty group co-chairs, Chief Sheldon Kent. The other co-chair is 's Chemawawin Nation Chief Clarence Easter.

The summit, entitled "Taking Ownership and Control of Our Ancestral Lands," approved an independent treaty dispute tribunal and a Treaty 5 commissioner to oversee talks with Ottawa on their treaty, signed 144 years ago. The summit site was also significant in Indigenous history, as home to a sacred site central to the region's Anishinabe governance and spiritual practices, a seat of higher learning for traditional chiefs that long predates European settlement in western Canada.

Buried beneath colonial frameworks, such sites are scattered throughout Treaty 5 territory as elders reminded summit delegates and guests. The locations remain sacred and hold added relevancy now as treaty nations put Indigenous law back into practice in the post-colonial era and carry it forward into the future.

By the evening of the first day, some 690 citizens of the 38 First Nations that are signatories to the 1875 treaty had arrived and registered for the summit. Some camped out in tents and RV's near the massive open-air canopy, close to an arbor where firekeepers continually fed a sacred fire. At the entrance to the grounds, delegates raised a flag designed with their sovereign emblem as their first collective act, in view of tepees where elders conducted traditional pipe ceremonies to mark each sunrise.

Many made daily commutes up to an hour away from hotels, inns and other nearby First Nations to take in the proceedings.

This year's summit followed two earlier summits in 2017 and 2018 which prepared much of the groundwork, with the involvement of youth, women and elders drawn from across the treaty territory. This gathering stood out as the first to be held outdoors on traditional territory. Storms opened the first day, skirting the summit with banks of thunderheads rolling by on either side and a tornado watch marked the third day. In between, eagles soared over the summit under brilliant blue skies.

By Thursday, when Canada's Minister of Crown Indigenous Relations, Carolyn Bennett, arrived, delegates had endorsed a formal statement to the Crown which summit spokesman and former national chief Ovide Mercredi delivered in a formal address.

"We have waited a long time for Canada to respect and honour our Treaty, "Ovide Mercredi told the federal minister charged with renewing the country's treaty relationship with First Nations.

"Many times we have thought that the delay was deliberate and tied to the federal and provincial government policies of neglect and extinguishment. We often think that the colonial strategy ---which includes the totalitarian regime of the and residential schools--- for our complete assimilation was, and remains, the plan that we will forget our treaties and disappear," the Treaty 5 spokesman declared in a 20-minute delivery, meticulously reviewed word by word with delegates ahead of the minister's arrival. "We will not forget and we will not disappear."

The Treaty 5 territory covers millions of acres of traditional territory, stretching from Manitoba's Interlake to Hudson Bay. As one of the series of 1 - 11, Treaty 5 was also a key gateway to open up the Canadian prairies to settlers. But the treaty is singular in another respect; it covers most of Manitoba and also takes in lands held under the historical Rupert's Land of the Hudson's Bay Company, a massive territory that would eventually be divided up among and the prairie provinces.

Treaty 5 today includes more than half a dozen First Nations in Ontario and , and along with the majority of First Nations in Manitoba, represents a population in excess of 100,000 citizens drawn from traditional territories of the Cree, Dene, Oji-Cree and Anishinabe.

The multi-jurisdictional nature of the territory presents a unique challenge to future treaty discussions and will almost certainly open up new jurisdictional fronts on resource sharing and land management with First Nations in western Canada. To that end, proceedings took in lectures from academics, legal experts and Indigenous historians on a broad range of topics. Discussions with implications for future treaty talks with the Crown covered the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, the current Parliamentary slate of federal legislation as well as historic laws including the Natural Resources Transfer Act and the latest court rulings on treaties.

"Minister Bennett, treaties are here for as long as the grass grows, the sun shines and the waters flow," youth delegate Wapastim Harper said in his remarks. Harper made a point of offering tobacco ahead of his speech, a traditional ritual that adds spiritual weight to the spoken word. "Without our treaties, Canada has no standing morally or legally. We need our land back," Harper concluded.

The summit took strong issue with conventional federal and provincial interpretations of treaty law. Federal authorities have consistently maintained that the territory covered by Treaty 5 – nearly 260,000 acres of land – was ceded and surrendered outright by Indigenous inhabitants and much of that in the space of eight short days in the summer of 1875. First Nations treaty signatories flatly dispute that interpretation as unilateral, insisting their ancestors never surrendered their lands, their livelihoods or the birthright of succeeding generations.

"To be clear," Mercredi told the minister, "we say categorically we reject the single understanding of Treaty 5 as interpreted and enforced by Canada. We are sovereign Nations who made a Treaty with the settler Crown. It was done with the recognition and understanding that we were an independent people who wanted a peaceful co-existence with the settler society. Our ancestors never went onto to relinquish our title to our lands, waters and resources. Yet with deliberate intent and bad faith, the Crown proceeded to assert full dominion over our lands and territories. That is not the meaning of our Treaty with the Crown."

As Mercredi reviewed the summit statement, delegates and guests could be seen visibly watching for the minister's response.

At the beginning, Bennett smiled and nodded and as the statement continued, her composure deepened and her focus sharpened. The steady pace of her pen kept time with the points Mercredi punctuated one by one in the summit's statement to the Crown.

"This Treaty 5 gathering is historic. It is what you said at the beginning and what we say at the end," Bennett said, striking a conciliatory tone in her concluding remarks. The minister acknowledged the summit as a forum on treaty and Indigenous law, a process she indicated she anticipated and accepted as a part of the nation-to nation process going forward under the Liberal government.

This was not the first time Treaty 5 citizens had gathered as a distinct people to remind the Crown to honour the settlement agreement as known and understood by its inherent Indigenous land inheritors. A nearly identical declaration was issued at a 1991 gathering of chiefs and elders from Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.

This time Treaty 5 chiefs and elders have reason to expect favourable change. From the inexorable pace of climate change to the current political realities, Canada today is not the same country it was a generation ago. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry among other official forums have worked a cumulative role in shifting the political landscape. At the same time, numerous court rulings have broadened the country's understanding of its legal foundations and embraced the concepts of Indigenous law.

The summit builds on a framework for how to deal with Ottawa on a nation-to-nation basis, including how to move past The Indian Act. The trio of summits since 2017 are, in fact, stepping stones to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's 2015 pledge to renew relations with Indigenous people and establish a nation to nation relationship with them. Talks at each canvassed First Nations governance, the rebuilding of First Nations institutions, the closing of socio-economic gaps and ways to generate independent revenues separate from government funding as well as practical applications for reconciliation and new nation-to- nation relationships.

Treaty 5 is one of more than 70 groups of First Nations in talks with Ottawa through a federal framework set up to move ahead with the new relationship Trudeau spelled out as a major priority coming into his first term. The discussion tables are among several taking place in parallel platforms throughout the country, some of them simultaneously conducted with some of the same First Nations. As federal parties move into the 2019 federal election, these groups are shoring up momentum to carry them through this fall's polling results and it was clear the summit had the minister's attention.

Minister Bennett made the road trip from Winnipeg with a strict schedule; delegates and guests were told she would stay two hours at most. Some eighty minutes of that time was taken up by Mercredi's formal statement followed by a round of pointed questions as chiefs, elders and Treaty 5 residents rose one after another to address the minister directly. Questions ranged from treaty grievances and unfulfilled land entitlements to deeply personal burdens. An elderly man broke down in tears recounting the search for relatives missing since the residential school era. A daughter delivered a passionate criticism of health care services and her detailed her father's suffering as he undergoes dialysis even as he suffers racist epithets in Winnipeg, far from his family home in South Indian Lake.

Bennett was greeted with harsh warnings, too.

"The people of Treaty Five are not just gathering here just for talk. They are here to do some very serious movement, to make sure their treaty is understood," Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee declared. "Your leader said the most important relationship is to Indigenous people . . . We're prepared. The Treaty 5 warriors are standing by and they're not prepared to let it go anymore," the MKO leader told the minister.

Pimicikamak Cree elder Tommy Monias stated, "This is my country. You are welcome here to live with us . . . We don't need you to suppress us (and) you need to ask us permission (for development on Indigenous lands) Tell (that) to your fellow Canadians."

Another elder from the Island Lake region demanded mandatory education on treaties in schools and then flatly delivered his own ultimatum: "I'm here to tell Minister Bennett, Your 'visiting hours' are over. It's time to start working, with us. You came to our land. You forced yourself on this country. It's time to work together."

Bennett remained composed. She also stayed nearly an hour longer than she expected. She addressed each question point by point, identifying many of the questions by the name of the individual who'd posed them. By the end of it, when the minister rose for a series of friendly photo-ops, she'd visibly earned the crowd's respect. Delegates openly commented on the minister's comprehensive feedback as she worked her way through the long list of varied queries.

It is worth noting, too, that the summit fits into a wider set of industry discussions and federal initiatives. Exploratory diamond and lithium mining ventures are in various stages of exploration in northern and eastern parts of Treaty 5 territory, bringing to bear a sense of urgency among First Nations to organize along treaty ties and leverage strength in numbers.

Another key factor prominent in the future political landscape is the role First Nations are poised to assert in the country's future. A year ago, Ottawa split the former Indigenous Affairs department in two, a bureaucratic decision with wide-reaching consequences. Bennett retained Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs to handle treaties and a separate Indigenous Services department was set up to deal with programs in health, education, infrastructure and child welfare. Last year, Ottawa unveiled plans and priorities with the goal to eliminate the Indigenous Services department as it transfers jurisdiction to First Nations over the next decade. The clock on federal jurisdiction over Indigenous affairs is ticking.

Submitted by Alexandra Paul, July 14, 2019

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