ANTH 436 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Treaty 4, Akwesasne, Indian Act
23 May 2018
School
Department
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Professor
2/22/2018
Asch Chapter 5
• What is your perception of treaty?
o Should treaties in settler-colonial societies be the basis for constitutions?
o Treaties often retaught as a narrative of defeat
▪ historically a way of excusing settler behavior
▪ deceptive force
▪ have not been honored
▪ intentional misconceptions -- feigning of cultural communication
o need to read the treaties
▪ would that capture treaty wholly
o the concept of “treaty people”
▪ treaty system existed before contact
o treaties as coerced, forced selling of land
o paternalism from the Canadian government
▪ paternalism was understood as the science of the day -- levels of
barbarism, savagery (indigenous peoples as literally understood as
children, white people as big brothers, etc)
o broken treaties
• treaty as partnership with Canada
o settler narratives around treaty are based on the writing of it
o oral agreements -- indigenous nations are the only ones with oral accounts of
treaty
o need a shift from paternalism → fraternalism
• What kind of relationship did people think they were in when they signed these
treaties?
o Treaty 4
▪ exploitation of Buffalo at the time (making drive belts for emerging
industry)
▪ combination of factors that resulted in the depletion of the herd
▪ a process of starving out indigenous populations in the area -- by the
1870s life on the plains which was once abundant was precarious
▪ making treaty because they had no other choice
• treaty as a last resort after years of fighting settler
encroachment (i.e. Crowfoot, Comanche in the U.S.)
o treaties signed because people were going to settle there anyway
• the idea of ceding sovereignty to settlers (or anyone)
o was it an easily conceivable from an indigenous conception
▪ rights to land as non transferable, because it was/is seen as
something connected to ancestry, etc
o was the idea of shared land conceivable to Europeans/settlers? (cede and
surrender as the basis for all European warfare)
• the argument of cultural miscommunication as inaccurate, dated
o both parties did have a good understanding of what each side wanted
o of course there was, but perhaps it shouldn’t be over-emphasized
▪ British leaders who constructed/wrote understanding the treaties
shouldn’t translate to the entire Canadian public understanding the
concept/intentions of treaty (there are many moving pieces of
bureaucracy)
▪ or the treaty commissioners may have understood the relationship,
but leaders in Ottawa may persistently align with another
agenda/understanding
• losing land….sovereignty as a more complex concept
o sovereignty is very abstract
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