The Queen at the Council Fire: The Treaty of Niagara, Reconciliation, and the Dignified Crown in Canada
200
The Queen at the Council Fire: The Treaty of Niagara, Reconciliation, and the Dignified Crown in Canada
200eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781459730687 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dundurn Press |
| Publication date: | 06/20/2015 |
| Series: | Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada (ISCC) at Massey College , #1 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 200 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Nathan Tidridge was presented the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal by the Prince of Wales in 2012. A high-school history teacher, he won the Premier’s Award for Teaching Excellence (Teacher of the Year, 2008). Nathan is the author of Beyond Mainland, Canada’s Constitutional Monarchy, and Prince Edward, Duke of Kent. He lives in Waterdown, Ontario.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One: Encountering Indigenous Voices My first encounter with Indigenous history stemmed from my boyhood explorations of the lake at my family cottage in Muskoka. Buck Lake, pooling out from either side of the Muskoka-Parry Sound border, was the source of many adventures as I plied its waters in an old canoe.1 I had burned all the official maps of Buck Lake and its surrounding area, opting instead to make my own. As the years went by, I added islands, rivers, and new lakes to an expanding world of my creation. I discovered a “New World” in nearby Fox Lake, christened islands with names like Royal Britannia and Raymond Island (after my grandfather), and even touched off a canoe war with my neighbours. Over time, traditions were developed that included flags, medals, and epic histories. Later, I attended Wilfrid Laurier University, publishing the history of my little world, which I had called “Mainland,” in an effort to preserve it indefinitely. I meticulously gathered everything together with the help of Professor Susan Scott of the Department of Religion and Culture. Susan and I would meet over tea at her home in Waterloo as she gently guided me through the passages and portages of recording personal history. One day, as we approached what I thought was the end of the process, Susan asked me a question that changed my entire view of this world I had claimed as my own. “Nathan,” she asked, smiling at me with her hand covering her cup of tea as wisps of steam escaped through her fingers, “how are you going to handle the ideas of imperialism woven into your story?” I could feel my canoe grinding against an unseen rock in the water. Susan was merely enquiring about something that should have stood out as obvious to me: I had not just created my own world; I had conjured up an empire. I had projected my own identity onto the landscape of Buck Lake, and by doing so had displaced histories that had been laid down before I arrived. The very idea that other people existed on the lake and had their own worlds — just as personal and intimate — had never occurred to me. Eventually, a new book emerged, entitled Beyond Mainland, in which I confessed, “I heard other names attached to the islands, rivers, and lakes that seemed so familiar to me. I was scared of those names — their existence implied a loss of control, that I was not the only steward of Buck Lake.”2 I eventually learned to relax my grip and expand my view of the land and its history, accepting that many people had travelled these same waters. It was then that I first encountered the stories of Indigenous peoples of the lake and its lands. I learned that “my” lake was part of a long chain of lakes that stretched from Georgian Bay into the eastern hinterlands of present-day Muskoka, and that this chain of lakes had once served as an important transportation route and source of food for the Indigenous peoples of the region. The place I knew as the sleepy hamlet of Ilfracombe, at the foot of Buck Lake, had been visited for centuries by the Anishinaabe. As a boy, I had never imagined Indigenous peoples living on the lands and in the waters surrounding my cottage. I had always pictured “Indians” as being from some ancient past, far removed from my life. In school, Indigenous peoples occupied the first few pages of our history textbooks before vanishing into the mists of a long timeline. Later, when I became a teacher of Canadian history, I was very tentative about exploring the place of Indigenous peoples in that history with my students. Resources were scarce and the curriculum did not ask us to dwell too much on the subject (fortunately, that has changed in Ontario).3 The history of the Indigenous peoples of Canada mystified me; it was filled with names that were difficult to pronounce and an oral tradition that didn’t fit well with my profession’s book-centred, Euro-centric focus, or its linear approach to time. If I had to admit it to myself, I was largely ignorant of the subject. What little I knew was informed by my experience of growing up during the crises in Oka and Ipperwash (not to mention the Caledonia Land Claim that erupted during my second year of teaching). I remember the media reporting on those events with little context, fueling family discussions back home that were laced with misinformation and learned racism. Growing up in Canada, my only points of contact with Indigenous peoples were the moments of conflict that occasionally occurred, which were marked by newspapers decorated with images of Natives in bandanas or behind barricades. It never occurred to me to ask why these events were happening, or question how they were being discussed in Canada. When I became an adult, it was easier to ignore the Indigenous peoples than try and make sense of what had happened between our two peoples. My views have changed considerably since those early days as a teacher. As my previous two books (Canada’s Constitutional Monarchy and Prince Edward, Duke of Kent: Father of the Canadian Crown) attest, for the past number of years I have been exploring the Crown in this country. It was through this exploration that I encountered King George III’s Royal Proclamation of 1763, reading that it was the “Magna Carta” for Indigenous peoples living with Canada — an assertion repeated throughout the few resources available to me. I began to realize that the Crown was at the heart of Canada’s relationship with First Nations. When the settlers and First Nations first came together to construct a delicate balance (represented so well by artist Alex MacKay’s Treaty Canoe) that would allow them to live together on the land, the Dignified Crown became the medium through which First Nations could communicate with non-Indigenous settlers. Through my involvement with Friends of the Canadian Crown, now the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada at Massey College,4 I attended the Diamond Jubilee Conference on the Crown held in Regina, Saskatchewan, as a discussant in October, 2012.5 This conference began to broaden my understanding of the complex relationship that has grown between the Crown and First Nations. Talks delivered by J.R. (Jim) Miller (Canada Research Chair in Native-Newcomer Relations and professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan) and Stephanie Danyluk (a research analyst in the Department of Self-Government at Whitecap Dakota First Nation) introduced me to the ancient practice of First Nations making European monarchs, and thus their subjects, kin. As J.R. Miller explained to the attendees: [BLOCKSTART] Kinship and alliance are the heart of the ties to the Crown. Understanding these ties allows us to appreciate where we as a country have gone wrong in the past and, perhaps, to discern how we might improve relations in the future.6 [BLOCKEND] In his 2014 discussion on the place of Indigenous concepts of love in Canada’s Constitution for the CBC Radio One program Ideas, Professor John Borrows (Professor of Law at both the University of Minnesota Law School and the University of Victoria) spoke of how love was woven into the treaties. “When Indigenous peoples signed treaties with the Crown in Canada,” Borrows explained, “love was frequently invoked, even in the face of sharp disagreements.”7 During the September 2013 opening in Vancouver of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the commission established in 2008 in the aftermath of the troubles with Canada’s Indian Residential School Program), the chair, Justice Murray Sinclair, remarked, “For the survivors [of Indian Residential Schools] in this room the most important gesture of reconciliation that they will ever see in their lives is for you to tell them that you love them.”8 [SPACEBREAK] It is here that language must be explored. Language is the atmosphere in which we live and see the world around us — that I think and write this in English immediately puts me at a disadvantage when speaking of another people. English Canadians are familiar with the issues raised by different groups speaking different languages as a result of their, sometimes strained, relationship with their French-speaking sisters and brothers. However, even though French and English are different forms of expression, they are rooted in a similar European tradition. There are shared experiences embracing religion, philosophy, and culture that allow their different worlds to make some sort of sense to each other. With a common Judeo-Christian background, the Europeans who landed on this continent over the past five hundred years have shared a relationship with the environment with deep biblical roots. Much can be gleaned about how European Canadians understand their connection to the land by reading Genesis 1:26 (New International Version): “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’” Later, in Verse 28, God is quoted as saying, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” The use of words such as rule, sometimes translated as dominion, and subdue (originally written in Hebrew, and later Latin, before being translated into the common languages of Europe) create power dynamics between humans (made in the image of God) and the environment. Even though modern Canadian society is secular, with a clear separation between religion and the State, we cannot ignore the fact that the languages of those who migrated from Europe to these shores are the products of a Western Christian world. First Nation languages share no genes with those languages that are the products of the European concept of the world. As an example, 70 percent of Anishinaabemowin (the Anishinaabe language) is comprised of verbs — a much greater percentage than is found in any European language (English has approximately 12.5 percent in the spoken language).9 The extensive use of analogy and metaphor, as opposed to the more common use of direct references and explanations employed by European languages, can be found throughout Indigenous communities (both historic and present-day). Anishinaabe names for places and landmarks typically reflect their relationship with them, or the location’s place in relation to the surrounding environment (For example: Toronto’s Humber River was originally called Cobechenonk, meaning “leave the canoes and go back.”) This style of naming contrasts with the European habit of designating features of the environment after significant people, places, or events. I can offer another, specifically English, example of the problem created by language, by continuing John Borrows’s exploration of the word love. In English, we only have this one word to explain a very complex and powerful experience. In my own life I throw the word love around repeatedly: I love my wife; I love my family; I love my students; I love my morning coffee. All of these relationships are different, and yet I only have one word that conveys an emotional connection that I am trying to get across. Other English-speakers understand that I am not applying the same definition of “love” to my wife as I do my morning coffee, even though I am not giving them any other verbs to work with. Bruce Morito addresses this idea in the introduction to his book An Ethic of Mutual Respect: The Covenant Chain and Aboriginal-Crown Relations when he cites Clifford Geertz’s notion of the “rich descriptor.” Morito explains “… where rich descriptors are used for purposes of communication, we can conclude that the people who use them appropriately presuppose a rich array of supporting and contributing intangible factors.”10 Love is a rich descriptor, but other English-speakers appreciate that and graft their experiences and relationships onto mine, thereby understanding that my love for coffee is not familial. Move into other cultures, however, and different words have been developed to provide names for the many “love” relationships we can have — I immediately think of the Greek concept of “agape,” or the word “metta” from ancient India. These words are vaguely translatable into English, but their essences are not. If those languages were to die, the distinctions and experiences those words evoke would die with them. The gap in meaning between languages described above exists between European languages and First Nations languages. As a result, one would imagine that attempts at settler-First Nations communication would be bound to fail as the worlds created by these very different realities are largely untranslatable. Paradoxically, Professor Morito offers a counter-argument: the lack of rich descriptors and the nuances in Indigenous languages that are found in English and other European languages may actually have led to a deeper relationship between the settlers and the Indigenous peoples because it necessitated careful listening and exploration of each other’s experiences. Morito explains, “the First Nation/Crown treaty relationship turned out to be deeper … precisely because both parties had to dig deeply into their imaginations and capacities to develop a shared lifeworld that people of the same culture would have [had], because they [took] so much for granted.”11 The referencing of Queen Victoria as “The Great White Mother,” or of King George III as “Father,” is famous in Indigenous history, and at the beginning was understood to invoke a strong relationship of equality. However, the meaning behind these rich descriptors has been lost, or deliberately corrupted, over time. When we look specifically at Anishinaabe culture and family structure, the problem with trying to explain relationships between radically different cultures becomes apparent. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Anishinaabe culture was very anti-hierarchical, with no concept of a paramount chief — any demonstrations of selfishness or ego was abhorred. Professor Evans Dowd, explaining the Odawa Nation in his book War under Heaven, writes, “To call leadership decentralized in these societies is almost to miss the point, because centralization was not an issue … Indian leadership was not authoritarian.”12 Dowd explains that the Odawa term for a civil leader was ogema, i.e., a highly respected man who headed a network of extended families but held no authority to impose his opinions on others. Dowd writes, “The ideal [Odawa] leader forged alliances through displays of generosity. He was composed, dependable, and willing to withstand long hours of negotiation. He mediated disputes among his followers and between his followers and others. He received gifts and redistributed them to his people; likewise, he gathered gifts from his people and gave these, in exchanges, to others.”13 The very idea of a leader in the community was markedly different from that of the Europeans whom they were encountering. This is especially true of women in Indigenous societies, who are often the glue that holds everything together — the “backbone of the Nation,” I am often told. It was with words used to describe family relationships that Europeans and First Nations began to sort out their interactions with one another. The problem that immediately emerged was that the meanings of the words — different depending on the language and culture employing them — bore little resemblance to the relationship they were intended to explain. The Anishinaabe concept of fatherhood, an equal relationship within the family that involved protection and generosity, bore no resemblance to its European counterpart, which was based in a male-dominated, hierarchical society. In her exploration of the relationship between the “Dignified Crown” and western Canada during the nineteenth century, the University of Calgary’s Sarah Carter explains: [BLOCKSTART] … while the addresses that successive governors general delivered to First Nations, replete with references to the Great Mother (Queen Victoria) and her “red children,” spoke of inequality rather than equality from the perspective of the vice-regal visitor, this was not how they were received by First Nations, who heard powerful affirmations of their familial relationship.14 [BLOCKEND] As Carter reminds her readers, referencing the Crown as “Mother” or “Father” was not an act of submission; instead, it was a declaration by an Indigenous Nation that they were equal members of the same family as their “brothers,” the British subjects they were encountering in their territory. Modern instances of such familial names being conferred on the Monarch, or their representatives, include the Salish Nation bestowing the name “Mother of All People” on Queen Elizabeth II in 1959, and the Kainai Nation (Blood Tribe) conferring a chieftainship on Governor General Adrienne Clarkson as “Grandmother of Many Nations” in 2005. At the beginning of their interactions with Indigenous peoples in North America, Europeans “got it,” and employed these terms while meeting with their new partners. An interesting account survives from 1815, when a Hudson’s Bay Company surveyor characterized King George III as the “Great Father of us all” in his efforts to secure peaceful relations with the Nations near the Red River settlement.15 This reference was taken by the Nehiraw (Cree) and Saulteaux peoples as a metaphor denoting equality — that the HBC and their rivals, the North West Company, were both children of the Great Father (king). Such an understanding was affirmed during the 1817 Selkirk Treaty. Sir William Johnson (superintendent of Indian Affairs for the northern colonies, 1756–1774) deliberately referred to Indigenous allies as “Brothers” and the King as “Father” (presumably in an Indigenous context). Even as late as 1876, Alexander Morris, the lieutenant governor of the North-West Territories, greeted delegates from the Nehiraw Nations assembled outside Fort Carlton (present-day Saskatchewan) saying: [BLOCKSTART] What I say and what you say, and what we do, is done openly before the whole people. You are, like me and my friends who are with me, children of the Queen [author’s emphasis]. We are of the same blood, the same God made us and the same Queen rules over us. I am a Queen’s Councillor, I am her Governor of all these territories, and I am here to speak from her to you.… I have been nearly four years Governor of Manitoba and these territories, and from the day I was sworn, I took the Indian by the hand, and those who took it have never let go.…16 [BLOCKEND] However, while his rhetoric seems to respect the equality enshrined in the Treaty of Niagara and Covenant Chain, Morris slides in a phrase that would have turned Johnson’s blood cold. Seemingly affirming the equality of the Nehiraw with the European settlers, Morris defines it by saying “ … you are subjects of the Queen as I am. She cares as much for one of you as she does for one of her white subjects.”17 [INSERT IMAGE: 1-1] If all peoples are equal only as subjects of the Monarch in this country, a problem emerges: Canada’s constitutional setup separates the Efficient from the Dignified Crown and expects the Queen, or her representatives, to act on the advice of a democratically elected government. Canadian legislatures use representation by population — a practice that dooms First Nations, whose lands have been flooded with waves of non-Indigenous immigrants. While what Alexander Morris is saying sounds nice, peppered as it is with references to an active “Great White Mother,” the Canadian constitution did not allow for the sort of relationship he describes to exist. Publishing The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories in 1880, Morris offered another nudge to the relationship between the Crown and First Nations when he wrote in his conclusion “The Future of the Indians”: [BLOCKSTART] They are wards of Canada, let us do our duty by them, and repeat in the North-West, the success which has attended our dealings with them in old Canada, for the last hundred years … let us have a wise and paternal Government carrying out the provisions of our treaties, and doing its utmost to help and elevate the Indian population, who have been cast upon our care.… [BLOCKEND] Morris’s final statement captures the new, paternalistic relationship that had begun to overshadow the Covenant Chain. The equality demanded by the Treaty of Niagara was replaced by a new relationship, where First Nations were seen as wards of the Crown. The lieutenant governor concluded: [BLOCKSTART] … instead of the Indian melting away, as one of them in older Canada tersely put it, “as snow before the sun,” we will see our Indian population, loyal subjects of the Crown, happy, prosperous, and self-sustaining, and Canada will be enabled to feel, that in a truly patriotic spirit, our country has done its duty by the red men of the North-West, and thereby to herself. So may it be.18 [BLOCKEND] European rich descriptors of the family dynamic were now being imposed on the relationships between the Crown (deliberately being presented by colonial officials as the Efficient and Dignified dimensions fused together) and First Nations. Attributes of the Crown including generosity and dependability, with no ability to impose on other members of the family, were replaced with concepts of benevolent authoritarianism and subjugation by colonial officials, who co-opted these relationships and remoulded them to suit long-term goals of assimilation. It is these mid-nineteenth-century definitions of relationship that have formed the collective narrative of Canada — they have become the lens through which many non-Indigenous Canadians see First Nations today. [INSERT IMAGE: 1-2] As settlers flooded west across the great plains, treaty commissioners presented themselves as direct representatives of the Queen, the “Great White Mother,” fostering the familial relationship in order to get the land they needed for European settlement. The shift from a relationship based on equality to that of submission can also be seen in Lieutenant Governor Adams Archibald’s address at the Council of Treaty One: “Your Great Mother wishes the good of all races under her sway. She wishes her red children to be happy and contented. She wishes them to live in comfort.” It should be noted that by these words Archibald had made another slight adjustment to the role of the Crown in its Treaty relationship. Instead of the Crown offering protection, the lieutenant governor has substituted that word with “sway,” or influence. The Queen’s representative goes on to say, “She would like them to adopt the habits of the whites, to till the land and raise food and store it up against a time of want.”19 This new role for the Queen further eclipses the traditional (and was never intended by the ancient Covenant Chain relationship). Echoing the relationship articulated by Alexander Morris, Archibald used the “Great White Mother” to give instructions to First Nations — supplanting the original Treaty dynamic with a European one of a parent to a child. As Peter Carstens explains in his preface to The Queen’s People, “It is therefore a mockery of that trust that from the colonial period onwards the lawmakers and administrators set in authority over [N]ative peoples of Canada were also the Queen’s people.”20 By pulling the interpretation of the Crown-First Nation relationship fully into the English language, the horrors of Canada’s Indian Residential School System seem inevitable. The extinction of Indigenous worlds, including their ancient relationship with the Queen, required the destruction of Indigenous ways of explaining it to themselves and others. Native languages had to be eradicated, and children separated from the older generations. If Indigenous peoples lost the words and stories they used to describe their relationships with one another, as well as the Queen, their assimilation would be complete because they would become mute — only European understandings and definitions would remain. When treaties are seen only through the lens of a European language, they are reduced simply to contracts rather than the living familial relationships they were intended to be (for First Nations “treaty” is a verb, not a noun). As Bruce Morito explains: [BLOCKSTART] Understanding the lifeworld or mindset of one’s allies could only be accomplished to a certain degree, partly because of psychological limitations in the human capacity to make foreign cultures intelligible without knowing the other’s language. Both parties would have lacked the ability … to detect and automatically interpret nuances in the behaviour and speech of others.21 [BLOCKEND] The difference between breaking a contract (an action associated with a penalty such as a fine) and breaking a Treaty (the destruction of a family relationship) is dramatic and demands a more thorough understanding by Canadians. [SPACEBREAK] While exploring language and relationships, it is also important to acknowledge the differences between written and oral histories, and their effect on the concept of time. European history has a tradition of being written, and is often presented on a timeline. By assigning dates to various events and the people who participated in them, a sense of distance is immediately created between the historical incident and the present-day — between then and now. History becomes a series of events, each building off the next, giving the impression of a “progression” into the future. “Moving forward” is always seen as better, synonymous with progress. One consequence of such a view of history is that the present supersedes the past, with the effect that the past inevitably becomes diminished. Oral history is different. Dates are irrelevant, as history becomes a story that encompasses the listener. The 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples explained: [BLOCKSTART] Unlike the western scientific tradition, which creates a sense of distance in time between the listener or reader and the events being described, the tendency of Aboriginal perspectives is to create a sense of immediacy by encouraging listeners to imagine that they are participating in the past event being recounted. Ideas about how the universe was created offer a particularly compelling example of differences in approach to interpreting the past.22 [BLOCKEND] A European worldview plants a Treaty on a timeline that we are constantly moving away from. Treaties become static things that can fall into abeyance or even become obsolete if enough time passes. For the historian, a Treaty becomes an artifact, insulated from the reader by the passage of time. Written text is frozen — a one-way conversation that becomes harder and harder to relate to since it cannot evolve to embrace contemporary language, which continues to develop. In an oral tradition, words are important, and they can be explored using new terms, phrases, and analogies that have developed since the story was first spoken. Interpretation and agreement become central to the Treaty relationship, which helps explain why councils could last for days as both sides explained how they understood their relationship with each other. A tradition of consensus demands constant communication and negotiation. Daniel K. Richter explains that “[T]he process of treaty making was always far more important to Indians than the results enshrined in a treaty document.”23 As with time, treaties are meant to be a continuing “work in progress” — they are never finished — that is the point. Treaties demand that both parties meet regularly to recite the words and stories associated with their relationship to one another, reinterpreting them and consensually agreeing to live together anew. Disagreements must be talked through. This is why love is so important to the Treaty relationship. Disagreements between family members can be visceral, even downright ugly, but as long as the parties involved love each other (and this does not mean they have to like one another), there will always be hope for compromise and consensus. I once heard from an Indigenous negotiator that Canada deals with modern Treaty negotiations as if they were divorce proceedings; lawyers are involved as details are hammered out in some sort of agreement that will settle things once and for all, so that both sides can move on separately with their lives. An Indigenous perspective sees treaties as a marriage: a relationship that is constantly evolving. Filled with agreement and disagreement, times of intense love and cold distance, a marriage is always a work in progress. Never static, it is a relationship that requires constant communication, attention and respect. As with any successful marriage, love must always be found at its centre. When Indigenous peoples speak of their relationship with the Crown, it should not be taken simply as something that was created in the past. Canadian conceptions of the Crown see it as a constantly evolving institution on a timeline, moving forward into the unknown future. Our Constitution allows for powers unused by the Crown to die through the passage of time — a “use it or lose it” principle. The powers and concept of the eighteenth-century Crown in Canada are dramatically different from those of the twenty-first-century one. Looking at the Crown using a First Nation perspective and concept of time presents a dramatically different institution. The promises and relationship agreed to in Treaty are as important and relevant today as they were when first negotiated. What we have in Canada is a perception problem concerning the Crown that needs to be revisited by all parties involved. By just looking at the different concepts of time involved, the complexity of this task becomes strikingly apparent. Early into my teaching career I visited the epicentre of Canada’s Indian Residential School System, the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario. Created as a residential school in 1828, the “Mush Hole” (as it was called by those that were made to attend) began the devastating effort by the Canadian government to “kill the Indian in the child,” or as Duncan Campbell Scott, deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs, articulated in 1920, “… to get rid of the Indian Problem.… Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic….”24 [INSERT IMAGE: 1-3] Thinking about that visit today brings to mind Thomas King’s remarkable Massey Lecture series, The Truth About Stories. After speaking about being abandoned by his father and raised by his mother, King reminded his audience, “I tell the stories not to play on your sympathies but to suggest how stories can control our lives, for there is a part of me that has never been able to move past these stories, a part of me that will be chained to these stories as long as I live.” Learning about Canada’s attempt to wipe out Indigenous identity and culture in this land is a story that many non-Indigenous Canadians are hearing for the first time. The rawness of this period serves to keep the wounds open and festering. For many, seeing Canada as a place capable of such acts is uncomfortable — even unimaginable. As Thomas King said, “… once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.”25 People who had once referred to Europeans as kin had thousands of their children removed from their mothers and grandmothers and forcibly assimilated into a culture that had originally pledged to follow agreements such as the Teioháte Kaswenta, or Two-Row Wampum. The abuse inflicted for over a century poisoned a relationship that was originally founded in equality, and corrupted it into one of rape, torture, and murder. Thanks to such organizations as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the stories circling around the hundreds of residential school sites in this country are loose in the world. So it must be. Stories such as these need to be chained to this country’s history, recognized as a part of our collective journey together. Such a step is key to the future of Canada, if we are, in the words of the Honourable Steven L. Point, ever to “paddle together in the same canoe.” Residential schools remain the most dramatic example in the breakdown of Canada’s relationship with First Nations, but there are many other indignities that have been suffered. Exploring Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2008 apology to the victims of residential schools, Eva MacKay quotes Michael Doxtater in The Apologizer’s Apology saying, “The closing of the residential school door leads down a hallway with other doors most Indians know about. The partnership now involves walking down that hallway together.”26 This has not simply been the collapse of a political alliance, or the breach of a contract from long ago. What happened in Canada was the breakdown of complex familial relationships between the Crown and Indigenous peoples. If it were simply a European-style contractual agreement that had been broken — like a pre-nuptial agreement — the solution would be relatively simple, albeit costly. However, these were relationships grounded in love — a word with no concrete definition in English (and certainly not one that finds harmony with Indigenous conceptions). For centuries we tried to relate to one another in Treaty, and the Dignified Crown (an institution rooted in honour, tradition, dependability, and consistency) provided non-Indigenous peoples with a way to communicate. However, it was the Europeans that changed the dynamic. Professor Dowd saw signs of this change after the Seven Years War (1754–1763), writing that “… language was critical to the failure of the British and Indians to establish a working relationship” after the French Crown had been expelled from the Great Lakes watershed, even citing Shawnees referencing the English’s “evil speech.”27 In the eyes of the First Nations across this continent, evil speech festered to the point where the settler population, under the Indian Residential School System, took Indigenous children from their parents and began systematically deconstructing their cultures. As I wrote earlier, one of the prime targets in that effort was the complete eradication of Indigenous languages. The logic is sound: If the intent is to destroy the worldview of another people, the very words they use to express their reality and define their relationships must be obliterated. If no words are left to describe an experience, it ceases to exist. With Indigenous languages extinguished, First Nations would be forced to embrace European words and the concepts they express. Put simply, if First Nations did not have words for subjugation and ownership, they needed to be forced into a language that did. It should be no wonder that Justice Murray Sinclair, addressing students at the University of Manitoba on February 16, 2012, characterized what happened in Canada’s Indian Residential School Program as meeting the requirements of the United Nation’s definition of genocide.28 For the 150th anniversary of the Charlottetown Conference, Stephen Lewis (often described as Canada’s most respected citizen) was awarded a prestigious Symons Medal and asked to deliver a lecture on the state of Confederation. Addressing his audience gathered in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Lewis (an honorary witness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission) characterized the contemporary landscape for First Nations as racist. “Sure, there was an apology,” Lewis acknowledged, “but an apology is ultimately gratuitous, ultimately self-serving and devious if it’s not accompanied by root and branch educational reform.”29 [BLOCKSTART] [Please set in some sort of hand-written font.] You have now been here for several days, during which time we have frequently met to Renew, and strengthen our Engagements,&you have made so many Promises of your Friendship, and Attachment to the English that there now only remains for us to exchange the great Belt of the Covenant Chain that we may not forget our mutual Engagements. Sir William Johnson, Niagara, 1764 [BLOCKEND] [INSERT IMAGE:1-4 — Please crop out grey background of image]
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 9
Introduction 11
Chapter 1 Encountering Indigenous Voices 29
Chapter 2 The 1764 Treaty of Niagara and Covenant Chain of Friendship 49
Chapter 3 The Queen at the Council Fire 77
Chapter 4 Building Community - A Model Royal Visit 119
Chapter 5 Suggestions for Moving Forward Together 129
Notes 155
Bibliography 169
Index 175
About the Author 182
What People are Saying About This
“This is a beautiful, clear and well-written book. Thanks to Nathan Tidridge for producing a great piece of scholarship, research and good feeling. I definitely recommend this book.”
“This is a beautiful, clear, and well-written book. Thanks to Nathan Tidridge for producing a great piece of scholarship, research, and good feeling. I definitely recommend this book.”
— Professor John Borrows, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law
“It is my privilege as a lieutenant governor of Ontario who was deeply involved in Aboriginal matters during my term to strongly recommend Nathan Tidridge’s latest book, The Queen at the Council Fire.… [It] is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the history of the relationship between the Crown and Indigenous peoples and why that relationship is crucial to Canada’s future relations with First Nations.”
— Honourable David C. Onley, O.Ont., 28th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario
“With The Queen at the Council Fire, Nathan Tidridge has gifted us a concise, sharp, and detailed account of one of the most important events in Canada’s history, a moment all too often ignored in the history books. The Treaty of Niagara offers a path for healthy relationships much needed in a modern culture built on the 1763 Royal Proclamation, the British North-America Act, and a long spectrum of violent, genocidal Indian policies. Tidridge reminds us of the hope embedded in our collective past and how we continue to be shaped by it in important and seminal ways.”
— Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, Associate Professor, Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba
“Constitutional monarchy is usually discussed in terms of principles. This account demonstrates that when the subject is First Nations, it is the practices of the Crown in its long relationship with Indigenous peoples that are of paramount concern. Through the prism of the Crown, Nathan Tidridge offers a unique perspective on a subject of fundamental importance.”
— Dr. David Smith, Author of The Invisible Crown: The First Principle of Canadian Government
“Nathan Tidridge has given us a richly textured account of the historic meeting of First Nations with Sir William Johnson, the British Monarch’s personal representative, at Niagara in 1764. The Treaty of Niagara is Canada’s first Confederation, Tidridge’s book is must reading for understanding Canada’s constitutional foundations.”
— Dr. Peter Russell, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto
“The Covenant Chain is a metaphor for alliance between the Crown and various Indigenous nations. Long ago, the representatives of the Crown let go their end of the belt and quit coming to the council fire to ‘polish the chain.’ In this book, Mr. Tidridge offers a re-telling of the ‘talk’ from a modern-day Canadian perspective. Mr. Tidridge is not a passive witness, but is an active participant and thus has made a valuable contribution to advancing the dialogue amongst the Canadian population in order to ‘smooth the path’ between settler population and the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples.”
— Alan Corbiere, Anishinaabe Cultural Historian, M’Chigeeng First Nation
“In The Queen at the Council Fire, Nathan Tidridge demonstrates the link between Canadian federalism and the First Nations, debunking the assumption that ‘Indians’ are simply an issue for Ottawa. Mr. Tidridge encourages us to look beyond the stereotypes and appreciate the mutual interest of both orders of government in collaborating with the First Nations through the unique institution of the Canadian Crown.”
— D. Michael Jackson, CVO, SOM, CD, Author of The Crown and Canadian Federalism (Dundurn, 2013), Vice-President, Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada
“Nathan draws the reader into an important story about a little known and often complex subject. Nya:weh, Nathan, for all of your hard work, passion, and friendship.”
— Heather George, Acting Cultural Coordinator of Her Majesty’s Royal Chapel of the Mohawks, Cultural Coordinator of Chiefswood National Historic Site