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Where Some Ideas Are Stranger Than Others...

Treaty Making With First Peoples Comes First

The difficulty with common sense notions is that they are supposed to be what "everybody" knows, but the definition of "everybody" is neither constant nor universal. So it took some time before I fully appreciated many non-Indigenous canadians do not realize Métis are treaty people. This seems really strange before remembering most non-Indigenous canadians are unaware they are in fact treaty people. They take it as given their ancestors or at least some earlier group undertook and completed the dirty work of infiltration, invasion, military occupation, and conquest. Certainly the usual settler state propaganda presents a versions of purported history reproducing just such a story. But it doesn’t take much practical thought or even research to realize this purported history makes no sense. If there had been no treaty making, just in effect a bridgehead and then creeping military invasion, how was this done when the majority of people shipped off to "the new world" via various forms of economic and legal coercion were poor as church mice, untrained and unequipped for military activity? Just because basically no european ever signed a treaty with Indigenous peoples they seriously intended to honour does not delete the reality and meaningfulness of treaties. For Métis in particular, since the land was already full and they needed to establish a place socially and economically in northern north america because they emerged there, treaties were never optional, and never ignorable. Without treaties with elder First Nations relatives, there was no way to safely harvest basic necessities or trade goods. Treaties helped schedule access to shared lands and instruct Métis how to enter appropriate relationships with those lands. Indeed, becoming fully conscious of the responsibility to develop and establish ongoing relationships with the land and First Nations relatives is a key element of Métis ethnogenesis as an Indigenous people.

Unfortunately, with the ongoing phenomenon of people who think they are white opportunistically claiming to be a racialized construct they call "métis" in eastern canada, the necessity and deep meaning of treaty for Métis is often blurred or ignored. This contributes to the issues arising between people who may genuinely be Métis in ontario who opted to try to establish agreements with the canadian federal government before establishing proper treaties with the First Nations where they live or indeed where they have moved. This is one of the tricky aspects of what the canadian legal establishment calls s. 35 rights after the part of the canadian constitution established in 1982. "S. 35 rights" are a sort of general category of rights held by all Indigenous peoples currently caught up in the settler colonial construct of canada. The rights are typically settler-defined as those to harvesting animals and plants from the land for personal or at least community use. Oftentimes, anyone from the broad constitutional categories in the canadian legal framework, "Indians, Inuit, and Métis" may be far outside their own traditional homelands. They may need or expect to exercise what canada calls "s. 35 rights." How is that supposed to work? Well, settlers may be inclined to point promptly to their expensive, slow-moving court system that assures so many lawyers a living. But Indigenous peoples are more likely to point first to treaties. To this day, the proper way to exercise "s. 35 rights" or indeed to establish such things as ceremonial lodges outside of traditional lands is to get permission and create an ongoing land relationshp from the Indigenous people who are already in relationship to the land. Getting permission can be on an individual or family basis, but for larger communities permission must be established via treaty. Going to "canada" or "the crown" for permission, which usually means permission to exploit, not be in ongoing longterm relationship, is not treatymaking. It is colonialism.

Métis scholar Adam Gaudry dealt directly with the question of whether Métis are treaty people in a 2016 talk in the Weweni Indigenous Scholars Speaker Series, which ran from 2015 to 2022 at the university of winnipeg. His talk is titled, as we may expect, Are the Métis treaty people? An examination of the Manitoba Act as a treaty with the Métis Nation. Gaudry argues Métis are indeed treaty people from the contemporary documentation around the original entry of manitoba into canadian confederation as the "postage stamp province." He notes the record shows Métis negotiating their entry into confederation insisted that the canadian state must undertake treatymaking with First Nations representing themselves. Due to the colonial commitment to imposing racialization, instead of this becoming enshrined as fullsome respect for Métis as another Indigenous people who understood themselves to be such and therefore properly able to treat only for themselves, not for other Indigenous peoples, it became a stick to undermine and even deny the existence of a treaty between the Métis Nation and canada. Practically speaking, this leads to some Métis being treaty people via their membership in First Nations outside of the "numbered" or as Leroy Littlebear refers to them, "victorian treaties." But more importantly, Gaudry describes how Métis had already entered treaty partnerships with First Nations, joining the Iron Alliance with Cree, Nakota, and Anishinaabeg of the plains, and making peace with the Dakota. He notes how marriages were part of small scale treaties between Métis and First Nations.

Returning specifically to the Manitoba case, Gaudry points out that Louis Riel himself spoke of the Manitoba Treaty between the Métis and other Red River peoples and canada in 1870. The Red River representatives went to ottawa understanding they were going to negotiate a treaty. Finally, Gaudry argues that the Manitoba Act and the Manitoba Treaty are two different things. The Manitoba treaty established the ongoing nation to nation relationship between Métis and canada, while the acts passed by the federal and new manitoban legislatures ratified the treaty in their legal framework in 1870. The Métis Nation ratification was carried out via the provisional government that undertook the work to bring the canadian federal government to the negotiating table and bring the treaty back to the people for their consent.

The point of treatymaking is to bring nations into longterm relationship with each other and the land. Without treaties, it is difficult for nations to avoid war or responsibly meet their basic needs for food, water and shelter, let alone undertake such important activities as ceremony and trade. To mendaciously sign a treaty, then ignore it while taking advantage of others who strive to uphold the treaty is to behave in a colonizing fashion. Worse yet, it is to behave in an utterly destructive, at best short term form of destructive behaviour which not only disrespects the land, it disintegrates the cultures of the nations that choose to sign a treaty with their fingers figuratively crossed behind their backs. The Métis Nation strives to uphold treaties to which it is already a party and negotiate others precisely because the M&eacutis;tis are treaty people: making and upholding treaty is part of Métis culture and history.

Major Revision Date of This Article: 2020-12-03

1. Gaudry, Adam. Are the Métis treaty people? An examination of the Manitoba Act as a treaty with the Métis Nation. Weweni Indigenous Scholars Speaker Series, 6 january 2016, university of winnipeg.
2. The canadian federal government describes the origins of the "postage stamp province" monicker in a page on manitoba’s provincial symbols as follows: "The new province consisted of 36,000 square kilometres surrounding the Red River Valley. It was called the ‘postage stamp’ province because of its square shape and relatively small size. However, the province did not remain that small. Its boundaries were enlarged in 1881 and again in 1912."
3. The majority of the best known "numbered treaties" affecting the original northwest territories in canada, Treaties 1 to 11, were signed between 1871 to 1899, during the reign of england’s Queen Victoria, which spanned 1837 to 1901. Treaties 9, 10, and 11 are the exceptions, with the first two signed in 1905-1906, the last in 1921-1922. "Adhesions," by additional First Nations not originally included in numbered treaty negotiations continue to be arranged and signed to this day. For a canadian federal perspective on these treaties, see The Numbered Treaties (1871-1899). For an Indigenous perspective, see the APTN series Treaty Road.

Copyright © C. Osborne 2026

Last Modified: Wednesday, January 07, 2026 23:05:37