The Rural Voice, 2019-03, Page 40considered to be the duration of the
agreements. Typically, says Glenn
Trivett, an Ojibway historian and
teacher who lives in Mount Forest,
Ontario, the treaties ended with
language like, “as long as the sun
shines” and “as long as the rivers
flow.” A pipe was usually smoked to
solemnize the deal.
According to Trivett, smoking the
pipe (often mistakenly referred to as
a “peace pipe”) was a deeply sacred
act and meant the highest level of
sincerity. Trivett should know. He is
a Midewiwin pipe carrier, one of the
few entrusted by his people to carry a
sacred ceremonial pipe.
Language like “as long as the
rivers flow” meant that, “This
agreement will be in effect forever,”
Trivett says. But forever is a long
time. Much longer, Trivett adds, than
Crown officials had in mind.
Unbeknownst to Indigenous
signatories of the treaties, Trivett
says, sealing the deal did not mean
forever for the British.
Why the disconnect?
Some argue that, because of
differences in culture and worldview,
Indigenous and Crown negotiators
could not possibly have understood
one another. Indigenous peoples
looked upon the land and saw
something sacred to be treated with
care and respect. Europeans regarded
the land more as a base to exploit for
commercial gain. Unlike their treaty
counterparts, they saw themselves
not as being in and of the land, but
over against and above it.
For the Christian European
colonizers, their essential detachment
from the land was reinforced by
Biblical scripture, in particular,
passages like Genesis 1:26: “Then
God said…And let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea and
over the birds of the heavens and
over the livestock and over all the
earth….” Whether through
fundamentalist belief or as
convenient justification, the
colonizers used such passages to
rationalize not only their dominance
of the natural world, but their control
and ultimately oppression of
Indigenous peoples and appropriation
of their sovereign lands.
In his book, No Surrender: The
Land Remains Indigenous,
Athabasca University historian
Sheldon Krasowski argues that
Indigenous peoples did not intend to
surrender their land through the
treaty processes. Indigenous Chiefs
wanted to share the land with settlers
in exchange for treaty benefits
offered by the Canadian government,
including annuity payments, reserved
lands, education, and sometimes
,assistance with transition to
agriculture.
Treaty commissioners, Krasowski
says, had a common negotiating
strategy: they would discuss the
benefits of treaties and ignore the
hitches, including land-surrender
clauses. And yet, he adds, echoing
Trivett’s words, Crown negotiators
were following Indigenous protocols
or customs that were “led by
[Indigenous] Elders [and were
intended to establish] a spiritual bond
between Euro-Canadian and
Indigenous Peoples that continues to
exist as long as the sun shines, the
grass grows, and the rivers flow.”
Were Crown officials fully aware
of the solemn nature of the
proceedings and the absolute and
sacred seal of smoking the
ceremonial pipe?
In a March 2003 paper analyzing
the historical economic factors
affecting the development of
Indigenous peoples in Canada,
Trivett quotes the British at the time
of intensive treaty making in the 17th
and 18th centuries: “…We [the
British] are a million people. We are
invincible, the sun never sets on the
British empire, we are dominating
the world. Indians are dying in huge
numbers from [European] disease…
Sometimes we are giving them
blankets…that have diseases on them
to speed up the process, but they are
36 The Rural Voice
Glenn Trivett, an Ojibway historian, says while the treaties meant “forever”
to Indigenous people, “forever” did not mean the same to the British. Photo
by Michael McLuhan.