Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Spring 1997
Document Type
Article
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 2, Spring 1997, pp. 85-101.
Abstract
Most of the Canadian plains region is covered by the "Numbered Treaties" negotiated in the 1870s between the government of the Dominion of Canada, acting for the British Crown, and the nations whose territories encompassed the area. Even at the time that the treaties were negotiated, the various signatories had different assumptions about what they actually meant. During the ensuing century and more that the treaties have existed, their meanings have been reinterpreted. With the repatriation of the Canadian constitution in 1982, giving treaty rights constitutional status and protection from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the actual guarantees of the treaties have often been interpreted in a manner inconsistent with current government policy and quite possibly in a way that none of the treaty negotiators for the Crown could have imagined, let alone predicted, in the 1870s. Although the Crown's prime objective was to avoid American-style "Indian wars" by securing promises of peace from the First Nations' leaders and to negotiate the surrender of lands that could then be parceled out to incoming Euro-Canadian settlers, the texts of the treaties did promise the Indigenous parties sovereignty on their remaining territory, and particularly in the case of Treaty Seven, established that Indigenous leaders should share the responsibility for maintaining peace and order in the region. While it is always difficult to interpret a document in the light of completely altered circumstances, I make the argument that Treaty Seven, at least, may be legitimately interpreted in such a way as to provide for guaranteed representation, at the federal level, for the First Nations that were parties to the treaty.
Although a number of studies have been conducted during the past several years suggesting that guaranteed parliamentary representation for Aboriginal peoples is compatible with the Canadian electoral system, others have suggested that such particularistic representation- giving special electoral rights to one particular group-is unconstitutional. The lack of consensus in the existing literature about the constitutionality of guaranteed Aboriginal representation may be because all of the studies have focused on integrating Aboriginal representation within the existing electoral scheme. Like Iris Marion Young, most scholars have conceptualized guaranteed representation as a means to rectify past injustices and inadequacies in the Canadian political system, but ihhey had examined guaranteed representation as a pre-existing right of Aboriginal peoples from before the repatriation of the constitution they might have arrived at different, more consistent conclusions.1
In this paper I argue that guaranteed parliamentary representation can legitimately be derived from the peace and good order clause that appears in the Numbered Treaties. In Treaty Seven (as in all the Numbered Treaties) the peace and good order or "mutual" clause reads as follows:
And the undersigned Blackfeet, Blood, Piegan [sic] and Sarcee Head Chiefs and Minor Chiefs, and Stony [sic] Chiefs and Councilors on their own behalf and on behalf of all other Indians inhabiting the Tract within ceded do hereby solemnly promise and engage to strictly observe this Treaty, and also to conduct and behave themselves as good and loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen. They promise and engage that they will maintain peace and good order between each other and between themselves and other tribes of Indians, and between themselves and others of Her Majesty's subjects, whether Indians, Half Breeds or Whites, now inhabiting or hereafter to inhabit, any part of the said ceded tract; and that they will not molest the person or property of any inhabitant of such ceded tract, or the property of Her Majesty the Queen, or interfere with or trouble any person, passing or traveling through the said tract or any part thereof, and that they will assist the officers of Her Majesty in bringing to justice and punishment any Indian offending against the stipulation of this Treaty, or infringing the laws in force in the country so ceded.2
Comments
Copyright 1997 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln