Source: https://lobstick.wordpress.com/oral-traditions-and-treaty-81/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 01:54:19+00:00

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In celebrating the centennial of Treaty 8, it is important not to forget that it belongs to the eleven Numbered Treaties. Although these were signed at different times over a period of fifty years, and each has unique features, such as Treaty 8’s provision for reserves in severalty, the Numbered Treaties as a group are very similar to one another. Today Treaty 8 is caught up in a broad movement affecting all the Numbered Treaties, and indeed all land-surrender agreements in Canada, to transform the nature of these treaties, to devalue the written text and impose new interpretations based on aboriginal oral traditions. This paper argues that oral traditions can be a useful source of information in interpreting the treaties, but only if they are subjected to the same type of critical analysis routinely employed on other forms of evidence, both in historiography and in the judicial process.
At least for the time being, however, the treaty text is still paramount. In the 1988 Horse decision, the Supreme Court held that treaties should be interpreted in accordance with the normal rule for contracts, “that extrinsic evidence is not to be used in the absence of ambiguity.”(3) Even though the Supreme Court reaffirmed this principle in Sioui, aboriginal advocates detest the Horse decision and frequently invite the Supreme Court to overrule it.(4) Their goal is to promulgate a transformed understanding of treaties in which the written words of the agreement are not determinative because “the written text expresses only the government of Canada’s view of the treaty relationship: it does not embody the negotiated agreement”(5) as the elders remember it.
RCAP’s conclusion is that Canada should henceforth act on the basis of this novel and untested legal theory and regard aboriginal peoples as co-owners of all land, even though they signed agreements extinguishing their land rights, have received substantial benefits for doing so, and continue to seek punctilious fulfilment of those treaty clauses from which they draw benefits. The Commission’s call for the “implementation and renewal of treaties”(16) comes down in the end to a one-sided reading of the treaties. Implementation means that clauses conferring benefits must be fulfilled to the letter, while renewal means that clauses by which the Indians gave up something must be ignored, reinterpreted, or replaced.
This view of the treaty was widely disseminated through the book As Long as This Land Shall Last, written by Father René Fumoleau, an Oblate missionary in the north. Morrow’s decision in the Paulette case was overturned on appeal, but the political victory had been won. The federal government entered into negotiations with the Dene and Metis of the Northwest Territories (but not Alberta) for a new land-claim agreement. More recently, the Minister of Indian Affairs signed a memorandum of understanding with the “Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta … to establish a formal bilateral process to … implement an inherent right of self-government consistent with the spirit and intent of the Treaty relationship.”(19) Whether the renovation of Treaty 8 will amount to repudiation remains to be seen.
The repudiation of treaties has not yet spread to other parts of Canada, perhaps because conditions in the Mackenzie Valley were unique. Land there was still part of a federal territory, so a provincial government did not have to agree to give up control of its Crown lands. Also, reserves had never been taken up, relatively little land had been alienated to private owners, and native people were still a demographic majority outside of Yellowknife.
In the absence of wholesale “renovation” of the treaties, what we are likely to see is guerrilla warfare in the courts, in which aboriginal advocates attempt to undo extinguishment by gradually undermining the Crown’s control of public lands and natural resources. A recent example is a case decided by the Provincial Court of Saskatchewan on August 26, 1998, which acquitted two Dene from Buffao Narrows of the charge of hunting moose illegally on the Primrose Lake Air Weapons Range. Basing this part of his judgment largely on Dene oral tradition, the judge held that Treaty 10, even though it contains the usual clause about surrender of title to the land, actually meant that “the land would thereafter be shared along principled lines.”(20) If not overturned on appeal, this decision means that Saskatchewan may lose its control over resource development on Crown land and may have to get permission from one or more Indian bands every time a project is contemplated. There would also seem to be major implications about compensation for past developments in which the Crown acted as if it had a clear title.
Another example is the Rio Alto case initiated by the Fort McKay First Nation. RioAlto Exploration sought and obtained permission in the normal way from the Ministry of Environmental Protection to run some seismic lines in the Treaty 8 area. The Fort McKay First Nation, alleging that the seismic exploration would interfere with its members’ traplines, asked the Court of Queen’s Bench for “an Order of Mandamus compelling the Minister of Environmental Protection to consult with the Applicants regarding the scope, nature and extent of the impact of all exploratory activities approved by that minister on the exercise of the Treaty and Aboriginal rights of the Applicants.”(21) What the band is after is the right to approve, and receive compensation for, any economic development on Crown land in what it considers its traditional territory – in effect, a right of co-ownership with the province.
Inconveniently, Treaty 8 says that the Indians gave up all their rights and title to the land, but counsel for the band may base an argument on the Treaty’s guarantee of the continued right to hunt and fish on Crown land. Again, the language of the treaty is inconvenient, because it says that hunting and fishing can continue “saving and excepting such tracts as may be required or taken up from time to time for settlement, mining, lumbering, trading or other purposes.”(22) In response, the Fort McKay First Nation may quote the oral promise of the treaty commissioners: “But over and above the provision, we had to solemnly assure them that only such laws as to hunting and fishing as were in the interest of the Indians and were found necessary in order to protect the fish and fur-bearing animals would be made, and that they would be as free to hunt and fish after the treaty as they would be if they never entered into it.”(23) They may also bring forward various oral traditions purporting to show that their people never intended to give up their land rights.
On 26 February 1999, the campaign against the treaties was taken to a new level when two statements of claim were filed in Alberta. The Samson Cree Nation now holds that in 1877, when they adhered to Treaty 6, they “agreed only to share the surface of the Traditional Lands with Her Majesty the Queen.” They “did not surrender by Treaty No. 6 their aboriginal title and aboriginal rights in and to the Natural Resources.”(24) In a separate action, all Treaty 7 bands “deny they ceded, released, surrendered or yielded up their Aboriginal title or right over the Treaty 7 Territory,” claiming instead that “they were agreeing to share the Treaty 7 Territory with the Crown.”(25) If actions of this type are successful, they will totally transform the treaties.
If extinguishment is undermined in the courts by an “expansive” interpretation of hunting rights, it will produce an awkward duplication of property rights. Indian bands will not receive ownership rights as such, but rather veto rights, or perhaps the right to be consulted, on economic development projects that might affect hunting, fishing, and trapping in “traditional territories” whose boundaries are at present not defined. Provinces will lose the ability they now have to undertake or authorize projects on their own authority. It is, moreover, predictable that bands will have overlapping conceptions of their traditional territories, so that provincial authorities may have to deal with two or more bands, not just in major projects like dams, but in minor projects like seismic lines. If it came to that, it would be better to grant Indian bands title in fee simple to larger tracts than to end up with an impossibly cumbersome system of dual or multiple property rights that can only stultify economic activity.
Prior to the 1990s, oral traditions played only a limited role in native-rights litigation. In the 1935 Dreaver case, the Exchequer Court heard testimony from Chief Dreaver, who had been present at the signing of Treaty 6 in 1876, and allowed him to state his understanding of the “medicine chest” clause in that treaty.(31) In Paulette in1971, Justice Morrow heard oral evidence from Indians who had witnessed the signing of Treaties 8 and 11. But neither of these cases had high legal (as compared to political) impact. Justice Morrow’s decision was overturned on appeal, and Dreaver remained little known and was not even reported until the 1970s. Moreover, both cases exemplified not oral traditions in the true sense of stories passed down across generations, but witnesses recounting their own memories of events witnessed decades ago.
The Court’s decision in Badger did not turn entirely, or even chiefly, on oral tradition; but it did make use of oral tradition, as recounted by a Cree elder, to help interpret the words of Treaty 8 as well as the accompanying promises made by government representatives during the negotiations.
There are, to be sure, differences between Delgamuukw and treaty litigation. In Delgamuukw, there was no text to interpret because there was no treaty; the Indian plaintiffs were offering their oral traditions as evidence about their occupancy of land prior to the time when white settlers were present to write down their observations. In contrast, treaty cases focus on the interpretation of a text, and Indian oral traditions recount events which are also recorded in conventional documents. For those who live in the Treaty 8 area, the central issue is what was said in the Treaty 8 negotiations in 1899. Not only is there an abundance of written sources describing the events, the Indian cultures themselves had already entered the early stages of literacy.
• The passage of time is a linear, irreversible process in which events can be dated precisely.
• Causation follows time’s arrow. A later event cannot be the cause of an earlier event.
• There is an objective core of fact that in principle can be discovered by sifting the evidence (sometimes, of course, the necessary evidence is missing).
• Not all evidence is equally worthwhile. First-hand evidence is usually more reliable than hearsay. Contemporary statements are usually more reliable than those elicited long after the event. Human memory is fallible, and people sometimes do not tell the truth, so it is essential to seek corroboration from multiple sources.
The underlying similarity of historiography and the judicial process is not surprising, because both are products of post-Enlightenment Western civilization. Within that context, both aim at establishing the truth about what happened in the past. Oral traditions, in contrast, differ from both historiography and the judicial process in important ways. As RCAP has emphasized, the oral traditions of aboriginal peoples are based on a cyclical rather than a linear view of time,(46) and a different understanding of time implies a different view of causation and agency. As in the Australian “Dreamtime,” the stories that make up Indian traditions often involve the Creator and other suprahuman beings who move in and out of time. Oral traditions express the perceived meaning of existence in an ordered cosmos; they do not reflect the Western concept of objective fact tested by evidence. In particular, oral traditions do not discriminate among types of evidence according to criteria of reliability and closeness to the event. One authority (herself quite favourable to oral traditions) has written that “the contradictions in what constitutes history – oral and written – cannot be resolved. The narratives can be juxtaposed … but not necessarily reconciled into a seamless whole.”(47) Below are three concrete examples of the difficulties.
First, aboriginal oral traditions often contradict Western conceptions of rationality and knowledge. When the Cree elder John Buffalo was asked in 1975 about the disappearance of the buffalo from the prairie, he replied, “Some old men said that the buffalo entered the earth somewhere, but I do not know. It must be true, as there are none left.”(48) Saying that the buffalo entered the earth may be an emotionally moving, mythic or poetic way of describing their disappearance, but it is not compatible with the rational explanations sought in the judicial process as well as in the writing of history.
Interviewer: Before Treaty Six was signed, there were about four treaties signed in Eastern Canada. Did the Indians in this part of the country know anything of the treaties coming to them?
Horse: No, they were not aware of a treaty that was to be signed. It was only when it was here they realized what was happening.
Interviewer: Did the elders or ancestors know of the treaties in the United States?
Horse: No, they they did not know of them. They only knew of what was taking place with them.
Lightning: Do you know how much land was given up or sold to the white man?
Mustus: The amount of land they gave up was written down on paper. I am wondering whether it was one foot underground or more. It was written down, but I do not know where the paper could be found.
Lightning: And you do not know how much was to be used?Mustus: No, I do not know, but whatever they selected for themselves they kept; the rest was taken. I do not recall my grandfather telling me about the depth underground.
Lightning: Did he ever tell you anything about underground minerals or oil?
Lightning: When the commissioner came here to make treaty, were his intentions to sign treaty on a friendly basis or was it to acquire the land?
Gibot: That is something that always puzzles me when I think of it. It appears as though he wanted to claim the land, to own the land for the government. That is why they took that action.
Lightning: Did the Indians of long ago ever imagine or think that anything valuable would be found underground?
Gibot: You mean the elders of long ago? No, they never mentioned anything about money [gold or minerals] to be found underground or even petroleum to be found below the surface. I never heard my grandfather, although he was intelligent, mention anything. Even after my grandfather died, I never heard anything mentioned.
Lightning: They never told stories of the commissioner discussing these things?
The oral traditions proffered by these three informants differ markedly with respect to the core meaning of Treaty 8. Paulette says it was only a treaty of peace and friendship and had nothing to do with the land. Mustus says the Indians surrendered the surface of the land but retained the mineral rights. Gibot says the government acquired the land while minerals were never discussed. These contradictory versions of history cannot all be true at the same time.
The three factors cited by von Gernet are all applicable to aboriginal oral traditions. First, oral traditions are held in the human memory, and everyone’s memory is fallible. “Contrary to common belief,” notes von Gernet, “there is no evidence that people who depend more on orality have inherently better memories.”(55) Writing was a tremendous advance precisely because it transcended the limitations of individual memory.
Third, context can have a crucial effect. For example, the oral traditions published in the book The Spirit of the Alberta Indian Treaties were collected “by a team of staff and consultants of the Treaty and Aboriginal Rights Research (T.A.R.R.) group of the Indian Association of Alberta.”(57) In other words, the work was sponsored by an aboriginal political organization under the highly evocative label of “treaty and aboriginal rights.” Given the close-knit character of Indian communities, it is impossible that the partisan spirit of the enterprise would not communicate itself to those who were interviewed and exercise an influence upon their memories.
None of this means that oral traditions are always unreliable. In any particular instance, an oral tradition may have much to teach us. However, it does mean that oral traditions cannot be accepted as factual without undergoing the critical scrutiny that both historians and courts apply to all other kinds of evidence, including archaeological remains, written records, electronic data, and photographic images.(58) Critical scrutiny implies investigating the provenance of sources, asking questions such as who generated the sources, what were their motives, how knowledgeable were they about the events they witnessed, how were the sources transmitted, are we sure we have authentic versions, and so on. It also means comparing sources against each other to establish the most likely account of what happened – what in civil litigation might be called “the balance of probabilities.” This, in my view, is the proper interpretation of Chief Justice Lamer’s dictum that oral traditions must be placed “on an equal footing” with other forms of evidence. Equality means treating all forms of evidence in the same way.
The use of aboriginal oral traditions in treaty litigation will be constructive as long as these procedures are observed and as long as oral traditions are treated as one of many kinds of historical evidence. However, adovcates of the aboriginal worldview often speak as if oral traditions were intrinsically different from other forms of evidence, containing a superior truth not amenable to empirical testing. In that perspective, equality would mean “separate but equal,” and would demand the suspension of normal historical methods. If the Supreme Court’s Delgamuukw decision is interpreted in that spirit, the treaties will be transformed from intelligible, enforceable agreements to unpredictable relationships in which everything is up for renegotiation.
1This paper consists mainly of extracts from my book. First Nations? Second Thoughts, McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming.
2Monique M. Ross and Cheryly Y. Sharvit, “Forest Management in Alberta and Rights to Hunt, Trap and Fish under Treaty 8,” Alberta Law Review 36 (1998), 98-100.
3R. v. Horse  2 W.W.R., 300.
4E.g., Ross and Sharvit, “Forest Management in Alberta”; Alan Pratt, “The Numbered Treaties and Extinguishment: A Legal Analysis, “Discussion Paper for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, May 1995, 41-3; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Report (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1996), vol. 2, 29.
5Sharon Venne, “Understanding Treaty 6: An Indigenous Perspective,” in Michael Asch, ed., Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada (Vancouver: Unversity of British Columbia Press, 1997), 173.
6RCAP, Report, vo. 2, 18.
10Michael Asch and Norman Zlotkin, “Affirming Aboriginal Title: A New Basis for Comprehensive Claims Negotiations,” in Asch, Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada, 209.
11Dennis Madill, Treaty Research Report: Treaty Eight (Ottawa: Treaties and Historical Research Centre, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1986), 128.
12RCAP, Report, vol. 2, 45.
13Chief Harold Turner, testimony before RCAP, 20 May 1992, cited in Norman Zlotkin, “Delgamuukw and the Interpretation of the Prairie Treaties,” Fraser Institute, “The Delgamuukw Case: Aborginal Land Claims and Canada’s Regions,” Conference, Ottawa, May 26-27, 1999, 7.
14RCAP, Report, vol. 2, 45.
17René Fumoleau, As Long as This Land Shall Last (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, n.d.), 13.
18Trial transcript, p. 157. Glenbow Alberta Institute, William G. Morrow Papers, M 1865, box 1, file 1.
19Declaration of Intent by the Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta, as Represented by the Grand Chief, and Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, as Represented by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 22 June 1998.
20R. v. Catarat and Sylvestre, Provincial Court of Saskatchewan, August 26, 1998, typescript, 39.
21Originating Notice, Ahyasou et al. v. Rio Alto et al., February 13, 1998, s. 5.
22Madill, Treaty Research Report: Treaty Eight, 128.
24Statement of claim, s. 12, cited in Ken Tyler, “Will Delgamuukw Eclipse the Prairie Sun? The Implications of the Supreme Court’s Decision for the Prairie Treaties,” in Fraser Institute, “The Delgamuukw Case,” 5.
25Statement of claim, ss. 39-40, cited in ibid., 6.
26Patrick Macklem, “The Impact of Treaty 9 on Natural Resource Development in Ontario,” in Asch, Aboriginal and Treaty Rights, 97.
29Richard Price, The Spirit of the Alberta Indian Treaties (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1979); Treaty 7 Elders, The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996).
30E.g., the Saskatchewan oral history program described in Blair Stonechild and Bill Waiser, Loyal till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion (Calgary: Fifth House, 1997).
31Delia Opekokew, “Review of Ethnocentric Bias Facing Indian Witnesses,” in Richard Gosse, James Youngblood Henderson, and Roger Carter, eds., Continuing Poundmaker and Riel’s Quest: Presentations Made at a Conference on Aboriginal Peoples and Justice (Saskatoon: Purich, 1994), 197.
32R. v. Horse  2 W.W.R., 300.
33R. v. Badger  133 D.L.R. (4th), 344.
34Delgamuukw v. British Columbia , 153 D.L.R. (4th), 235.
35Ibid., 232. For a critique, see Alexander von Gernet, “What My Elders Taught Me: Oral Traditions as Evidence in Aboriginal Litigation,” in Fraser Institute, “The Delgamuukw Case,” 16-23.
36Von Gernet, “What My Elders Taught Me,” 16.
38Regna Darnell, “Cree Syllabics,” The Canadian Encyclopedia (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1985), vol. 1, 438-9.
39Henry Faraud, Dix-hit ans chez les sauvages (Paris: Régis Ruffet, 1866), 117-8, 155.
40Telephone interview with Raymond Huel, Department of History, University of Lethbridge, June 22, 1998.
42Charles Mair, Through the Mackenzie Basin: A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1908), 62.
43Delgamuukw v. British Columbia , 153 D.L.R. (4th), 231.
46RCAP, Report, vol. 1, 34-5.
47Julie Cruikshank, “Oral Tradition and Oral History: Reviewing Some Issues,” Canadian Historical Review 75 (1994), 410.
48Price, Spirit of the Alberta Indian Treaties, 122.
50Tom Flanagan, Analysis of Plaintiffs’ Experts’ Reports in the Case of Chief Victor Buffalo v. Her Majesty the Queen et al, 17-18.
51Trial transcript, p. 157. Glenbow Alberta Institute, William G. Morrow Papers, M 1865, box 1, file 1.
52Price, Spirit of the Alberta Indian Treaties, 146.
54Alexander von Gernet, Oral Narratives and Aboriginal Pasts: An Interdisciplinary Review of the Literature on Oral Traditions and Oral Histories, (Ottawa: Research and Analysis Directorate, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1996), 20.
56Quoted in Brian J. Gover and Mary Locke Macaulay, “‘Snow Houses Leave No Ruins,'” Saskatchewan Law Review 60 (1996), 67.
57Price, Spirit of the Alberta Indian Treaties, xiv.

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