Many people think of treaty rights as “special” indigenous rights however, all people living in Canada are treaty people with their own set of rights and responsibilities.

Treaties are a foundational part of Canadian society. Every road, house, building or business that exists today in a treaty area was made possible because of a treaty.

The existence of treaties is proof that the first settlers of what is now Canada respected First Nations as sovereign people and negotiated Nation to Nation.

By understanding the colonial history of Canada we can renew our relationships with each other and move towards meaningful reconciliation.

Learning Module

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this module, learners should be able to:

Describe a treaty and how it benefits indigenous populations and Canadians/settlers, diaspora populations and newcomers.

Detail their own rights and responsibilities as a treaty person and understand the conditions upon which they have agreed to share the land with the Nations who were here first.

Understand the settler role in colonialism and how Canadians today are still benefiting from it.

Module Topics

You will explore the following topics in this module:

What is a treaty? Who are treaty people?

Treaties pre-contact

Treaties early contact

Treaties in the Colonial era

Treaty Relations Today

Suggested Activities

Resources for further learning

Module

Resource List

Indigenous Education Resources by Jean-Paul Restoule is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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