Treaty Seven And Guaranteed Representation How Treaty Rights Can Evolve Into Parliamentary Seats

• Main Author: Ladner, Kiera L.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 1997
• Subjects: Other International and Area Studies; Canada; Indian; First Nations
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1941; https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/context/greatplainsquarterly/article/2940/viewcontent/Ladner.pdf

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 ...