Peter Shawn Taylor: Indigenous land salutes a nice idea that will backfire badly

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Has Canada acquired a second, tuneless national anthem?

Prior to public events of all sort — city council meetings, school classes, concerts, sporting events, church services, conferences, etc. — it is now widely accepted practice to acknowledge the fact participants are on the traditional territory of various Indigenous peoples, and that the rest of us are merely guests on their land.

Arising from the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, this routine is meant to promote greater understanding between Indigenous peoples and the rest of Canada. It’s not working. Instead of conciliating, these statements are creating confusion and conflict. They’re also rife with historical inaccuracies.

These statements are creating confusion and conflict. They're also rife with historical inaccuracies

The current popularity of these statements ought to be taken as a sign many non-natives honestly care about native issues. Paying homage to Indigenous stewardship of the land in this symbolic way seems like a nice, polite and very Canadian thing to do. The Winnipeg Jets, for example, open every home game with an acknowledgement that they’re playing on “Treaty 1 land.” But what are the practical implications of such symbolism?

Last month during the Jets’ exciting run through the Stanley Cup playoffs, native grandmother Gerry Shingoose caused a fracas at one of Winnipeg’s famous “Whiteout” street parties by taking the Jets’ pre-game invocation literally. Standing on a sidewalk inside the designated party area, Shingoose was asked to move to the street since city regulations required the sidewalks to be kept clear at all times. She refused. “I can stand anywhere … you guys are on Treaty 1 territory,” she defiantly told security personnel as she filmed herself with a cellphone. “No, it’s not,” exasperated staff responded. “This is Indigenous land,” she repeated determinedly. “This is Treaty 1 territory.”

The numbered treaties of the Canadian west were contractual arrangements between the Canadian government and various Indigenous tribes. In exchange for explicit compensation, natives on the Prairies did, in the words of Treaty 1, “cede, release, surrender and yield up to Her Majesty the Queen and successors forever all the lands” described by the document, with a remainder set aside for reserves. This was a mutually-agreed-upon deal no different from buying a house today; land was exchanged for certain considerations, all sales final.

Shingoose was eventually dragged off by police, her claims to traditional ownership of Winnipeg’s sidewalks notwithstanding. But the notion that she could stand wherever she wants because it’s all “treaty land” is certainly not without argument, considering the prominence this exact claim is given prior to every Jets home game, as well as before countless other public meetings and events across Canada. Repeat something often enough, and people start believing it’s true.

Repeat something often enough, and people start believing it's true

The Shingoose affair really points to the yawning difference in understanding about the meaning of our newly ubiquitous land-acknowledgement statements. Non-natives tend to see them as purely symbolic demonstrations of concern. Natives, however, interpret them as evidence they still retain some sort of residual moral or legal right to territory their ancestors long ago sold to the rest of Canada.

Such a massive gap in perception between cultures will eventually lead to a reckoning, warns Frances Widdowson, an academic at Mount Royal University in Calgary and an outspoken critic of land-acknowledgement statements on campus and elsewhere. “What happens 10 years down the road when some Indigenous people suggest it’s time we start paying rent on this land, given that we’ve admitted over and over again that it isn’t really ours?” she asks. It’s a good question.

Land acknowledgements are also becoming a way to control legitimate debate and compel speech. In a recent vote, the Ontario Medical Association rejected making a land-acknowledgement statement prior to their meetings as a meaningless form of tokenism. Dr. Nel Wieman, president of the Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada, instantly denounced this decision as proof that “privilege and racism” run rampant throughout the doctors’ group. Once you had to do something explicitly racist to be declared one. Now anyone who chooses not to fall in line with current political fashion can be smeared with this horrible epithet.

And as with the mischaracterization of “treaty land” as a legally meaningful concept, land acknowledgement statements elsewhere in Canada also fail as honest history.

I live in Waterloo, in southwestern Ontario, where the standard pre-event acknowledgement states we’re on the “traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Neutral and Haudenosaunee peoples.” Not exactly.

The Haudenosaunee currently in the Grand River area of southwestern Ontario traditionally lived in New York state. During the American Revolution, Chief Joseph Brant and his Haudenosaunee Mohawk warriors fought as allies of the British. When that ended in defeat, Brant asked the British Crown to relocate his people to more congenial surroundings.

So in 1784, Gov. Gen. Frederick Haldimand bought a tract of land 10 kilometres wide on either side of the Grand River from the Mississauga people (members of the Anishinaabe group), as a new home for the Haudenosaunee. Brant and his 2,000 followers showed up around the same time as many white loyalist refugees were also making their way to southwestern Ontario to claim similar British land grants. They are no more “traditional” owners of the land than anyone else living on land bought from someone else.

The Mississauga had held sovereignty throughout the Grand River area since 1700, but sold the entire tract of 385,000 hectares to the British for £1,180. Again, this was an outright land sale no different from Prairie treaty negotiations, or selling your house today.

As for the Neutral tribes, they were indeed the original residents of the Grand River area. But we know very little about them today because they were wiped out during the devastating wars between the Haudenosaunee and the Huron that erupted long before any European settlers arrived.

A truthful land-acknowledgement claim would thus have to recognize that the original owners of the land had it stolen from them by other native tribes, who have been squatting on it ever since, along with the rest of us settlers.

Further, it is often pointed out that Indigenous groups today control a mere sliver of the original Haldimand Tract; the implication being that Brant’s followers were swindled out of their birthright. And while the details of the land deal are endlessly complicated, it’s important to note that Brant had always intended — with backing by hereditary chiefs — to sell off large chunks of the land to attract white settlers into his new territory for, in Brant’s own words, “the purposes of making roads, raising provisions and teaching us the benefits of agriculture.”

Brant sold the land because he wanted to bring white and native societies closer together; and in doing so, give his people the opportunity to learn and prosper from Western culture and technology. Maybe someday we’ll acknowledge that.

Peter Shawn Taylor is editor-at-large of Maclean’s. He lives in Waterloo.