🌿 The Day I Realized Canada Doesn’t Own the Land
Sharon Venne, Treaties, and Why History Feels Different Once You Learn the Truth
Sometimes you hear something that quietly rearranges your entire understanding of the world.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just one conversation… and suddenly nothing fits the way it used to.
That’s what happened to me when I learned from Sharon Venne.
Not from headlines.
Not from school textbooks.
Not from government “heritage minutes.”
From an Indigenous lawyer who simply explained history the way it actually happened.
And honestly?
It shook me.
👩🏽⚖️ Who Sharon Venne Is
Sharon H. Venne is a Cree lawyer, scholar, and international advocate for Indigenous rights.
She helped shape parts of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
She has spent decades working on treaty law, land rights, and Indigenous sovereignty.
But what makes her powerful isn’t just credentials.
It’s clarity.
She explains Canada in a way that makes you stop and say:
“Wait… why didn’t we learn this in school?”
📜 The Part That Changed Everything for Me
Here’s what really hit me.
She said:
Before the treaties…
Indigenous nations already had:
- governments
- laws
- education
- medicine
- trade networks
- diplomacy
- fully functioning societies
They weren’t “waiting” to be discovered.
They weren’t “undeveloped.”
They weren’t empty land.
They had everything.
And here’s the part most Canadians never hear:
They still had it after.
Because treaties weren’t meant to erase them.
🤝 Treaties Were Not “Land Sales”
This is where everything gets messy.
We’re taught that treaties meant Indigenous people “gave up” their land.
Like a real estate transaction.
Sign here → land is now Canada’s.
But Sharon explains that’s not how Indigenous law or understanding works at all.
Treaties were meant to be:
nation-to-nation agreements.
Sharing agreements.
Co-existence agreements.
Relationship agreements.
Not surrender.
Not extinction.
Not “thanks, we’ll take it from here.”
More like:
“We will live together. We will help each other. As long as the rivers flow and the grass grows.”
That’s not a land deed.
That’s a promise.
🧠 Then Came the Provinces…
And this is the part that really scrambled my brain.
Canada didn’t even exist when many treaties were signed.
The provinces were created later.
Which means:
Indigenous nations made agreements with the Crown, not Alberta, not BC, not Saskatchewan, not Ottawa bureaucrats that didn’t even exist yet.
So when provinces act like they “own” everything?
It raises a huge question:
Who actually gave them that authority?
Because from an Indigenous legal perspective…
The land was never surrendered in the first place.
🌎 Why This Matters Right Now
Learning this history feels heavy — especially when we look at current politics.
When you see:
- provinces fighting over “resources”
- corporations extracting land without consent
- or even foreign governments poking at Canadian unity
- separatist movements talking about dividing territory like it’s property
You suddenly realize…
Canada doesn’t sit on empty land.
It sits on treaty land.
On Indigenous land.
On agreements that were supposed to be honored.
So when politicians talk about borders and ownership like it’s a Monopoly board…
It feels wrong.
Because the foundation itself is misunderstood.
🌿 What Woke Me Up
What Sharon Venne gave me wasn’t anger.
It was perspective.
A deeper one.
A more honest one.
It made me realize:
Canada isn’t just a country.
It’s a relationship.
And relationships require:
- respect
- consent
- accountability
- memory
Not erasure.
Not rewriting history.
Not pretending the past is settled.
💬 Final Thoughts
The day before the treaties, Indigenous nations had everything.
The day after, they still did.
What changed wasn’t their legitimacy.
It was the story Canada chose to tell.
And maybe that’s what needs correcting most.
Not just laws.
Not just policies.
But the story.
Because once you really understand it…
You can’t unsee it.
And you can’t go back to believing the land was ever “empty” or “owned” the way we were taught.
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