The Treaty Canada Forgot: Two Boats on One River
Imagine that two nations agree to travel down the same river.
One has a canoe.
The other has a ship.
They agree that each will steer its own vessel.
Neither will impose its laws, language or way of life on the other.
They will live beside one another in peace.
That is the powerful image of the Two Row Wampum.
So what happened?
How did we get from two boats travelling together to a Canadian government that once attempted to control almost every aspect of Indigenous life?
That is the uncomfortable part of the story.
The relationship was supposed to be ongoing
Treaties were not necessarily understood by Indigenous nations as one-time transactions in which they permanently surrendered their relationship to their lands and governments.
They were relationships.
They were renewed.
They were remembered.
They involved obligations on both sides.
Wampum belts could serve as reminders of those relationships.
Canada's own historical and legal materials acknowledge that Indigenous nations and European powers negotiated treaties according to diplomatic traditions that included wampum, oral histories and continuing renewal of agreements.
The relationship was not supposed to end when the ink dried.
Then Canada built a system of assimilation
After Confederation in 1867, Canadian governments increasingly pursued policies aimed at assimilation.
The Indian Act became a central mechanism.
Residential schools attempted to separate children from their families, languages and cultures.
Traditional governance systems were undermined.
Indigenous people could be subjected to government control over matters that most Canadians would consider fundamental personal and political freedoms.
This was not the relationship represented by two nations travelling beside one another.
It was closer to one government attempting to take control of the other vessel.
Canada's Department of Justice has acknowledged that after Confederation, Crown policy became one of assimilation rather than partnership.
But the canoe didn't disappear.
This is perhaps the most important part.
Indigenous nations survived.
Their languages survived.
Their laws survived.
Their memories survived.
Their stories survived.
Their wampum traditions survived.
And so did the understanding that treaties created relationships and responsibilities that did not simply disappear because a colonial government changed its policies.
In 1917, for example, Six Nations Clan Mothers invoked the Two Row and Covenant Chain wampum relationships in a petition to King George V.
The belt was still being used as a political memory and a statement about the relationship between the Crown and the Haudenosaunee.
The canoe was still there.
Canada today
Modern Canada now uses very different language.
We hear:
reconciliation.
nation-to-nation relationships.
Indigenous self-government.
treaty rights.
UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
And Canada's Department of Justice explicitly says treaties are living frameworks for relationships between Indigenous peoples and the Crown.
But words are easy.
Relationships are harder.
If the Two Row Wampum is going to be more than a beautiful historical symbol, then its principles have to mean something.
Peace.
Friendship.
Respect.
Mutual recognition.
Non-interference.
And the right of each nation to govern its own people.
Maybe reconciliation begins with remembering the original agreement.
Not remembering it as a quaint story.
Not putting a picture of the belt on a museum wall and walking away.
But asking what it actually means.
Two boats.
One river.
Neither steering the other.
Perhaps Canada has spent several centuries trying to steer the canoe.
Perhaps the work of reconciliation is learning how to stop.
And perhaps the most radical thing Canada could do is finally take seriously the relationship that Indigenous peoples have been reminding us about for generations.
The canoe was never supposed to disappear.
It was supposed to travel beside us.
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