Aboriginal Voice in Canadian Political Affairs

In today’s modern Canadian society every group is fighting for their rights to be heard, acknowledged and more importantly respected. In Canadian history one group has had to fight harder than anyone else to receive a voice to be heard and that is the Aboriginals. The question that needs to be asked is, do they really have a voice at all? Throughout this paper I will highlight three areas of aboriginal political uprising, First the history, secondly successful initiatives for the betterment of aboriginals and finally unsuccessful actions in the political landscape.

One of the earliest instances of Canadian aboriginals having a voice in politics was seen in July 1817. Five Saulteaux and Cree chiefs signed a treaty with Lord Selkirk to provide an area for settlement purposes. This area was to include “a strip of land two miles wide on each side of the Red and Assiniboine rivers”. This would mean that the treaty would start at city of Winnipeg and extend up the Red River to the city of Grand Forks North Dakota. Plots of land also “six miles in each direction from Fort Douglas, Fort Daer, and Grand Forks were also included”. In exchange for the land, each tribe was to receive annual payments of 100 lbs of tobacco. This land treaty was the first to be signed in western Canada. This would be the stepping stone for the Canadian government to seek treaties with the aboriginal people. The aboriginal political voice was also largely seen with treaty negotiations during the European colonization of the Canadian aboriginals. A series of eleven treaties were signed from 1871 to 1921, and it is a well known sentiment among Canadians that the signing of treaties was seen as an unfair process from an aboriginal standpoint and was destined to be advantageous to the Government of Canada. The purpose of the treaties was to secure land from the Aboriginals, the land was to be used for agricultural, industrial purposes as well as settlement for Europeans and non