Week 3
The People Original to Turtle Island
Chapter 13 of the book
How did we get here?
 It's about oppression and how our colonialist society developed Canada
The Indian act was the most repressive piece of act that we had in Canada and took all
the rights of the natives that were here, and we owned whatever was here.
The Dutch were the first settlers to offer some peace while the others were fighting.
The Wampum belt - from Indigenous course of the Compact Era.
 It was an idea/treaty
 They were put together by seashells and presented
 Government stole all of them
 Help to negotiate the treaties that were put together and designed to how we
would share the sea, land, and air
People would use muzzles to shoot and see how far the shot would go and that would
be how far from the territory was. They were then later 'Canadianized'

Will possibly have an in-person lecture session where we will have a walk-though
of a residential school
The Indian Act film shown: The Indian Act: It's Ongoing Impact

We need to use the Métis Iroquois technology of the time to get new water
Certain areas you are now allowed to self-govern.
In-class assignment for marks: Take your picture for the assignment and write down the
story behind that picture with how you are grounded to land, earth, and water. Like a
totem pole tells a story.
Storytelling. Tell me what the importance is through land connection, the memory in the
picture, and how it captures, the mental-spiritual-physical-emotional experience in the
picture.
Learning objectives
1. Understand Indigenous diversity
2. Connect colonial legislation to dispossession
3. Recognize Indigenous resilience
4. Connect Indigenous sovereignty and legal frameworks
5. Understand Indigenous resurgence
**Slides were not gone over, instead the YouTube video was shown and the in-class
assignment was provided to work on for marks.
Wampum Belt
It basically took all the rights of the people out here. They had rights in the first place.
It's a big discussion.
It took all the rights of the natives that were already here. And made it, you know,
whoever, whatever. Land, sea, water, air.
But we weren't the only ones here. There must have been tribes. There were
indigenous people.
And if that's where the first was still colonizing. And they were the first settlers to come
in here. And for the French and English.
The one group in Detroit, say, went through somewhat. And you've seen when Trump
came into office and was signing all these executive orders. Similar, not exactly similar,
to that.
It was the intention of offering peace. It was the intention that our two lands, our two
bodies, canoe and ship, will be together.
 The wampum belt in the compact era
Okay. And they're purple and white. Yeah.
So the idea is that we would work together to bring peace to the nation. It wasn't a
treaty. It wasn't a collective law.
Now, once these wampum belts were put together, basically like shells, were put
together. Where are they? Does the Pope have some? Are they in a museum? They
could be hidden somewhere. But there weren't a lot of them.
There were a couple of them. And it was just the idea that we were off of peace and
negotiated a treaty. And that's how the treaty was signed.
So we're a law, obviously, in the Atlantic. And the treaties that we put together were
designed to, say, were designed to how we would share a right to sea, air, riches, and
wealth. How the main treaty came about when we were going to Toronto was literally, in
terms of what it covered, what area it covered, was a person would stand on Lake
Ontario with his muzzle.
And you'd see on a farm, you'd hear it. And that would be the territory. And that would
be the territory.
And so that's how treaties started. And in the territory.
Indian Act
The Indian Act comes along once these treaties were put in place. Remember that a lot
of these weren't in writing. They were just handwritten.
So first they were in shell form on a belt. Then they were handshaped. And a lot of
them, you know they're there, but you don't know where they are.
It's a trend. And the professor at that point said the same thing. We don't know where
these treaties are.
Are they confirmed? Are they in a museum that we don't know about? Are they hidden
somewhere? No one was able to see them. But we have this thing called reconciliation.
We're like, we did do this.
We were bad. And we will help you. We'll get in trouble another time.
So the Indian Act basically took all those, any rights and privileges, because those
treaties are vague, any rights and privileges or those treaties, if you were to be
Canadian, if you were to speak English, if you were to sound English, if you were to be
educated in English, if anything in terms of your land rights were taken away, if anything
in terms of land rights were taken away, if anything in terms of your heritage were taken
away, as soon as you went to school, public school, you lost your rights to be Canadian.
And when I'm saying Indian, I'm saying Jeddah, Mississippi, Iroquois, First Nations, all
that. You lost your rights to be Canadian.
Did you get anything in return? Well, yeah. There was paper involved.
It wasn't real money, it was paper. And so, we would give you land, and you can go
settle into different territories. And that was your territory.
Part of the agreement was, we'd take everything away from you, but we'd give you
something that already belonged to you if you could live in those territories. So, we've
got that. But we need, the territories have, at that point, trees.
It's just like, you've got to talk about trees and start to live on the trees. Eventually, they
made agreements that the territories were near rivers or lakes because most of their
food and clothing was from the river, as opposed to the caribou. There's been a caribou
in Mississippi, but not a lot.
And eventually, we had some bait came along, and we did that. we had some bait there.
And that worked.
So, let's say this is your land, and you go settle in northern Saskatchewan, in this little
area here, and we give you some paper. But they didn't understand English. So, the
robbers, I call them, who were, it's like going to an employment office and getting a
check, and then you have it in your hand and you don't know what it is.
So, the robbers, the English and French, were there immediately to take the mail. Give
us the mail, give you this in exchange for it. They didn't know what it meant.
So, they only lost that money that was offered to them. They lost their rights to the land
and didn't use the land. So, they're in a little section.
And the sections are getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. The last
section here on the area, Ford and his buddies are trying to build a house on Indian
land. It's not a long time ago, this is not a long time ago.
So, the Indian Act, which you can, I've got it still on in a second, so it's not long. You can
go on YouTube, because CBC has a lot of marketing, a lot of good videos on the Indian
Act, but just press it on, you know how to make it go faster, so press it on 2 or 2.5 and
you'll still hear the words. It won't be an hour long, it'll be like 30 minutes long.