The Government of Canada is not keeping all of the promises it made to aboriginal peoples in 24 “modern” treaties, mostly in the North, negotiated over the last 40 years, ratified by aboriginal peoples and Parliament, and guaranteed by the Constitution of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada says treaties should “reconcile” aboriginal and non-aboriginal interests, and that the “honour of the Crown” depends upon treaty promises being kept. Certainly the social and economic future of aboriginal signatories rests in large measure on these agreements.
Some modern treaties contain more words than the New Testament. Breathing life and meaning into them requires government transfusions of intellectual and financial resources, and commitments of political capital. Without the needed resources, these modern treaties will never be fully implemented. As years pass and memories of treaty promises fade, these agreements may moulder in the dusty crypts of the Department of...
Terry Fenge is an Ottawa-based consultant. He was research director and senior negotiator for the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut, the Inuit organization that negotiated the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.
Tony Penikett was the 2013 Fulbright Arctic Scholar at the Senator Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Reconciliation: First Nations Treaty Making (Douglas and McIntyre, 2006).
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