Book Review: We Are All Treaty People

Epp, Roger. We Are All Treaty People. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press. 235pp., ISBN 9780888645067 Paperback CDN $26.95.

Review by Ethan Baptiste

Upon reading We Are All Treaty People it is quickly discovered that much of the book has very little to do with Indigenous People at all. Although the author claims “on these prairies, we are all treaty people – settler and aboriginal” (5) the main focus of the book is instead rural prairie communities and the identity struggles, conflicts, agrarian movements and localized cultures found within them. Overall, the book is a well written descriptive narrative of rural identity and life on the prairies, from the perspective of a prairie settler. The structure of the book is a collection of essays written by the author. However, this is one of the main weaknesses of the publication because there is a lot of overlap in theories, ideas and arguments presented.

Underlying the title of the book there is a presumption that all rural individuals fall within the same category of identity. That presumption is not based on culture or language but is situational and instead based on common factors of kinship based communities, displacement, racial prejudice, socio-political and economic marginalization, and parallel struggles against globalization. Interestingly, the right-wing think-tank economists equally condemn rural communities and advise their members to abandon their identity, relocate to urban centers and urge public policy makers to reallocate wasted public resources to the cities (7, 191). However, being placed at the margins and periphery alongside one another does not necessarily mean a common identity or the inclusion of one treaty people.

There are a few problems with this new identity categorization. First, and foremost, settlers do not have treaties. Although, the Crow Rate¹ is described as being the treaty of the rural farmer, that agreement falls far short of an actual treaty, which is a peace agreement negotiated between two sovereign Nations. This type of treaty is impossible between a ruling government party and their own subjects. The Crow was simply a subsidy, granted to a sub-group of the countries citizens. Second, if we turn to faming, historically there were clear distinctions between Indigenous Peoples and settler farmers, most clearly seen through public policy. After Indigenous communities had began to fully understand farming in the mid-nineteenth century on the prairies, were producing more, beginning to accumulate equipment and beginning to compete with non-Indigenous farmers, the government stepped in.

Within the 1867 Indian Act there were policies that prevented First Nations farmers from selling their produce and stock, seeking better markets, better lands for farming, and investment capital. This greatly damaged Indigenous farming interests while benefiting settlers. Third, there is no treaty peoples culture, only distinct Indigenous and Western cultures. The author points out the limited exposure, within rural communities, to art and culture because there are often no theatre, cinema, gallery, bookstore and music lessons. However, there is a difference between access to mainstream cultural infrastructure and having a culture based on separate belief systems, values and knowledge. Last, rural settlers may feel some ‘racism’ in cities and are made to feel uncomfortable about where they came from. That does not equate the experience of Indigenous Peoples, where that discomfort comes in the form of not being hired, not being able to rent in certain buildings and treated in certain ways in restaurants.

The book does have one section that is specifically related to Indigenous People, Chapter Seven. In this chapter, the author first critiques the past and current reconciliation efforts, and second, claims rural communities made of interconnected Indigenous Peoples and settlers can reconcile traditional economic interests like forestry, logging and farming and learn to coexist. The author does provide some excellent observations in regards to reconciliation: The constant rhetoric and slim promises of the Indian and Northern Affairs; bias in the media, aggressive reaction and calls of “reverse racism” (123); and, federal policy that is more about “limited liability guilt-management on behalf of Canadians” (123) than reconciliation.

Additionally, failings within any progress towards reconciliation have a lot do with the refusal for settlers to recognize history, granted that indifference allows for the release of “inter-generational guilt” (132). This subsequently relates to my favourite quote of the whole book: “Though they often identify themselves as conservatives, curiously, they recognize no inherited obligations” (133). The author recognizes the tendency to refocus the question of reconciliation about not “what they (we, as Indigenous Peoples) want – recognition, compensation, land – (to) what we (settlers) can live with” (126). Therefore, the subject is “not the Indian problem but the settler problem (126).

In terms of the second claim of coexistence and economic reconciliation, the author doesn’t offer viable solutions and instead provides more problematic observations. First, the author contends settlers can share the same connection to land as Indigenous People. However, this is untrue. Although, there are third and fourth generation settler farmers who may feel “an inseparable interconnection of personal identity” (137) with their farmland, that is only a surface understanding of the relationship Indigenous People have with their lands. The interconnection Indigenous Peoples know is tied to language, cyclical ceremonies, spiritual connection, understanding of the whole ecology and a feeling of deep responsibility to ensure the land survives, not because the land provides for their People but because they are the land. This interconnection cannot be transplanted. Also, it is felt in every Nation, including the Tsuu T’ina Nation that is, from the author’s definition, an urban community and more a part of Calgary than the rural prairie.

Therefore, there is no overarching term that can encompass all prairie communities, settler or Indigenous. As it sits, we have a subculture, in rural interests, strategically aligning themselves with Indigenous Peoples. Although, it is beneficial for that subculture, and for that matter any special interest group, to align themselves and their struggles with Indigenous Peoples to give legitimacy to their voice or demands for fair treatment. It must be reminded that we are a Peoples and even if we are marginalized in similar ways, we have our own subcultures and subgroups and cannot fit within surface classifications.

Also, it is idealistic to assert there is a treaty peoples that can coexist within the confines of the author's presumptions. This is not to say it cannot happen, but, that coexistence cannot solely be based on surface similarities of common needs for infrastructure, comparable geography, efforts to resist forced industrialization, opposition to globalization and predator corporations, and a willingness to remain rural.

Further, and more important, I believe that coexistence would still eventually require an aligning of Western values. Would Indigenous People be permitted to honestly answer the question of: What is the best use for your lands? What if the definition of rural and requirement for coexistence meant reversing farmland? This would involve the termination of agriculture and removal of dikes and canals in efforts to restore old-growth prairie that took thousands of years to grow but hours to destroy during the tilling and seeding process. Are settlers really willing to alter their farming practices, or logging and fishing for that matter? Indigenous Peoples would soon see the same response we have received from the think-tank economists, media and urban centers. Therefore, similar to the experience of Indigenous Peoples throughout history, we will be left with the choice to only become “Settler Treaty People” within Eurocentric definitions, and subject to a new type of rural colonization. That coexistence would still not be defined by us and would require cultural dissolution to proceed.

¹The Crow Rate began as an 1897 agreement between the federal government and the Canadian Pacific Railway, giving the CPR a cash subsidy to extend tracks to south-eastern BC in exchange for reduced freight rates in perpetuity on eastbound grain and westbound settler’s effects (170).

BaptisteReview.pdf (129.03 kb)