Our Home And Treaty Land

The words “Treaty means that your identity is bigger than just you” are used both literally and metaphorically. “It’s tempting to start the story of a long journey, even a journey of realization, with the arrival rather than the first, uncertain, steps. But it’s really those first steps that prepare for everything else.” “First steps are what this book is about,” writes Matthew Anderson in his preface, and understanding Treaty is an essential first step. Treaty – what it meant to the First Nations and to the Newcomers who originally entered into it, and what it could and should mean for all of us today – lies at the heart of this book. Treaty is key to the shared narrative, shared spirituality, and shared respect for the land that Ray Aldred says are necessary for our peoples – Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike – to walk well, to live well together on the land because Treaty still is, or should be, a lived reality. Treaty doesn’t refer to a onetime, historical event, but to a lasting, daily way of “living well,” in right relation to each other, to the land, and to the Creator.

Our Home and Treaty Land addresses the critical need for non-Indigenous peoples to face their past with honesty in order to navigate a harmonious way forward. In this revised edition, co-authors Ray Aldred and Matthew Anderson take you on an expanded exploration of Treaty, and how it is a solution to Canada’s social, spiritual, and ecological crises. Aldred brings Cree spirituality, cosmology, and experiences of intergenerational trauma into conversation with Christian concepts of creation and repentance, mapping a path towards restorative justice. Matthew, in alternating chapters, unfolds a journey (sometimes a literal one) of unsettling awakening to untaught Canadian histories and dishonoured Treaties, from the complexities of a typical settler-descendant hyphenated identity. Our Home and Treaty Land repurposes Christian scripture not as a license for dominance and conquest but as a model for sacred covenants. It provides gentle and valuable insights and concrete, practical guidance for individuals and communities eager to understand and honour their Treaty commitments. Within these pages, you’ll discover Treaty as a family-making ceremony that binds settlers, Indigenous peoples, Land, and Creator together on a good path.

Our Home and Treaty Land addresses the critical need for non-Indigenous peoples to face their past with honesty in order to navigate a harmonious way forward. In this revised edition, co-authors Ray Aldred and Matthew Anderson take you on an expanded exploration of Treaty, and how it is a solution to Canada’s social, spiritual, and ecological crises. Aldred brings Cree spirituality, cosmology, and experiences of intergenerational trauma into conversation with Christian concepts of creation and repentance, mapping a path towards restorative justice. Matthew, in alternating chapters, unfolds a journey (sometimes a literal one) of unsettling awakening to untaught Canadian histories and dishonoured Treaties, from the complexities of a typical settler-descendant hyphenated identity. Our Home and Treaty Land repurposes Christian scripture not as a license for dominance and conquest but as a model for sacred covenants. It provides gentle and valuable insights and concrete, practical guidance for individuals and communities eager to understand and honour their Treaty commitments. Within these pages, you’ll discover Treaty as a family-making ceremony that binds settlers, Indigenous peoples, Land, and Creator together on a good path.

Argues against the costs to taxpayers of land claim settlements, and the settling of large tracts of lands to minorities in historical land claims.

The first treaty that was made was between the earth and the sky. It was an agreement to work together. We build all of our treaties on that original treaty. On the banks of the river that have been Mishomis’s home his whole life, he teaches his granddaughter to listen—to hear both the sounds and the silences, and so to learn her place in Creation. Most importantly, he teaches her about treaties—the bonds of reciprocity and renewal that endure for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the rivers flow. Accompanied by beautiful illustrations by Luke Swinson and an author’s note at the end, Aimée Craft affirms the importance of understanding an Indigenous perspective on treaties in this evocative book that is essential for readers of all ages.

Can Indigenous and non-Indigenous people live in a treaty relationship despite over 200 years of social, cultural, and political alienation? This is the challenge of reconciliation – and its beautiful promise. Twenty-five years after the Ipperwash crisis, writer and social activist Heather Menzies showed up in Nishnaabe territory in Southwestern Ontario, near where her forebears settled, hoping to meet her would-be treaty kin. She was invited to help document the broken-treaty story behind the crisis, as remembered by Nishnaabe Elders and other community members involved in reclaiming their homeland at Stoney Point. But she soon realized that even the most sincere intentions can be steeped in a colonial mindset that hinders understanding, reconciliation, and healing. In this thoughtful, sensitive, nuanced account, Heather Menzies shares her own decolonizing journey. Her story shows how a settler, through respectful listening, can learn what being in a treaty relationship might mean, and what changes – personal and institutional – are needed to embrace genuine reconciliation.

A motley group's long trek across the prairies, witnessing the land, reflecting on the past, and creating new paths for the future The Good Walk is a memoir, travelogue, and manifesto, recounting how a growing group of dreamers instigated prairie pilgrimages on foot, starting in 2015 and continuing almost every year since. The story is steeped in Treaty Four and Treaty Six history and edged with Canadian, nêhiyaw, and Métis stories and poetry. It braids Indigenous perspectives together with rural Saskatchewan characters along routes increasingly emptied of the family farms and small towns that once defined a province. It doesn't shy away from the clearing of the plains in the 1870s and 1880s nor the 2016 killing of Colton Boushie that again separated the rural communities from the Indigenous communities. Travel with the author through prairie storms, family histories, and humorous encounters, and bear difficult witness to the evolving politics of ownership and of racialized land access. Readers will share the real-life adventures of a group of Indigenous and settler walkers, trekking thousands of kilometres on swollen feet along the Traders' Road, the Battleford Trail, the Frenchman and the Fort Qu'Appelle Trails--prairie paths that haven't been walked in over a century.