Prince Charles reminded on importance of treaty

Grand Chief Stan Beardy reminded Prince Charles about the treaty relationship between the Crown and Treaties 9 and 5 during a May 22 meeting in Toronto.
“It remains crucial that we maintain strong relations with the Crown,” Beardy said, noting that recent immigrants to Canada are starting to outnumber the original signatories to the treaties. “When you look at the constitution, the UN Declaration (on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples), we have legal status as First Nations people only through the treaty making.”
When First Nation leaders put their mark next to the Crown’s representatives on the treaty, Beardy said that meant the sovereignty and nationhood of those First Nations was recognized under international law.
“When you’re a nation under international law, that means that you have an identifiable culture, you have people, the land and that’s what we have and that’s what we have to maintain,” Beardy said. “So when we talk about that, it means that there has to be proper consultation and accommodation for any outside interests to access our natural resources, including the Ring of Fire.”
Beardy said Nishnawbe Aski Nation communities have lived in peaceful coexistence and have shared their lands from time to time, but he noted the communities are entitled under the treaty to benefit from the development of their lands.
“That’s why the treaty is so important, because that is our legal position of having a special status under the BNA (British North America) Act, under the Canadian constitution,” Beardy said.
Beardy also provided Prince Charles with a copy of the book Treaty No. 9 - Making the Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905, which was written by John Long and published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2010. While details about Treaty 9 were previously known only through the accounts of two federal government commissioners, Long’s book provides another perspective on the treaty by adding the neglected account of a third commissioner.
The book indicates that many crucial details about the treaty’s contents were omitted in the transmission of writing to speech, while other promises were made orally but not included in the written treaty.
“We have a treaty relationship — here is how it came about in northern Ontario,” Beardy said about Long’s book. “He needs to understand what treaty making is through historical research and actual notes on what transpired (and) some observations of each party’s perspective of what was taking place.”
Beardy said his point was to remind Prince Charles that he has a legal duty to uphold the Crown.
“And he needs to remind the settler governments, the successor states Canada and Ontario and its jurisdictions, that they have to respect, enforce and implement the treaty.”