Gwen Muskwa is the Treaty Relations Director for Treaty 8, having worked with the organization for 29 years. She describes her work as honouring the legacy of elders who taught her everything she knows, with a focus on ensuring treaties are respected, honoured, and upheld. Norma Large is from the Saddle Lake Creek Nation in Treaty 6 territory, currently living in Treaty 7 territory in Calgary. She explains she has spent approximately 30 years doing advocacy work to address inequities between First Nations and non-First Nations peoples, and sees the current referendum moment as an opportunity for change.
Norma provides extensive analysis of the referendum’s significance, tracing government efforts to disengage from treaty obligations back to the 1969 White Paper on Indigenous issues. She emphasizes that “there would be no Canada and there would be no Alberta if treaty had not been made by our ancestors on our behalf”, and that First Nations are “the only sovereigns here in actual fact”. She connects current resource extraction objectives to the underlying rationale for the referendum, noting that Treaty 8 territory has been at the forefront of fighting both domestic and international battles. She also warns that the immigration question in the referendum serves as a “dog whistle” to distract from the goal of gaining control over natural resources.
Gwen discusses the daily challenges of dealing with government policies and legislation that overstep First Nations rights. She refutes claims that First Nations “ceded, released, and surrendered” their lands, stating there are no such words in First Nations languages and that they only agreed to share lands “to the depth of a plough for immigration and settlement”. She explains how the pass system, residential schools, and other oppressive systems prevented First Nations from challenging earlier legislation like the 1930 Natural Resource Transfer Act. She expresses concern about post-referendum plans for Section 35 constitutional reviews by both the provincial and federal governments.
Both Gwen and Norma elaborate on the sacred nature of treaties as international instruments made with the Imperial Crown of Great Britain and Ireland, not Canada or Alberta. Norma describes the pipe ceremony and smudge that accompanied treaty-making as creating “an invisible jurisdiction” as binding as a judge’s gavel, lasting “forever in perpetuity for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the waters flow”. Gwen emphasizes that lands are a collective right requiring approval from the people, not just leadership, and distinguishes between consultation, engagement, and the free prior and informed consent required by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Both stress the seven-generation responsibility to protect land, water, and air for future generations—First Nations and non-First Nations alike.
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Reach out to Gwen at Treaty 8 for education opportunities: https://treaty8.org/about/education/.
Note: Norma said Bill C-69 but meant C-39.
