Treaties Were Meant to Free People

How Ottawa Turned Survival Agreements into Chains — and Why Some Leaders Now Defend Them

The modern story told about treaties is emotionally powerful, politically useful, and historically incomplete. We’re taught to see the Numbered Treaties as instruments of permanent confinement—agreements that subordinated Indigenous peoples under Ottawa’s “protective” thumb forever. Challenge that federal role, and it’s framed as an existential threat to Indigenous survival. That narrative crumbles when you look at the actual conditions in the 1870s–1900s and what the treaties were really negotiated to achieve.

In what is now Alberta and the Prairies, treaties weren’t designed to trap anyone in dependency. They were survival agreements, hammered out amid famine, economic collapse, and violent instability. Buffalo herds vanished. Starvation and disease ravaged communities. Inter-tribal conflicts simmered. European settlement advanced relentlessly—resistance alone couldn’t stop it. Treaties were pragmatic responses to prevent chaos, mass displacement, and bloodshed. The alternative wasn’t peaceful independence; it was collapse.

Freedom then wasn’t abstract sovereignty—it was survival and stability.

Treaties delivered food aid in scarcity, agricultural tools, seed, livestock, education, and training—not as permanent handouts, but as transition tools to help Indigenous peoples endure immediate crises and join a new economic reality with dignity. They reduced violence too: no shared legal framework existed before. Territorial disputes, raiding, slavery, and retaliation were routine. Treaties set defined territories, peace guarantees, and a common authority to curb bloodshed. Children no longer grew up in constant insecurity.

Treaties were moral triage: the non-genocidal path across North America. Not perfection—just the least-bad option amid conquest pressures. They preserved hunting, fishing, and gathering rights while assuming adaptation, not permanent isolation outside the economy. That matters.

The chains came later—not from the treaties themselves. The Indian Act (1876 onward) hijacked the path: centralized authority, replaced traditional governance with federally engineered band councils, restricted land and economic autonomy, and built a funding model that rewarded compliance over results. Transitional agreements became permanent bureaucratic containment. Administrators got insulated; communities got managed.

That insulation shows up today in coordinated efforts by some Indigenous leadership to block initiatives that could benefit both Alberta and many First Nations communities. When Alberta pushed Bill 1 and Bill 54—asserting provincial jurisdiction and easing referendum thresholds—opposition was immediate. Chief Allan Adam of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation framed sovereignty moves as threats to treaty rights. Lawsuits and injunctions piled on from bands like Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan, Blood Tribe, and others, arguing separation needs First Nations consent or it violates Treaty obligations and Section 35 rights. Courts (e.g., December 2025 Federal Court ruling) have entertained these, warning new borders could infringe mobility and treaty promises. What’s glaringly absent: any real discussion of Alberta honouring treaties directly—transparently, locally—without Ottawa as eternal middleman. Federal control gets treated as synonymous with protection, despite its catastrophic track record.

Same pattern in resource development. Some leaders—like Stewart Phillip in B.C.—declare pipelines “never” in absolute terms. Yet many reserves face unsafe housing, boil-water advisories, chronic unemployment, and youth exodus. Environmental protection is valid. Engineered poverty isn’t. Plenty of First Nations choose differently: Impact Benefit Agreements and equity stakes turn development into self-reliance. Oil sands operators spent billions procuring from Indigenous businesses (e.g., $7.3 billion from 2013–2016 alone); bands like Fort McKay have netted hundreds of millions through partnerships, funding housing, education, health, and infrastructure. The split isn’t Indigenous values vs. development—it’s governance choices.

This isn’t new. In 2014, amid global anti-oilsands campaigns, Chief Allan Adam joined Neil Young’s “Honour the Treaties” tour, blasting the industry onstage. Around then, Tides Foundation’s 2013 IRS Form 990 publicly lists a $55,000 grant to 850450 Alberta Ltd.—a company tied to ACFN’s business arm, with Adam and band officials as directors/shareholders in trust for the band. The timing aligned with his activism; critics called it influence, though ACFN framed support as community/legal efforts. Broader NGO and foundation funding has amplified certain voices, resourced lawsuits, and shaped narratives—often sidelining bands thriving via resource deals.

The gap between leadership and lived reality widens. Chiefs and administrators operate in a federally funded bubble: secure salaries, covered legal/travel, relevance via Ottawa alignment. Many members endure overcrowding, limited healthcare, few jobs, and little accountability. A system claiming to represent people while structurally disconnected isn’t self-determination—it’s management.

That wasn’t accidental. The Indian Act’s band council model wasn’t traditional governance—it was federal control machinery. Dependent on Ottawa, shielded from real accountability, it concentrates power and breeds mismanagement. Not an Indigenous failure; predictable from top-down imposition.

As Alberta debates sovereignty under Danielle Smith, treaties get weaponized to shut down discussion. That’s a historical distortion. Treaties protected people from hunger, violence, and instability—not to freeze political change or grant Ottawa permanent veto over democracy.

A sovereign Alberta could honour treaties directly: transparently, locally, as partners—not dependents. Replace chains with real accountability. The uncomfortable truth: treaties were meant to free people. Ottawa turned them into chains. And today, too many leaders defend those chains because the system still rewards compliance over outcomes.

Re-examining this isn’t attacking Indigenous peoples. It’s challenging a federal structure that failed them for generations. And it’s long overdue.

-Christopher Scott