.png;w=960)
FORT QU'APPELLE, Sask. — Forty years after the first Treaty 4 gathering brought people together in Fort Qu’Appelle, the annual event continues to draw students, families and community members to learn, reflect and remember the treaty relationship.
The annual gathering, hosted by the File Hills Qu'Appelle Tribal Council (FHQTC), began Sept. 14 and concludes Sept. 20.
For 40 years, the gathering has taken place during mid-September, as the signing of Treaty No. 4 took place on Sept. 15, 1874. The gathering has events like an annual feast, student activities, an interactive career fair, a traditional powwow celebration and many more endeavours.
A co-chair of the student activities planning committee, Alana Starr, says the FHQTC has brought in students from more than 50 schools in and around southern Saskatchewan. She believes it's vital for kids, and adults for that matter, to learn about what living on Treaty No. 4 territory means.
"Even if you're not born here, even if you immigrated here, you need to learn about the space, the territory that you're entering into — it's really important to have an understanding that's not based in stereotype," says Starr.
Starr says that the gathering is "not necessarily a celebration. It's more about coming together, and gathering, and remembering."
Dan Bellegarde, a life speaker for the FHQTC who represents Little Black Bear's Band of Cree & Assiniboine, shares some important context about the signing of the treaty from a First Nations' perspective.
"The interpretation of the treaty, though, is somewhat different from the treaty parties — there were issues around language, understanding, and translation. The Crown used such words as 'cede and surrender,' and the First Nations used such words as 'sharing the land'," says Bellegarde.
Bellegarde insists that, regardless of the communication issues during the treaty negotiations, "mutuality" was to be the basis of the relationship between the treaty parties.
"There was to be mutual benefit, mutual respect, and mutual understanding between the treaty parties going forward, and that, of course, lost its way when the Indian Act was imposed in 1876 — just two years after the treaty was signed," says Bellegarde.
