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Originally Posted by onetwo_threefour
Not to mention that when Europeans came, they chose to treat the First Nations as sovereign trading partners and did not 'conquer' the lands. It's pretty disingenous to blame the First Nations for asserting Treaty Rights since that was the entire point of Treaties from the European standpoint. If it had been up to the First Nations, treaties would never have been necessary as they were already on their lands and didn't have a concept of land ownership, they would have been happy to share the land and set up territorial boundaries as they did amongst themselves before Europeans were on the scene, but as far as a traditional First Nations culture is concerned, the European claim to sovereignty over any part of traditional native lands is bogus.
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I’m pretty sure greed cut both ways at the time - if you didn’t believe in land ownership, or the exclusivity of land ownership, it was easy to sign treaties handing away vast regions of land for a relatively small amount of imported goods, since the “cost” to you was nothing more than a signature, and you got access to fantastic items and supplies you’d never had before.
Conversely, the Euro’s were swindling the first nations by not offering a rate of exchange commensurate with the amount of land involved.
Neither side did a great job in those early treaty negotiations, in my opinion.