Crystal Gail Fraser
Since the publication of Talk Treaty to Me: Understanding the Basics of Treaties and Land in Canada, I have spent a great deal of time talking about treaties with audiences across Canada, and I have enjoyed every moment of it. Unsurprisingly, people often ask remarkably similar questions. They want to know what treaties are, why they matter today, and what treaty relationships mean in practice. One question surfaces repeatedly: if treaties were supposed to establish respectful relationships between Indigenous Peoples and newcomers, how do we reconcile that history with the Indian Act?
This year, that question is urgent. In 2026, both Treaty 6 and the Indian Act mark their 150th anniversaries. This overlap is striking. One commemorates a treaty relationship that First Nations continue to uphold and renew. The other marks the passage of legislation that became one of the most significant instruments of colonial control and genocide in Canadian history.
How can both be true?
The answer begins by recognizing that treaties and the Indian Act emerged from fundamentally different visions of Indigenous-newcomer relations. Yet for much of the last century and a half, Canadians have viewed treaties through the lens of the Indian Act. In doing so, we have often confused a relationship with a bureaucracy.
Treaty 6 was signed in 1876 between First Nations and representatives of the Crown across what is now central Alberta and Saskatchewan. Like other numbered treaties, it emerged during a period of enormous change. Epidemics had devastated communities, bison populations were collapsing, and settler expansion was accelerating across the Prairies. First Nations leaders entered treaty negotiations seeking to secure the future of their peoples in an uncertain and rapidly changing world.
Too often, treaty histories are presented as land transactions. The story goes something like this: Indians surrendered territory, the Crown acquired land, and the agreement was completed. This narrative remains deeply embedded in Canadian public memory, despite decades of scholarship demonstrating otherwise.
A growing body of scholarship invites us to think differently. Cree scholars Gina Starblanket and Matthew Wildcat argue that treaties should be understood as constitutional agreements that continue to structure relationships between Indigenous nations and the Canadian state. Rather than viewing treaties as historical transactions, they encourage us to understand them as ongoing political relationships grounded in mutual responsibilities.
Similarly, Shalene Jobin’s work on Indigenous nationhood and governance reminds us that treaties did not erase Indigenous political authority. First Nations entered treaty as self-determining peoples with their own legal traditions, diplomatic protocols, and governance systems. Darcy Lindberg’s scholarship further challenges Canadians to recognize treaties as living agreements that continue to generate responsibilities in the present.
Taken together, this scholarship represents a profound shift in how many Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars understand treaties. Treaty is not merely a document housed in an archive. Treaty is a relationship. It is a framework for living together that creates obligations that extend across generations. For some First Nations, treaties are spiritual agreements.
When treaties are discussed in Indigenous communities, the conversation often centres on relationships, kinship, reciprocity, and shared responsibilities. Treaty is frequently described as an agreement to coexist, about how peoples will live together while maintaining their distinct identities, laws, and political traditions. The language may differ from community to community, but the underlying principle remains remarkably consistent: treaty endures. And we all have treaty responsibilities.
The Indian Act emerged from a very different set of assumptions. Also passed in 1876, the Indian Act was not negotiated. The legislation was imposed by the federal government (then, the Dominion of Canada) and consolidated earlier colonial laws designed to regulate First Nations and communities.
Over time, the Indian Act became one of the central mechanisms through which Canada pursued assimilationist policies. It imposed systems of governance, defined legal categories of Indigenous identities, oppressed women, regulated reserve lands, and granted extraordinary authority to federal officials. Indian residential schools operated within this broader system of colonial administration. Restrictions on ceremony, movement, and political organizing emerged from the same logic of state control.
The distinction is important because treaties and the Indian Act were attempting to accomplish different things. Treaties established relationships between peoples. The Indian Act sought to manage Indians within the Canadian state.
Yet the two became entangled. For generations, many Indigenous Peoples encountered the Crown primarily through Indian Act institutions. Federal bureaucrats administered treaty annuities. Indian agents often mediated treaty obligations. Band councils created under the Indian Act became the primary governmental bodies recognized by Ottawa. As a result, the day-to-day experience of treaty was increasingly filtered through colonial administrative structures.
The entanglement deepened over time. At a recent Yellowhead Institute Fire, Cree legal scholar Sharon Venne argued that amendments to the Indian Act in 1951 further blurred the distinction between treaty and legislation. In her view, treaty beneficiaries increasingly came to be understood through the statutory category of “Status Indian,” contributing to a shift in how many Canadians understood Indigenous-Crown relationships. The result was that treaty relationships, which originated as nation-to-nation agreements, were increasingly interpreted through the administrative machinery of the Indian Act.
When public debates emerge about treaty rights, self-government, land claims, taxation, or Indigenous jurisdiction, people frequently conflate treaty relationships with Indian Act administration. They assume that treaties created the systems they see around them. In reality, many of those systems emerged from federal legislation rather than treaty commitments.
This conflation also surfaces around calls for the abolition of the Indian Act. Venne has argued that many people do not fully consider what such a move would entail under the current legal framework. The Indian Act is not merely a piece of legislation; it structures the administration of reserve lands, band governance, legal Indian status, and numerous federal responsibilities. Eliminating the Act without replacing these structures would not simply remove colonial legislation. It would fundamentally alter the legal and political landscape that has developed around it over the last century and a half. Whether one supports reform, replacement, or abolition, the discussion requires a clear understanding of what derives from treaty and what derives from federal legislation.
This confusion has consequences. When Canadians interpret treaty relationships through Indian Act institutions, treaty itself can become reduced to questions of status, taxation, reserve administration, funding arrangements, or federal programs. Important as these issues are, they are not the sum of treaty. Such a narrow understanding obscures the larger questions that treaties were intended to address: how peoples share territory, how relationships are maintained across generations, and what responsibilities accompany coexistence. These are treaty questions. They remain just as relevant today as they were when treaty was first negotiated.
Across Canada, Indigenous nations continue to revitalize governance systems, assert jurisdiction, negotiate new agreements, and strengthen relationships grounded in their own legal and political traditions. Many of these efforts draw not from the Indian Act but from Indigenous understandings of treaty, nationhood, and responsibility. This is why the dual anniversaries of 2026 are significant.
Treaty 6 and the Indian Act were born in the same year, but they pointed toward different futures. One reflected a vision of coexistence rooted in relationships and mutual obligations. The other reflected a vision of administration rooted in hierarchy, control, and genocide. For 150 years, the latter vision has dominated the history of Indigenous-state relations.
As Canadians reflect on both anniversaries, perhaps the most important task is not simply remembering the past. It is learning to distinguish between these two legacies. The challenge before us is not merely to understand what happened in 1876. It is to decide which vision should guide us moving forward.
If treaties remain living relationships, as First Nations have long maintained and as scholars such as Starblanket, Wildcat, Jobin, and Lindberg increasingly demonstrate, then treaty is not simply history. It is a framework for the future. One hundred and fifty years after Treaty 6 and the Indian Act, the question is no longer how both can be true. The question is which legacy we choose to strengthen over the next 150 years.
Author’s Note on Terminology: Following the guidance of Gregory Younging in Elements of Indigenous Style, I use terminology that reflects both historical context and contemporary usage. Terms such as Indigenous and First Nations are used where appropriate, while Indian appears when discussing the Indian Act, historical records, legal categories, or language used by governments and institutions at specific points in time. These terms are not interchangeable, and their use throughout this article reflects the historical, legal, and political contexts being discussed.
Dr. Crystal Gail Fraser is a historian and Indigenous studies scholar at the University of Alberta whose work centres on Indigenous histories of Indian residential schooling, oral history, governance, and community-driven research in the Canadian North. She is the author of By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories and co-author of the national bestseller Talk Treaty to Me: Understanding the Basics of Treaties and Land in Canada. Her scholarship and public engagement were recognized with a Governor General’s Award for Scholarly Excellence (2025). She leads Survivor-centred, community-engaged projects that support public education, Indigenous methodologies, and truth-telling grounded in Indigenous knowledge systems.