Robinson Huron Treaty

Vincent J. Curtis

21 June 23

The Robinson-Huron Treaty of 1850 is in the news, as a substantial new financial settlement is being worked out among some 21 Indian bands and the Federal and Ontario governments.  The figure of $10 billion is being kicked around as a final settlement.

The importance of this news is not that Indians are owed so much money, or that land claims remain unsettled to this day; it is that the treaties still mean something.  So far as Canadians are concerned, that something is the uncontestable legitimacy of Crown ownership and title of the land within Canada’s borders.  Crown sovereignty over Canadian territory with respect to foreign powers has not been in dispute since the Treaty of Paris of 1763, by which French sovereignty over New France was surrendered to the British Crown.  Within that territory, and territory subsequently accessed to the Crown in Right of Canada, settlements and Treaties were made with Indian bands found in possession of territory within Canada’s boundaries.  The purpose of these settlements and treaties was to delineate where Europeans could settle and establish their society without molesting and without being molested by Indian bands.  European settlement was an unstoppable developing reality, and the Crown sought to make these changes to the facts on the ground as peaceful as possible.

Despite what aboriginal extremists might say, Canada belongs to Canadians in the fullest legal sense.  This talk of changing the national anthem to say, “our home on native land” is romantic nonsense; harmful thinking, actually, for it undermines the legitimacy of agreements.  Our predecessors bought it; we own it.  And own the land in the British legal sense of land ownership, a faculty never developed by aboriginals.

There is a romantic fashion within the Liberal government tending to undermine the legal legitimacy of Canada’s title to its own territory.  The logic of that position raises the question that if Canadians aren’t living on land truly under the title of the Canadian Crown, why are we paying taxes to the Canadian governments?  We aren’t their serfs.  If Canadians aren’t living on Canadian soil, then who does Ottawa think they’re pretending to govern, and tax?

So far as Hamilton is concerned, the importance of these Treaties is that no valid Indian claims lie upon the city.  In particular, the Nanfan Treaty has no application to Hamilton, and never did.

It also means that many of these pathetic “land acknowledgement” incantations are often false and misleading, and seem to vitiate the terms of settlements made more than a century ago. They amount to romantic nonsense, and, being false, romantic, and misleading can only lead to disappointment as the implications of their words are rejected in fact.

The treaties validate Canada’s title to its own land, notwithstanding aboriginal extremism.

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