BEYOND TREATY 6

“My Indian brothers…I have shaken hands with a few of you, I shake hands with all of you in my heart…God has given us a good day, I trust his eye is upon us and that what we do will be for the benefit of his children…You are, like me and my friends who are with me, children of the Queen. We are of the same blood, the same God made us, and the same Queen rules over us…what I will promise, and what I believe and hope you will take, is to last as long as that sun shines and yonder river flows…” –  Lieutenant Governor Alexander Morris (Excerpt from opening remarks at Fort Carlton 1876)

“I have heard the Elders say that when the terms of the treaties were deliberated the smoke from the pipe carried that agreement to the Creator binding it forever. An agreement can be written in stone, stone can be chipped away, but the smoke from the sacred pipe signified to the First Nation peoples that the treaties could not be undone” – Ernest Benedict of Akwesasne, Mohawk reserve told the Indian Claims Commission in 1992 (Miller 139).