APTN Interview with Sheilla Jones: Treaty Payments

When treaties were signed they were agreements to share Canada’s growing prosperity with the original people of this land. It was a $4- to $5-annual payment for every man, woman […]
Published on September 12, 2019

When treaties were signed they were agreements to share Canada’s growing prosperity with the original people of this land.

It was a $4- to $5-annual payment for every man, woman and child back then.

Today, it remains a $4 to $5 payment, depending on what treaty area you’re in.

There’s a new book out — and a working group has been formed – to look at the path Canada has been on over the past 50 years, and how the current system isn’t working.

Spending tens of millions of dollars a year through the Indian Affairs department hasn’t worked for regular Canadians or for First Nations.

So what if the system was turned on its head and that money was instead, put in the pockets of all Status Indians under a revolutionized treaty annuity system?

APTN News host Melissa Ridgen sat down with Sheilla Jones, the author of Let the People Speak; Oppression in a Time of Reconciliation, and Sheila North, former grand chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak who sits on the working group and wrote the forward to Jones’ book.

Click here to see the original post and video on Facebook

Featured News

MORE NEWS

Canada’s Indigenous Burial Hoax Is Still Very Much Alive

Canada’s Indigenous Burial Hoax Is Still Very Much Alive

History shows that many hoaxes, fake news stories, and conspiracy theories have proven nearly unassailable, even when proven false. So far, it seems a British Columbia burial canard will be added to this list. The assertion that thousands of Indian Residential School...

Black on Canada’s Proud Black History

Black on Canada’s Proud Black History

Did you learn any Black history in Black History Month? February came and went in Canada with few high-profile offerings, except a nod to a pioneering black athlete there and a slogan or commercial there. Black organizations sued the Canadian Human Rights Commission...

A Teacher Who Won’t Salute

A Teacher Who Won’t Salute

My Warholian fifteen minutes of fame came not from a father (Roy) who helped hammer out over glasses of Scotch the “Kitchen Cabinet” compromise that saved the patriation of Canada’s Constitution Act (1982) or a great-great-great-grandfather, Charles Waters, an early...