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.
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