Institutional of Affiliation:
The 8th Fire conversely focuses on exposing and addressing the plight of Indians in Canada. Indians are believed to have been the first inhabitants of Canada. This is however not well received by the British, who were also eying the resources on the land which led to a conflict of interests. The fast growing population of Indians worried the British as they did not embrace the idea of sharing the available resources with them. This resulted to several agreements reached in a bid to unequivocally resolve the growing conflict.
According to Long (2010), one of the agreements reached was the Toronto Purchase which compelled the Mississauga’s to surrender lands around Toronto area to the British crown. The agreement saw the exchange of 250,808 acres of land for some money, about 2000 gun flints, mirrors, brass kettles, flowers, laced hats and wine. The Indians were lured into the agreement by claims that the payment made was for periodic rental of the land. It later came to their knowledge that the exchange completely took their rights to the land.
The Aboriginals later realized the loss of their land and the essence of immediate regain of control which prompted them to rethink the Indian agreement. They could no longer have the British making decisions on what they could do on their reserve land. The big loss and the contemporary need to secure their children’s future pushed them to seek a new agreement on the reserve lands (Alcantra, 2013). The Indian agreement initially reached had facilitated the creation of reserve lands and the community thought it was time the regained control and started managing the lands. It was evidently clear that they risked losing the land if they did not take it back and make resourceful use of it.
References
Alcantra, C. (2013). Negotiating the deal:Comprehensive land claims agreements in Canada. Toronto. [Ont: University of Toronto Press.
Long, J.S. (2010) Treaty no.9: Making the agreement to share the land in far northern Ontario in 1905Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
