2 t’ahú tsąba nálye nį yati nedhé hólį, eyi bek’éch’á ejere néné hólį

Dënesųłıné oral traditions locate the history of Wood Buffalo National Park firmly in the context of Treaty 8. For generations, Elders and Knowledge Holders have argued that the Park always has been a violation of Dënesųłıné rights to live in, relate to, and steward their territories as they have always done—rights that are enshrined in Treaty 8. The Dënesųłıné title for this chapter encapsulates this perspective. According to Elder Cecilia Adam, it means: “When the treaty was made, a great law was made. Against that [in contradiction] the Park was created.”

In July 1899, leaders representing the Dënesųłıné peoples of the Athabasca River, Birch River, Gull River, Peace River, and Slave River met at Fort Chipewyan with Treaty commissioners representing the British Crown to negotiate and sign an adhesion to Treaty 8. Elders’ accounts of the event point to both oral and written agreements made in good faith during several days of negotiations. According to the oral histories, Dene leaders understood Treaty 8 as an agreement to peacefully share their lands and waterways with the Crown in exchange for various protections and necessities, including reserve lands, annuities, uniforms, schools and teachers, tools and equipment for agricultural activity where possible, and, most importantly, the uninterrupted “right to pursue their usual vocations of hunting, trapping and fishing throughout the tract surrendered.”¹ Crown commissioners noted in their reports on the events that they had assured local leaders these rights would remain unimpeded as long as the grass grew, the sun shone and the rivers flowed.² As Elder Louis Boucher told the Indian Association of Alberta’s TARR team in 1974:

The commissioner representing the Queen who was here to make the treaty payment picked up a blade of grass and said, “in the future, this will never be taken away from you. Don’t have any wrong ideas about it. You will always have it. As long as the sun walks and the rivers flow. The way you are making a living in the bush will never be restricted.”³

Elder Jimmy Deranger explained the importance of this promise to protect the rights of the Dënesųłıné in perpetuity:

Whose land is it? Nobody’s [i.e. not settlers’]. Ours, ours. It’s always been ours. Now the natural grass is still growing, the water at Lake Athabasca and the rivers are still flowing. And the sun is still shining. And that’s our land. And the Dënesųłıné people and Mikisew people, the Métis people are still using the land as they did before contact and during contact, and to this very day. And will continue to use it. They had used it for 15,000 years, and they will continue to use it for another 15,000 years.

The Declaration of Rights to Land Use that ACFN Elders released in 2010 clearly articulates Dene interpretations of the Treaty: “Our parents and grandparents have told us that Treaty 8, signed by our Chief Laviolette in 1899, is an intergovernmental agreement that, in return for sharing our Traditional Lands, upholds our inherent Dene rights to land use and livelihood.” Further, “The meaningful practice of our Treaty Rights depends on having sufficient lands and resources to exercise those rights. Sufficient refers to not only quantity but quality, including what is required to fulfill our cultural and spiritual needs.”⁴ In 2010, ACFN Elder Rene Bruno recorded an oral history of the signing of Treaty 8 at Fort Chipewyan in 1899—His testimony is in the Oral History section of this chapter. Rene’s grandfather, Chief Laviolette, was a signatory—and his mother, who was present at the signing of the Treaty, told him the oral history of what happened there. He explained that it took days to negotiate and sign the agreement because “the Chief gave the commissioner a rough time,” making sure commissioners knew the area was Dënesųłıné territory—“that’s why we say we own this land” he said. In signing the Treaty, Dene leaders agreed that “they were going to share it [the territory]; that’s what they told them. That’s the kind of agreement that was made. As long as the sun is shining, river is flowing, and grass is growing.” Yet, despite this promise, Rene concluded, “they [the government] are breaking it now. That is what’s happening.”⁵ As the oral histories shared in this section demonstrate, the Park’s creation and expansion, and its management throughout the twentieth century, were among the many violations of treaty that he and the Elders Declaration point to.

Oral histories indicate that most of the Crown’s oral promises were broken and forgotten in the decades that followed. Furthermore, several terms and promises made orally at the time of the commission were later revoked or altered in the written Treaty document. In his extensive history of Treaties 8 and 11, historian René Fumoleau writes that the precedent for these violations occurred immediately upon signing. He explains how Pierre Mercredi, an interpreter for Treaty 8 who was present at Fort Chipewyan in 1899, recalled that initially there were two versions of the Treaty. The original version, which he witnessed and interpreted in Fort Chipewyan in 1899 for Dënesųłıné leaders, contained the provision that Dene people would maintain their rights to reside, harvest, and move across the land forever. He maintained that a second version of the Treaty was sent to leaders later on; it contained the additional terms stating that the Dënesųłıné rights to “pursue their usual vocation” was restricted.

That they shall have right to pursue their usual vocations of hunting, trapping and fishing throughout the tract surrendered as heretofore described, subject to such regulations as may from time to time be made by the Government of the country, acting under the authority of Her Majesty, and saving and excepting such tracts as may be required or taken up from time to time for settlement, mining, lumbering, trading or other purposes.⁶

Mercredi maintained that this clause had been added after the fact: “When the copy came back, that second clause (that they shall promise to obey whatever hunting regulations the dominion government shall set) was in it. It was not there before.” He continued, “I have no doubt the new regulation breaks that old Treaty. It makes me feel bad altogether because it makes lies of the words I spoke then for Queen Victoria.” Mercredi concluded, “The old Chief came to me and told me that I had spoken the words for Queen Victoria and they were lies. He said that if she had come and said those words herself, then, and broken them, she would have been an awful liar.”⁷ According to oral histories, the language in the written document eventually made it possible for government officials to take up Dënesųłıné Treaty Lands as they saw fit. In this way, Parks officials sometimes justified the taking up of lands for the Park, the imposition of a suite of strict game regulations throughout the twentieth century, and the evictions and displacements of Dënesųłıné people. Thus, the history of the Park has been interpreted by the community as a history of broken treaty promises and of violations of Dënesųłıné Treaty and Hereditary Rights.

Because of the violations of the Treaty that have characterized the history of the Park, some community members have concluded that Crown commissioners did not undertake the Treaty in good faith, but rather, the Treaty was an intentional means of cheating the local people out of their lands and resources. Chief Jonas Laviolette wrote in 1928, “I would like my brother Indian on the outside to know how the Treaty is being cheated with us . . . I want everyone to know that the White man has gone back on us, with his bargain with us . . . we are getting so tired of asking all the time and no one takes a bit of notice of us . . . I treat my dogs better than we are being treated.”⁸ Elder Alice Rigney recalled her brother, the late Elder Pat Marcel, telling her, that “they signed the treaty saying, ‘we’ll take care of you,’ when all they wanted to do was exploit all our resources. When you think about it, that’s what the Treaty was.” Alice believes that Park was part of a long process of treaty violations and an attempt to subordinate or erase Indigenous Peoples who had signed treaty and agreed to peacefully share their lands and waters. “They [the treaty commissioners] must have been real smooth talkers,” she stated. “When [the Dene leaders signed that document, everything changed—but not to our advantage. We’re a sovereign nation because we signed a Treaty with the Queen of England but we’re way at the bottom, beneath the federal government.”The creation of the Park in Dene territories, and the accompanying wildlife management policies restricting Dene lives, have in many ways taken priority over the obligations the Crown has to the Dene people.

Furthermore, the Dënesųłıné have consistently argued that the Treaty should have been accounted for throughout the history of the Park, whenever decisions were being made about it or harvesting policy was being generated or revised. Some express the view that the creation of reserves should have preceded the establishment of the Park, in order to protect Dënesųłıné rights, lives, and ways of life before Dene homelands were annexed for bison preservation. Whether the Crown commissioners signed Treaty 8 in good faith or not, a common interpretation emerges through the oral histories across the generations: the terms and promises of Treaty 8, especially the promise to protect Dene people’s rights to move, live, and harvest throughout their territories as they had always done, were violated through the creation, expansion, and management of Wood Buffalo National Park. As Elder Victorine Mercredi succinctly said in 1998, “They broke their word long ago.”⁹

The oral histories shared in this chapter elaborate on this perspective, suggesting that the creation, expansion and management of the Park fit into a wider historical pattern of Treaty promises broken by colonial governments managing land-use in Dënesųłıné territories and across Alberta and western Canada. Oral testimony, therefore, demonstrates that WBNP became a key player in the history of colonial elimination in Dene territories and northern Alberta. Dene Elders, however, have never forgotten the original terms and intentions of the Treaty and continue to publicly voice these interpretations, challenging the infringements and violations that the Park, along with many other colonial policies, processes, and institutions, represented.