Treaty Research Report - Treaty Five (1875) - 1 views
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The Split Lake band
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The Native people in western Canada were only too aware of the rapid changes facing their lands in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
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The Native people north of the preliminary boundary of the treaty appealed repeatedly to be covered under treaty. The government refused, at least until the early 1900s when the proposed development of the Hudson Bay Railway convinced the authorities to heed their requests.
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the proposed Hudson Bay Railway placed immediate development pressure on the region and the government moved with uncharacteristic speed to secure land surrenders covering the affected area.
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Most the bands had requested reserves during negotiations, but a surveyor was not sent north until 1913. In that year, D.F. Robertson of the Dominion Land Survey was appointed to lay out reserve at Gods Lake, Island Lake, Deer Lake, Split Lake, Nelson House, Oxford House, Churchill and York Factory.
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W. McLean also travelled to the area that year, primarily to meet with the recently-signed Indians at Split Lake and Nelson House and to ascertain the interest of the Indians at York Factory and Churchill in accepting an adhesion to Treaty Five
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the general attitude of the non-treaty Native people, who saw some hope and help in the treaty process, particularly given the disruption forecast to follow the construction of the railway to Hudson Bay
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They were only too aware that the proposed Hudson Bay Railway would disrupt their lands and sought the official protection of a federal treaty.
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Our hunting lands will be ruined by the shriek of the Iron horse & we will be at a loss to know how to feed & clothe our little ones."
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Semmens returned to the nort
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he did not even travel to Split Lake.
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The document prepared for the Split Lake band called for the cession of large territories, while the adhesion for the other bands involved no such transfer, focusing instead on bringing individuals under treaty.
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The chief at Split Lake did insist on the five dollar per person gratuity
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Inspector Semmens was directed in 1908 to secure the adhesion of the Split Lake and Nelson House bands to Treaty Five.
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Under Treaty Five we can give no gratuity, and as the Split Lake Indians have been urging us for years to allow them to join treaty, it will require some additional inducement to get them to accept treaty without arrears of annuity
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Expansion in the transportation industry, the start of commercial fishing on the lake, and a growing number of lumbering operations forced the Native people either to protect their existing reserves or to ask for different locations which promised better access to the new opportunities.
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The economic turmoil around the turn of the century, especially the rapid rise and subsequent collapse of the commercial fishery and the gradual expansion of the timber industry, disrupted the Native people's way of life, although the changes also provided new opportunities that many Native people successfully exploited.
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The federal government's priorities for treaty-making proceeded in two stages. The first, Treaties One to Seven, cleared the way for western settlement. The second, which started with Treaty Eight in 1899, saw the government abandon its longstanding determination not to offer treaties to the harvesting peoples of the northern forests. This was done in part to pave the way for anticipated non-Native development and in part because the government felt it could no longer ignore the Native people's often-repeated requests for a treaty.
