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ARCHIVED - Treaty 8

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Why a Treaty?

Letter from Roderick MacFarlane, Chief Factor, Fort Chipewyan, to David Laird, Lieut. Governor of the North-West Territories, 24 December 1880

"... owing to the scarcity of food animals, and the comparative failure of the fisheries, numbers of Indians will doubtless suffer many privations betwixt [now] and Spring. We have already expended a lot of fish and potatoes on them; in short, but for the assistance thus annually rendered to starving Indians, throughout the North, many of them would assuredly perish.... It strikes me very forcibly that something must be done and that speedily to help these poor people. Confining my remarks as applicable to the District of Peace River, Athabasca, English River, and the Mackenzie, I am really unaware of anything that has yet been accomplished by our rulers ... since the territory was transferred to Canada."

Writing more than ten years after the transfer to Canada of the lands belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company trading empire (Rupert’s Land), Roderick MacFarlane, the Chief Factor at Fort Chipewyan north of Edmonton, chastised the government for its lack of compassion for the destitute First Nations in his area. Despite such persistent pleas for help, the government continued with its policy of no-treaty-no-help for another 19 years.

Ref. No.: MG29, A11, vol. 1, pp. 808-809

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