Aaniin,
This week’s Learning Together post was created and shared by our Indigenous Partnerships and Housing Worker, Missy Knott.
For this week’s Learning Together, I wanted to share some reflections from a treaty talk I attended on October 22nd at the Trent Lakes Library featuring Eric Knott.
Listening to Eric, I was reminded once again that understanding treaties isn’t just about examining historical documents, it is about honouring truth, understanding systemic impact, and centering community perspectives and the wisdom of our Elders as we look toward the path forward.
Understanding the Spirit and Intent of Treaties
When we talk about treaties like the Rice Lake Treaty of 1818 or the Williams Treaties of 1923, there is often a stark difference between how they were written down by colonial governments versus their true spirit and intent. Historically, agreements that were made orally were translated into written terms that stripped away fundamental rights, cultural freedoms, and access to traditional lands.
One quote from today that really stuck with me asked a fundamental question about colonial authority:
“Who gave the colonial administration permission to do this?”
The history behind these negotiations reveals deep social and economic imbalances. In 1818, negotiations were forced through in a single day, putting communities in a position where resistance meant severe hardship. Later legislative changes, including the Indian Act starting in 1876, further disrupted traditional ways of life which was restricting hunting, fishing, and harvesting, and effectively starving communities into submission through policy, privilege, and forced poverty. Even when Indigenous peoples were pushed to transition into farming, those lands and rights were taken away as well.
Systemic Disruption, Gender-Based Violence, and the Targeted Erasure of Women
A crucial part of today’s talk focused on how colonial laws explicitly targeted Mississauga women to dismantle matriarchal governance and community structures. Under discriminatory provisions of the Indian Act, an Indigenous woman automatically lost her Indian status, band membership, and property rights if she married a non-Indigenous man. She was evicted from her home community and denied the right to be buried on her ancestral land, while Indigenous men who married non-Indigenous women passed their status on to their wives.
This deliberate policy of disenfranchisement and displacement was a form of legislative genocide, an intentional effort to assimilate Indigenous peoples and reduce band membership across generations.
Removing women from their central leadership and caretaking roles directly introduced gender-based violence into communities that historically relied on and revered women’s leadership. Colonial governance imposed patriarchal systems, creating imbalances, separation, and trauma that reverberate through generations, contributing directly to the ongoing national crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQIA+ people.
Women, Leadership, and Cultural Resurgence
Despite these intense histories of separation and systemic disruption, the history of Mississauga women is one of incredible strength, leadership, and transformation.
From early advocates like Nahnebahwequa (Catherine Sutton) in the 1850s fighting for land rights, to Chief Elsie Knott becoming the first female Chief in Canada in 1954 and helping restructure our community (even during a time when First Nations people couldn’t vote federally until 1960), women have continually held up our nations. Language teachers like Rita Rose and community leaders preserved our culture, leadership structures, and ways of knowing through decades of protest and perseverance.
Looking 7 Generations Back and 7 Generations Forward
A core teaching that ran through today’s talk was the responsibility we carry when we look 7 generations back and 7 generations forward. Truth is one of the Seven Grandfather Teachings, and facing these difficult truths is necessary if we want to close cultural gaps, listen deeply, and restore balance.
The legal struggles from the 1977 R. v. Taylor and Williams bullfrog case to the 2018 Williams Treaties settlement show that the fight to honour original treaty rights, kinship, and spiritual connections to the land has been ongoing for generations.
When we listen to community perspectives, honour the spirit and intent of relationships, and recognize the strength and resilience of Indigenous women and leadership, we can begin to walk a better path together.
Environmental Impact & Alice Williams’ Quilt Art
We were also joined by Elder and textile artist Alice Williams, who shared her powerful quilt art to visually demonstrate the devastating impact of colonial destruction on our environment.
Seeing her hold up a complete, beautifully stitched quilt representing the wholeness and balance of Creation—and then contrasting it with a quilt torn apart, frayed, and cut through with holes—was a striking, heartbreaking visual. It put into words and fabric what words alone sometimes cannot: how environmental degradation, land disruption, and pollution have torn away at the natural world and our delicate relationship with it.
Yet, the art also reminds us of resilience—that even through deep disruption, the sacred teachings, memory, and commitment to stitching our relationship with the land back together remain alive.
Thank you for taking a moment to Learn Together.
Thank you, Miigwetch,
Missy
