Response of the Environmental Law Centre (Alberta) Society to Bill C-78 The Canadian Environ... Book

We went to Mackinac Island this summer and there is a superb history of the native Americans who lived on the island, as you take the road around the island. The history pulls no punches. The U.S. promised them land, and then took it away a few years later. AJ Blackbird tells this story, which was first published in 1887. An amazing book.

"A treaty was concluded in the city of Washington in the year 1836, to which my people--the Ottawas and Chippewas--were unwilling parties, but they were compelled to sign blindly and ignorant of the true spirit of the treaty and the true import of some of its conditions. They thought then when signing the treaty that they were securing reservations of lands in different localities as permanent homes for themselves and their children in the future: but before six months had elapsed from the time of signing this treaty...they were told by the white neighbors that their reservations of land would expire in five years, instead of being perpetual, as they believed."