YouTube talk by Sandi L Boucher summarizing “missing” facts in Canadian history from year 0 to 1500 that shape today’s Indigenous–Canadian relationship. Key points: Indigenous nations used treaty practices on the plains by 500–1200; Norse contact around 1000 (they called some Indigenous people "skraelings"); the Bayotuck nation was eliminated with the last known survivor dying in June 1829 and some remains later displayed in overseas museums and repatriated (skulls returned 28 Feb 2019); the Haudenosaunee Confederacy formed circa 1450; and the 1493 Papal Bull (Doctrine of Discovery) declared non-Christians’ lands vacant—precedent for colonial land claims. The speaker also cites population estimates for Indigenous peoples before widespread European settlement (roughly 200,000–2,500,000 and 300–450 languages).
Questions this video answers
Around the year 1000.
Circa 500–1200.
Around 1450.
1493.
Between 200,000 and 500,000 (some sources up to 2,500,000).
Chapters
Hello, you absolutely amazing person, you. I thought we'd finish off this week with more of those missing facts that I alluded to or I started talking about in the August 29th video. I'll link to it in the show notes. So this is pieces of historical fact or legislation that has happened that really set up the Indigenous Canadian relationship we're seeing today. And many, many people Indigenous include are not aware of these facts. So in the last episode or the first missing facts video, I brought you up to year zero where BCE or BCE switches into the common era. Today we're going to talk about from that first year up until the year 1500. And yes, I have a handy dandy index card. Let's talk about it. Hi everybody, My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Seine River First Nation in Treaty 3 Territory in Northern Ontario. And as I said today, I'm taking another shot at giving you some missing facts. Not your fault if you didn't know this stuff was not taught in our education system, was not common knowledge. But we can change that together. So as I said, the last episode brought us up to year zero. Well, first point I wanted to point out was in the years 500. So imagine that we're in 2024 now. Imagine if the year was 500 up to 1200, we see that the Indigenous communities that are on the plains, so the western provinces start to use treaties to either build relationships between each other, the different nations, or with non human promises to the land, to the creatures. Now that may be a surprise for some people because I've met people who think the treaties started when the settlers arrived. We were using treaties long before we even knew you existed. So now this one, one of the reasons I wanted to share this information with you, for one, I realized my YouTube, I share it all the time with seminar audiences. I have a full day seminar that goes over all these things and then I realized my YouTube audience may not know these facts. But the other thing is if you look at what happened before, you can see, well for the Indigenous watching, you can see where the attitudes towards us, where they came from, like where that misinformation came from. So this is one of those. Example, in the year 1000 the Norse arrive and on Baffin Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, right? So they encounter indigenous peoples and they refer to indigenous people as. Now I'm going to pronounce it as Skraelings. I'm not Norse, so I'm not sure if that's the proper pronunciation put it here. So you see the spelling. Feel free to correct me in the comments if it's mispronounced. From an indigenous perspective, who they probably met. Here we go with the renaming already. I'm going to give you a name rather than find out what your name is. They probably ran into Dorset, Inui, Thul, or Bayotuck peoples. Those nations, they decided to call them skraelings. So they start exchanging goods with the indigenous people. But a lot of violence, a lot of tension, so there's no permanent settlements that happen. Now, if you just made an assumption about which side was being violent, maybe I should let you in on the definition of skraeling in Norse. So it means there's one or two ways we can look at this word. It either means barbarian or foreigner. So barbarian, I think we can all agree that would not be a compliment. So judging us instantaneously because our nations were different, or for the first documented point in history, we see indigenous people referred to as foreigners on our own lands. Unfortunately, that doesn't go away. Now, the Bayotuck, I'm not sure if you're aware, were a First Nation that was completely eliminated by contact with Europeans. Between the violence and the slaughter and also the diseases that were brought that we didn't have any natural immunity to because we'd never experienced them before. So the last known surviving Bayoth Nation member died in June of 1829. So that's how the first contact on the eastern shores played out. Now, unfortunately, that story, in my opinion, gets worse. In fact, the remains, two Feotuck skulls were actually displayed or housed in a museum in Scotland. And in February 28, on February 28, 2019, the skulls were returned to Canada. Did any of you just hope that those people finally got to go home? Yeah, that's not what happened. They went from a Scotland museum to first the Canadian Museum of History and eventually to a museum in Newfoundland, Labrador. How would you feel if I went to some of our oldest cemeteries, dug up people, displayed them in a museum? I wouldn't want your great grandmother being displayed any more than I would want mine. That made me sad. That's not them coming home. Anyways, so when was that? That was the year 1000. We're going to fast forward now a little bit to 1450. And the Haudenosaunee Confederacy is created. That's the Iroquois Confederacy. So the first Nation communities in southern Ontario create a confederacy. They have their. Actually our political system is largely based on their political structure. So not bad. A 1450 like I said history started here long before the settlers got here. That had nothing to do with the settlers. The settlers hadn't made it to Ontario yet. 1493, remember I said how I'm sharing this so we can see where the things that affect us today came from. In 1493, the Papal Bull of the Doctrine of Discovery. This is issued by the Pope who was seen as the authority. And it said that any lands not inhabited by Christians would be considered vacant or terra nullius and could be claimed in the honor of the king or queen. And that is how Canada got so effed up. Just for some clarity, at that time, around the 1500s, depending on the source you go to, the indigenous population in Canada was either in the lands now known as Canada was either 200,000 to 500,000 people and some sources have it up to 2.5 million people speaking between 300 and 450 different indigenous languages. And they the land was about to be deemed vacant. That these people do not even exist. Why not Christian? Think of modern day politics right now and the strong voice against people who are not Christians. We have seen this play out before and I don't know about you, but I'm old enough to remember. I'm going to guess it was history class, not geography history, where you saw those posters that said free land grants Come to Canada. Get 600 acres of land. A thousand acres of land. I remember seeing those and thinking, well, my parents work really super hard for every dime. Would have been kind of neat to live in that time and be able to, because my dad works really hard. He would have cleared the land. And that's how effed up it is to grow up indigenous in Canada. Because yes, my dad was French and yes, he could have benefited from that. But my mom's family was already on those lands. She was about to. Our people were about to be moved off into the reserve system so that the settlers could have the lands they wanted. Now do you see why we gotta reconcile from everything that happened before? That's the next set. Next week I will do a video and add more facts, give you something else to think about. But if you wonder why the hostilities and the tensions and the mistrust today you got to do is look at Canadian history. Not Indigenous history, Canadian history. Have a super duper double delicious weekend and I'll see you next week. I love you. Bye bye.
