Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s not radical at all. It’s almost a word for word quote of what early Indian agents said to get people to sign. It asks Canada to abide by the treaties it signed! Crazy and radical thinking, hey??

Weirdly, in the Canada of today, that’s considered extremely radical. But it’s also considered radical to think First Nations should have clean drinking water.

If you’re interested in one heck of a read, learn about a Cree Chief named Big Bear. He quite literally saw into the future - I think his words make him one of the few genuine political visionaries of his era in Canada.

If you’re or anyone else is interested, I have a bunch of books. My email address is in my profile - some of these books are hard to find and I’m privileged enough to be able to afford them. I’d be happy as anything to mail them out to anyone interested, provided you give them wings and give them away to someone else. :)

Tangentially, they do have status cards, I worked at a wal-mart up north for a summer after high school and I used to have to type the number on the card into the cash register to override the tax on the transaction of people with a status card. The same wal-mart that banned people with a status card from buying mouthwash because they labeled the natives drunks and didn't want to propagate the issue. Yah seriously, that happened.