Our Home and Treaty Land: Walking Our Creation Story

by Raymond Aldred, Matthew Anderson

The words "Treaty means that your identity is bigger than just you" are used both literally and metaphorically. "It's tempting to start the story of a long journey, even a journey of realization, with the arrival rather than the first, uncertain, steps. But it's really those first steps that prepare for everything else." "First steps are what this book is about," writes Matthew Anderson in his preface, and understanding Treaty is an essential first step. Treaty - what it meant to the First Nations and to the Newcomers who originally entered into it, and what it could and should mean for all of us today - lies at the heart of this book. Treaty is key to the shared narrative, shared spirituality, and shared respect for the land that Ray Aldred says are necessary for our peoples - Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike - to walk well, to live well together on the land because Treaty still is, or should be, a lived reality. Treaty doesn't refer to a onetime, historical event, but to a lasting, daily way of "living well," in right relation to each other, to the land, and to the Creator.

192 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 1, 2022

Reviews

[Jon Coutts · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a valuable introduction to the ways of Treaty, written by a Cree theologian and a settler-Canadian who, by co-writing it, invite readers to learn both the meaning and the mode of Truth and Reconciliation in this place. In it they suggest that abstractions of possession and commodification have spoiled settlers and cut them off from their own creation and displacement stories. This can be recalibrated, they argue, by attending to the Melchizadekian witness of indigenous peoples, who slow down to let the land reform all relations, and who offer Treaty as a way forward together. (There's a christological claim here that I'm still mulling over - since it seems ironically to abstract and blend Jesus into creation - but I'm not going to rush this since it has biblical precedent in Jubilee and offers a corrective to blending Jesus into christendom.) Ray and Matthew have co-written a gem of a book for us here.

[Nikayla Reize · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite quote from this book:

"Too many settler-descendants would prefer to forget the past because it makes us uncomfortable. The same process, unfortunately, happens with the Treaties. As Roger Epp puts it, “Canadians [try] to live more comfortably, forgetfully, with the dirty little secret that the Treaties were a one-time land swindle than with the possibility that they might mean something in perpetuity." Here’s the truth: they do mean something in perpetuity."

Either we admit the land was stolen or we admit we were welcome here through ceremony and treaty and we allow that to shape our imagination for a future we all share as treaty people.

[Sara Parks · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who has heard both Ray and Matthew speak on Indigenous-Settler relationships and on Canadians' need to heal their relationship to the Land many times over the years, I am so happy to see this book in print. It contains material from many of their talks, along with freshly written material after the recovery of the residential "school" children's graves, woven into an organic dialogue, alternating one chapter by Ray and one by Matthew throughout. Although it is particularly written for Christians and makes references to theology and biblical texts, this is not done in such a way as to be off-putting to other readers. Ray's and Matthew's Christian contexts (one Cree, one Settler) do not overpower their knowledgeable and at times poetic writing about Treaty, about the role of literally walking one's Treaty Lands, about the vast distance remaining between here and reconciliation, about taking small steps to begin. Ray and Matthew have provided a gentle, witty, and enlightening beginner's guide to walking well in Treaty together.

[Caleb Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I've found another must read book for Canadians, especially Christian Canadians.

What a powerful way to view the land. What a powerful way to journey in the world and through faithful, helpful and loving reconciliation.

Thankful for writers and authors who write for those who can't always see these things.