Alberta: Anniversary of Treaty No. 6: Premier Kenney

The Voice of Canada News:

Premier Jason Kenney issued the following statement on Treaty Six Recognition Day:

“We recognize the signing of Treaty Six between the federal Crown and Plains Indigenous people.

“As early as 1871, Plains Indigenous Peoples expressed interest in negotiating a treaty with the Crown that would protect them from the settlement of outsiders on their lands, and agreement was finally reached in 1876.

“Treaty Six was signed at two sites in Saskatchewan: at Fort Carlton on Aug. 23, 1876, and on Sept. 9, 1876, at Fort Pitt.

“An adhesion to the Treaty was signed in Alberta at a site that is now known as Edmonton.

“Treaty Six covers a large area of land covering what is now central Alberta and Saskatchewan. It was a sparsely populated land whose industry was largely agrarian and fur trade. In that sense the first entrepreneurs in this land were Indigenous. They were the first trading people.

“I think there is a deep and growing understanding of the moral obligation that we have as a society to work together in mutual respect with First Nations people. Let us move forward in the spirit of Treaty Six and those that came after it.”