The picture of Canada and Indigenous People started to get ugly.
Despite the obvious benefits Canada and Canada West (Ontario) received from the Robinson Treaties and the fees generated by selling extraction rights, Canada West did not want to pay any more the 34 First Nations despite its promises to periodically increase the annual annuities. The First Nations frequently complained, but the complaints fell on deaf ears.
We must also remember, that for many years the First Nations were not allowed to hire lawyers to make their cases in court. The Indian Act passed by the Canadian Parliament prohibited that from 1927 to 1951 by not allowing anyone to solicit funds on their behalf to hire legal counsel. As Bob Joseph explained in his book, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act,
“This made it illegal for Indians to hire lawyers or raise money to hire legal counsel. It also meant jail sentences for anyone who lent Indians money for lawyers or legal counsel. This amendment [to the Indian Act] coupled with it being illegal for Indians to form political organizations, created a very real barrier to Indians to form organizations, created a very real barrier to Indians pursuing land claims and human rights actions.”
They had to rely on the goodness of the governments, and sometimes goodness was absent. This is how settler colonialism operates. The injustice is startling, but the colonial powers assumed it as their divine right. As Chief Joe Mathias and Gary R. Yabsley said in their book In Conspiracy of Legislation: The Suppression of Indian Rights in Canada (1991),
“Indian nations were therefore denied those fundamental rights that are taken for granted in any democratic system. They were, as a matter of colonial and provincial policy, denied rights to lands they occupied for centuries. This exclusion from the land was extended through the discriminatory provisions of colonial and provincial legislation. And they were prohibited by federal law [from] seeking a legal remedy for this injustice.”
Colonialism operates that way. Through law and policy exploitation is institutionalized.
As Niigaan Sinclair explained about the First Nations affected by the Robinson Treaties:
“For over a century and a half, citizens from 34 First Nations watched billions of dollars of resources being taken from their communities, only to receive four loonies each.”
And it need not be said that during this nearly 150 years the Indigenous communities were fraught with the problems of poverty while everyone else profited handsomely from using their land! And people wonder why the First Nations could not prosper.