Dr. Long’s book featured in new doc

Dr. John Long’s book, Treaty No. 9: Making the Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905, plays a key role in a new documentary by legendary Canadian filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin. Titled Trick or Treaty, the documentary takes inspiration from the introduction to Long’s book: “Was it a trick or a Treaty?” The late Grand Chief Stan Loutit used these same words, attributed to Long, when he was interviewed for the documentary.

Like Long’s book, the movie shines a light on the most important document in the history of Canada's First Nations tribes: the infamous Treaty 9, a 1905 agreement in which First Nations communities supposedly relinquished sovereignty over their traditional lands — a precedent that is routinely invoked whenever governments are challenged about rights issues involving First Nations communities.

Against the backdrop of numerous key recent events, such as Chief Theresa Spence's hunger strike and the rise of Idle No More and other youth-oriented Aboriginal movements, Obomsawin interviews a string of legal, historical, and cultural experts — as well as people whose forebears were present when the treaty was signed more than a century ago — about the corrupt genesis of Treaty 9. The deeper that Obomsawin digs, the more disturbing the revelations. It gradually becomes clear that the printed copy of the treaty is not the only valid version; even more startling, the First Nations signatories themselves were not able to see the written treaty until decades after the signing, and then in a language they didn't understand.