Whose land is it anyway?

Gifted essayist editorial writer Peter Shawn Taylor’s beautifully crafted essay discusses the folly of indigenous land acknowledgments by reminding readers about the following facts and other key issues:

The numbered treaties of the Canadian West were contractual arrangements between the Canadian government and many Indigenous tribes. In exchange for compensation in various forms, natives on the Prairies did “cede, release, surrender and yield up to Her Majesty the Queen and successors forever all the lands” described by the document, with a remainder set aside for reserves. This was a mutually-agreed-upon process no different from buying a house today; land was exchanged for certain considerations, all sales final.