Treaty Territories of Canada

Dummer’s Treaty, signed in Boston in 1725 and ratified by Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik leaders in Annapolis Royal and other centres over the following years, was the first formal treaty relationship between the British Crown and the Indigenous peoples of the Maritime region. It established peace after years of conflict and guaranteed the Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik their existing way of life, including the right to hunt, fish and gather on their traditional lands. This right was confirmed again by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Marshall (1999), which upheld a Mi’kmaw man’s right to fish for commercial purposes under the 1760 treaty.

The Treaty of 1752 was signed between Governor Peregrine Hopson and Mi’kmaw Chief Jean-Baptiste Cope at Halifax. It renewed the earlier peace agreements and explicitly guaranteed Mi’kmaw rights to hunt, fish and trade throughout Nova Scotia. The treaty famously promised that the Mi’kmaq would have “free liberty of Hunting & Fishing as usual.” The Supreme Court of Canada confirmed in R. v. Simon (1985) that this treaty was valid and that the hunting rights it guaranteed remained in force, over two centuries after signing.

Signed in the aftermath of the British conquest of New France, the Treaties of 1760–61 were negotiated with multiple Mi’kmaw and Wolastoqiyik communities at Halifax and Windsor. They confirmed peace and included a key “truck house” clause that granted the Mi’kmaq the right to trade. In the landmark R. v. Marshall decision of 1999, the Supreme Court interpreted this clause as guaranteeing a treaty right to fish commercially for a “moderate livelihood” — a ruling that sparked a national debate over treaty rights and commercial fishing access that continues today.

The Miramichi Treaties were the final Peace and Friendship agreements, signed at the mouth of the Miramichi River as the American Revolutionary War created new pressures on the relationship between Britain and the Maritime Indigenous nations. These agreements extended the peace relationship to communities in New Brunswick that had not been signatories to earlier treaties and formed the last of the historic Peace and Friendship treaty series. Their rights, like those of all Peace and Friendship Treaties, continue to apply to the territories covered.

The Toronto Purchase was a land-cession treaty with the Mississaugas of the Credit covering the land on which the City of Toronto now stands. The original 1787 deed was so poorly written that its boundaries were unclear, and the purchase was formally completed in 1805. In 2010, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation launched a Specific Claim that resulted in a $145 million settlement — the largest Specific Claim settlement in Ontario history at the time — acknowledging that the original purchase had been deeply inadequate.

Governor Frederick Haldimand’s 1784 proclamation granted the Haudenosaunee Confederacy — who had been British allies during the American Revolution and lost their New York homelands as a result — a tract of land six miles on either side of the Grand River “from its source to its mouth.” This was approximately 950,000 acres. Through a series of sales and surrenders in the early 1800s, most of this territory was ceded, leaving the Six Nations with a fraction of the original grant. Their claim to the surrendered lands remains one of the largest outstanding land claims in Canada.

The Williams Treaties of 1923 were the last historic treaties signed in Ontario, covering a large tract of land between Georgian Bay, Lake Simcoe and the Trent River watershed. The seven First Nations who signed surrendered extensive territories but retained hunting and fishing rights — rights that the federal and provincial governments subsequently denied for decades. In 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Restoule v. Canada that the Crown had violated the annuity provisions of the Robinson Treaties (which informed the Williams Treaties framework), leading to significant compensation negotiations.

Lieutenant-Governor Francis Bond Head negotiated treaties in 1836 that attempted to establish Manitoulin Island as a permanent reserve for all Indigenous peoples of Upper Canada who wished to live there “as long as the grass grows and the water flows.” Bond Head’s plan was repudiated by the Colonial Office in London as impractical and was never fully implemented. A subsequent 1862 treaty attempted to extinguish Indigenous title to Manitoulin Island, but the Wikwemikong First Nation refused to sign — making their territory at the island’s eastern tip the largest unceded territory in Ontario.

The Robinson-Superior Treaty was negotiated by William Benjamin Robinson with 18 Ojibwe chiefs along the northern shore of Lake Superior, covering approximately 53,500 square kilometres of land rich in copper and silver. The Crown agreed to pay an initial sum and a perpetual annuity of £500 to be divided among the signatory nations. The treaty promised that the annuity would increase as the territory’s resources generated revenue — a promise the Crown failed to honour for over 150 years. In 2024, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Canada had breached this treaty obligation and ordered compensation.

Signed two days after the Robinson-Superior Treaty, the Robinson-Huron Treaty covered the vast northern shore of Lake Huron and established the annuity system that would define the Numbered Treaties for the following half century. Twenty-one Ojibwe chiefs and their communities ceded approximately 35,700 square kilometres. The treaty guaranteed hunting and fishing rights over the ceded territory — rights that were confirmed and expanded in the decades-long Restoule v. Canada litigation, which resulted in a landmark 2024 settlement of over $10 billion for both Robinson treaty nations.

The first Douglas Treaties were signed in 1850 with the Lekwungen people (now Songhees and Esquimalt Nations) and the W&SANEĆ (Saanich) people of southern Vancouver Island, covering the land around the Hudson’s Bay Company fort that would become Victoria. The treaties promised that villages and enclosed fields would remain in the possession of First Nations, and that they could carry on their fisheries “as formerly.” The brevity and ambiguity of these documents — typically a single handwritten page — has been the subject of ongoing legal and political interpretation.

The Nanaimo Treaty of 1854 was the fourteenth and final Douglas Treaty, signed to acquire land around the coal-producing area of Nanaimo. Like its predecessors, it was a brief document that ceded land while promising to preserve village sites and the right to hunt and fish. After this treaty, Governor Douglas’s requests for funds from London to continue the treaty-making process were denied. British Columbia entered Confederation in 1871 without signing treaties with the vast majority of its Indigenous nations — a gap that has produced the most complex and litigated land rights situation in Canadian history.

Treaty 1 was the first of the numbered treaties, signed at Lower Fort Garry (Stone Fort) on the Red River with seven Anishinaabe and Swampy Cree chiefs. Canada ceded to these nations reserve lands, agricultural implements, education provisions, and an annual payment of $3 per person. The seven chiefs drove a hard bargain, securing promises that were recorded as “outside promises” beyond the written text — promises the government subsequently denied making. After sustained pressure, Canada acknowledged the outside promises in 1875 and increased the annuity to $5.

Treaty 2, signed at Manitoba Post (near present-day Portage la Prairie) three weeks after Treaty 1, covered the southwestern corner of Manitoba and followed the same basic terms as Treaty 1. It was negotiated primarily with Ojibwe communities of the parkland belt. Like Treaty 1, it was subject to the controversy over “outside promises.” The treaty territory encompasses the region between the Assiniboine River and the US border, including much of the agriculturally productive land of southwestern Manitoba.

Treaty 3 (the Northwest Angle Treaty) was negotiated over two years with the Anishinaabe (Saulteaux) of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake region, who were skilled negotiators and who extracted significantly more generous terms than Treaties 1 and 2 — $12 per person as a signing bonus, larger reserve allocations, and explicit recognition of hunting and fishing rights. The territory covered by Treaty 3 includes the boundary waters route between Lake Superior and Lake of the Woods and was critical for transportation access to the prairies.

Treaty 4 was signed at Fort Qu’Appelle in the Qu’Appelle Valley with Cree and Saulteaux nations of the southern plains. The negotiations were tense: Chief Pasqua and other leaders demanded an explanation for why the Hudson’s Bay Company had been permitted to sell their lands to Canada without their consent. The treaty covered approximately 194,000 square kilometres of prime agricultural land, including the future sites of Regina, Moose Jaw, and Swift Current. Chief Piapot of the Cree refused to sign immediately, doing so only months later under duress.

Treaty 5 covered the Winnipeg River basin and the land surrounding Lake Winnipeg — a vast, resource-rich territory of boreal forest, rivers, and lakes. It was signed initially at Beren’s River and Norway House and subsequently adhered to by additional bands. The treaty addressed the needs of the Crown’s plans for the waterway and timber resources of northern Manitoba. Adhesions to Treaty 5 were signed as late as 1910, extending its coverage into the northern reaches of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Treaty 6 was the most significant and best-known of the numbered treaties, negotiated at Fort Carlton and Fort Pitt during a period of catastrophic bison decline and smallpox epidemic. The Plains Cree chiefs — including Mistawasis and Ahtahkakoop — negotiated exceptional provisions including a “medicine chest” clause (interpreted today as a right to healthcare) and a “famine and pestilence” clause guaranteeing Crown assistance during times of extreme hardship. Chief Big Bear refused to sign in 1876, doing so only in 1882 when starvation threatened his people. The territory covers Edmonton, Saskatoon, and the heart of Canada’s prairie provinces.

Treaty 7 was signed at Blackfoot Crossing on the Bow River with five nations of southern Alberta, including the powerful Blackfoot Confederacy under Chief Crowfoot (Isapo-Muxika). It is also the most contested of the numbered treaties: Blackfoot oral history holds that the chiefs understood they were agreeing to a peace treaty with the Crown — not a land surrender. The discrepancy between the English text (which extinguishes Aboriginal title) and what chiefs understood they were agreeing to has been the subject of sustained scholarly debate and ongoing legal challenges. The territory includes the future sites of Calgary and Lethbridge.

Treaty 8 is the largest of the numbered treaties by area, covering approximately 840,000 square kilometres of boreal forest and subarctic land. It was signed in the wake of the Klondike Gold Rush, which made the Crown anxious to establish sovereignty over northern territories. The Dene and Cree signatories were promised that they could continue to hunt, fish and trap “throughout the tract surrendered.” This promise is at the centre of ongoing disputes over oil sands development in northern Alberta, where Treaty 8 territory encompasses some of the richest oil deposits on Earth and some of the most controversial resource extraction in Canadian history.

Treaty 9, the James Bay Treaty, was signed as Ontario and the federal government sought jurisdiction over the vast boreal north of the province, opened by the construction of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway. The territory covers approximately 90% of Ontario’s land mass but a small fraction of its population. The Cree and Ojibwe communities of the James Bay coast were the last to sign in 1929–30. The verbal promises made during negotiations — that nothing would change in daily life — have been systematically documented by researchers as drastically at odds with the written surrender text that commissioners brought north.

Treaty 10 covered the Athabasca region of northern Saskatchewan and was negotiated at Ile-à-la-Crosse, Green Lake and other northern communities with Dene and Cree nations who relied on the boreal forest for their livelihood. Concerns about mineral and timber rights in the region drove the federal government’s interest in the treaty. The territory is characterised by boreal forest, muskeg, and the interconnected lake and river systems of the Churchill and Athabasca watersheds, which remain central to the traditional economies of the First Nations of the region.

Treaty 11, signed in the year of the Dene Nation’s most northerly communities, was negotiated along the Mackenzie River after the discovery of oil at Norman Wells raised the prospect of massive resource development. It was the last historic treaty signed in Canada. The Dene peoples who signed it have consistently maintained that they agreed to a peace and friendship treaty — not a land surrender — and the Justice Thomas Berger inquiry of 1974–77 famously gave the Dene people of the Mackenzie Valley an unprecedented platform to describe what the treaty meant to them. Berger’s final report recommended a ten-year moratorium on the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, a landmark moment in the history of Indigenous rights and environmental review in Canada.

The JBNQA was Canada’s first modern land claims agreement, signed after the Cree and Inuit of northern Quebec successfully blocked the massive James Bay hydroelectric project in court in 1973. In exchange for consenting to the hydro development, the Cree and Inuit received $225 million, extensive land rights, self-governance powers, and exclusive hunting and fishing rights over a large Category I territory. It established the template for all modern treaties that followed and demonstrated that Indigenous nations could negotiate from positions of strength when their rights were asserted in court.

The Inuvialuit Final Agreement (IFA) was the first comprehensive land claim settled north of 60 degrees and the first to be concluded under Canada’s modern comprehensive claims policy. The Inuvialuit — the western Arctic Inuit — received 91,000 square kilometres of land (including 13,000 km² with subsurface rights), $45 million in compensation, wildlife harvesting rights, and participation rights in environmental and wildlife management bodies. The IFA is widely regarded as one of the most successfully implemented land claim agreements in Canada.

The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, signed with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami’s predecessor organisation, was the largest land claims settlement in Canadian history at the time and led directly to the creation of Nunavut as Canada’s third territory on April 1, 1999. The Inuit received title to approximately 355,000 km² of land (including 35,000 km² with subsurface mineral rights), $1.148 billion in compensation, harvesting rights, and a role in environmental management. The creation of Nunavut transferred governance of a territory larger than Western Europe to a predominantly Inuit government.

The Yukon Umbrella Final Agreement established a framework under which individual Yukon First Nations could negotiate their own Final Agreements. Fourteen Yukon First Nations have now concluded their own self-government agreements, making Yukon the only Canadian jurisdiction where most of the territory is covered by modern treaty arrangements. Each Final Agreement provides the relevant First Nation with settlement land, financial compensation, harvesting rights, and extensive self-government powers — including the right to make laws in areas such as language, culture, social services and land use.

The Nisga’a Final Agreement was the first modern treaty in British Columbia and the culmination of over a century of Nisga’a advocacy for recognition of their land rights — including their 1913 petition to the Privy Council in London. The Nisga’a received approximately 2,000 km² of fee-simple land in the Nass Valley, $190 million in compensation, defined fishery allocations on the Nass River, and self-government powers in areas including language, culture, taxation and land use. The Nisga’a Lisims Government is one of the most developed examples of Indigenous self-government in Canada.

The Tsawwassen First Nation Final Agreement was the first urban treaty in British Columbia and the first to be concluded under the BC Treaty Commission process established in 1992. Located in the midst of Metro Vancouver, the Tsawwassen received 724 hectares of settlement lands, $13.9 million, agricultural leasehold lands, and harvesting rights. The treaty is notable for extinguishing Aboriginal title to the Tsawwassen territory in exchange for the defined rights — a model that remains controversial among First Nations who prefer rights-recognition approaches.

The Maa-nulth First Nations Final Agreement brought together five Nuu-chah-nulth Nations of western Vancouver Island in a single treaty that granted them approximately 24,500 hectares of land, $73.1 million in capital transfer, defined fisheries allocations, and self-government powers. The agreement is significant for demonstrating that multiple First Nations could conclude a single treaty together while maintaining distinct governance structures. The Maa-nulth nations are among the most active in implementing their self-government powers in areas including education, social services and lands management.

The Sahtu Dene and Métis Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement covers the Sahtu region of the Mackenzie Valley in the Northwest Territories. The Sahtu Dene and Métis received approximately 41,000 km² of land, $75 million over 15 years, and harvesting rights throughout the settlement area. The agreement also established co-management boards for land use planning and environmental assessment. Subsequent self-government agreements have been negotiated with communities within the Sahtu region including the Shúhtagot’ı≠ Dene of Colville Lake.