Treaty 45

Treaty 45, referred to variously as the Manitoulin Island treaty, the treaty of Manitowaning, or the Bond Head treaty, is a treaty that, by its terms, converted the whole of Manitoulin Island, then in Upper Canada, into a reserve.^[1]

Treaty 45 was negotiated in August 1836 between 16 leaders of the Odawa and Ojibwe and Francis Bond Head, as a representative of the British Crown.^[2][1][3] An entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia suggests that as opposed to "negotiation", what happened instead was simply that Bond Head "collected the signatures" of these leaders on the treaty document.^[4] Bond Head had travelled to Manitoulin Island in part for an annual exchange of presents with his Indigenous counterparts; according to historian Robert J. Surtees, he "took more decisive action" in negotiating the treaty once there.^[5]

The English-language document memorializing the treaty is in the collection of Library and Archives Canada.^[6]

The treaty's conclusion was memorialized on Manitoulin Island in August 2011.^[7]

The term "Manitoulin Island treaty" may also refer to a treaty negotiated in 1862.^[6]

Notes

1. McNab, David T. (1999). Circles of Time: Aboriginal Land Rights and Resistance in Ontario. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-88920-693-9.
2. Hutchings, Kevin (20 September 2016). "'More Savage than Bears or Wolves': Animals, Colonialism and the Aboriginal Atlantic". In Eckel, Leslie (ed.). Edinburgh Companion to Atlantic Literary Studies. Edinburgh University Press. p. 316. ISBN 978-1-4744-0295-8. JSTOR 10.3366/j.ctt1g051f1.25.
3. Hutchings, Kevin (20 August 2020). Transatlantic Upper Canada: Portraits in Literature Land and British-Indigenous Relations. McGill–Queen's University Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-2280-0266-6.
4. Anderson, Charnel (29 September 2021). "Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 30 September 2021.
5. Surtees 1986, p. 8.
6. Buchanan & Hewitt 2017, p. 300.
7. Erskine, Michael (17 August 2011). "First Nations gather to mark 1836 Manitowaning Treaty". Manitoulin Expositor. Retrieved 30 September 2021.

Sources

• Buchanan, Ruth; Hewitt, Jeffery G (7 November 2017). "Encountering settler colonialism through legal objects: a painted drum and handwritten treaty from Manitoulin Island". Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly. 68 (3): 291–304. doi:10.53386/nilq.v68i3.41. ISSN 2514-4936.
• Surtees, Robert J. (1986). Treaty research report: Manitoulin Island treaties. Ottawa: Treaties and Historical Research Centre; Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. OCLC 153543517. R32-268/1986E-PDF.

External links

• Transcription of the text of Treaty 45, dated 9 August 1836, via Crown–Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada