Coucoumellisms

Many Canadians cannot imagine such a thing today, but in the Great Lakes region, from the late 17 th century to the early 19 th century, neither Indigenous peoples nor Europeans were populous enough for either to impose their ideas on the other. Instead, they met and negotiated on a “middle ground.” By 1815 however, this was already changing. [1] (Cecil Chabot, “Renewing on Middle Ground”) When the British North America Act was passed in 1867, it created a conflict of interest. It effectively made the Government of Canada both responsible for “Indians and lands reserved for Indians” and for negotiating treaties and settlements with said Indians and purchasing land from them. (Bob Joseph, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act , p.7) These two factors led to the loss of the Nation-to-Nation relationship and the start of a paternalistic relationship between the Canadian government and Indigenous peoples. Increasingly repressive and assimilatory policies on the part of the gov