My Sacred Duty to Rebut Grand Chief Kyra Wilson’s Claim of Theft of Rupert’s Land

Reconciliation is not about rewriting history.

By Michelle Stirling ©2025

In a Hill Times article of May 24, 2025, Grand Chief Kyra Wilson of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, claims that Rupert’s Land was stolen from native people of Canada without free, informed and prior consent. Thus, she claims that King Charles III, who represents the Crown, is therefore effectively guilty of theft of Rupert’s Land. This is an anachronistic view of the past because such terms as free, informed and prior consent, regarding Indigenous relations, did not exist until very recently with the introduction of UNDRIP – the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Is she suggesting that UNDRIP is retroactive to 355 years ago, before the UN itself was ever conceived?

Furthermore, her argument implies that land was taken, but the British adventurers who came to Rupert’s Land, came as traders. Something was given, something was received, to the obvious benefit of both sides. That's how trade works, with a willing buyer and willing seller.

Grand Chief Kyra Wilson does not even recognize what she and her people received, even as she is exploiting it, desecrating the most sacred gift of all.

I’m speaking of the sacred power of Western civilization. The written word. The magic art of writing.

“…Our children and grandchildren will be taught the magic art of writing. Just think for a moment what that means. Without the aid of a spoken word our children will transmit their thoughts on a piece of paper, and that talking paper may be carried to distant parts of the country and convey your thoughts to your friends. Why even the medicine men of our tribe cannot perform such miracles.” - an Assiniboine Chief, as noted in Shingwauk’s Vision,

Wilson is using White Man’s medicine to denigrate the King whose ancestors defended Indigenous people of Canada from the onslaught of international wars and Indian Wars in the USA, which raged from 1644 (before America was founded in 1776) to 1924.

By Théophile Hamel / After François Nicholas Riss - Wilfredo Rafael Rodriguez Hernandez, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75675451

Wilson ignores the greater historical fact that it was Jacques Cartier who first claimed the land of Canada for the King of France on July 24, 1534 (per Wikipedia), planting a 10-metre cross on the shore of Gaspe Bay inscribed with “Long live the King of France” (in French, of course). Cartier did not ask permission to plant this cross or to make such a claim. He also took two Iroquois hostage and reportedly gained agreement from their chief to take these men back to France, on condition that he return with goods for trade.

By Canada Post Office - Canada Post OfficePhoto obtained from eBay by GwillhickerseBay item number : eBay item 220559615090, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11659695

France was the original colonizer of Canada, not Britain.

By Martin23230 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8111693

The Treaty of Paris 1763 ended what was known as the Seven Years War in Canada, and the British and Indian War in the USA. But this was just one part of a war between empires of the time. Britain won.

No one asked permission to be at war, and once territory was won, the victor claimed it. So, perhaps Wilson should take up her original argument about free, informed and prior consent with President Macron for things that happened 491 years ago.

During the time of the fur trade, it would have been impossible to have free, informed and prior consent of the various tribes and bands across Rupert’s Land, simply because it would have been impossible for the traders to consult with each and every tribe that today claim original sovereignty, over territories that the tribes themselves had not fully explored.

According to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, established in 1948, Article 11, King Charles cannot be said to be guilty of anything as these events happened long before his time and before any such directives were established within Canada.

Those French or English who came to Rupert’s Land felt it was their sacred duty, as advanced societies, to elevate their Indigenous trading partners from subsistence poverty, the uncertainty of the hunt, barbarous customs like infanticide, and to create a common means of communication through education in English or French. Likewise, the many disparate tribes they encountered had an assortment of customs antithetical to the development of a modern society, so the early adventurers and missionaries sought to create a common set of societal rules, primarily based upon their own Judeo-Christian principles of the Ten Commandments. With a common set of societal rules, one creates a society of high trust, where people know what is expected of them in terms of behavior, and know what to expect of others, which in turn allows a society to progress.

The written word, the English and French languages, had created vast libraries of knowledge and understanding which every person could access if they had a level of literacy, which Grand Chief Kyra Wilson obviously has today, and which Indigenous leaders like Joseph Brandt acquired from his time in the 1760’s at Moor’s ​Indian Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut.

Indigenous people readily adopted Christianity as well as the fact that they traded furs to acquire the useful tools and portable forms of food the traders offered. Thus Bannock, a Scottish fry bread made of simple ingredients of flour, baking powder, salt and water, became identified as Indigenous traditional food, so popular it was on the trail. If you were unlucky on the hunt, you at least had something to eat.

Wilson claims that Rupert’s Land was not the Crown’s to grant license to the Hudson’s Bay Company, nor was it Canada’s right to purchase it. Indigenous people often say that in their culture they had no concept of land ownership. Thus, how would they have argued for or against a transfer of land rights? And why do they do so today?

At the time of contact, Indigenous people could have easily wiped out the European traders; instead, they chose to do business. In doing so, the country of Canada, confederated as of 1867, subsequently wished to ward off the likely incursion of the Americans, who had rebelled against the British in 1773 with their Tea Party in the Boston Harbour, and by July 4^th, 1776, they had declared independence. Canada took action to protect its Indigenous trade partners as well as its land from America’s expansionism, but it was a challenge. At the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the USA had a million-man standing army. Former Confederate soldiers as whiskey traders were trickling into what is Western Canada of today, exploiting the Blackfoot Nation. The North West Mounted Police – all 300 of them - was formed to go West and drive the whisky traders out, which they did. In gratitude, Chief Crowfoot and others signed Treaty 7.

To give a sense of the challenge Canada was facing, the USA was spending ~$18 million a year on Indian Wars. Canada’s entire budget was $18 million.

Source

Today, Grand Chief Wilson is interviewed on television, a magic far beyond that of the written word! She presumably drives around in a car rather than riding a horse (which was another gift to Indigenous people from outsiders), flies in an airplane and likely uses a cellphone. She wears modern clothing and has beautifully manicured hands, a symbol of her relative life of ease, compared to that of her kokum, who lived the physically demanding life decades ago, as did her kokum before her, centuries ago, a hand-to-mouth subsistence life with few luxuries.

But somehow, Grand Chief Kyra Wilson wants to turn back the hands of time, as if throughout history, sovereign nations never rise or fall or become subsumed into a larger, more technologically advanced society.

Wilson claims that “The land was never for sale. And it is time the world recognized it.” The world has recognized that warring empires conquered all of North America. The world recognizes two countries, United States of America and Canada, as the resulting nations. That is the truth. It doesn’t seem like Grand Chief Wilson is actually interested in reconciliation. She seems interested in rewriting history. She has the gall to do so using the English language and the White man’s magic art of writing, which even a historic chief conceded “Why even the medicine men of our tribe cannot perform such miracles.”