I will never forget the sickening crunch in my gut when I first laid my eyes on Hannah Claus’ Invaders. The symbolism of the presence of three, monumental red blankets interrupting a field of white was not lost on me, nor were its elucidations of Indigenous sovereignty and resilience.¹I am reminded of the symbolism of red versus white in Indigenous expressions, most notably Harold Cardinal’s Red Paper, a response to Pierre Trudeau’s White Paper, which sought to abolish and extinguish Indigenous rights through assimilation with the Canadian state. Red is often a signifier of Indigenous power and strength, and Claus may be enacting a disruption of the plan white walls of the gallery space, another symbol of White modernity. Exhibited as part of a broader show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts titled ‘How long does it take for one voice to reach another?’, Claus’ work speaks to the broken relationships and lies that have built the Canadian state, a state of which I am a citizen of, and one whose structures and organs I continue to benefit from.

Perhaps this was why I was so disturbed. While there was a sense of joy in being in a room surrounded by the visual articulations of Indigenous resilience and sovereignty, as a descendant of settler diaspora, I cannot help but feel complicit in the acts of genocide and deceit that have been imparted on this land’s original inhabitants. And so I stood there, in a room titled ‘Voices of Resistance’, feeling like the perennial invader while being surrounded by works from Claus and Nadia Myre, both of which reference the treaty relationships that were misappropriated to justify the colonial exploitation and domination of the Canadian state. And here, it felt Claus and Myre were speaking to me through their work, asking me what I had to say for myself by being on this land, a treaty body, standing upon the bones of their ancestors?²While I have many things to say about Nadia Myre’s work, for the purposes of keeping this concise, I have chosen to focus specifically on Hannah Claus’ work in relation to Aimée Craft’s thesis. I feel very fortunate and humbled to have been able to see these works in person, as the feeling of experiencing them in person is the very basis of this reflection.

To understand the impact of Claus’ work, one must begin to acknowledge the discrepancies of how treaty relationships were formed and interpreted by those who were party to them. The black bands on the Claus’ blankets are a reference to the Two-Row Wampum that was made between the Haudenosaunee of what is now New York State and Dutch colonists in 1613. When Europeans first colonized this area, they saw themselves as protectors, and wanted to bring the Haudenosaunee under their control. Rejecting this paternalistic hegemony, they instead opted to enter into a relationship of brothers and equals. Like the Dish with One Spoon enacted with their Anishinaabe neighbours to the north, the Haudenosaunee interpreted this relationship as one grounded in mutual sharing of the land, and respect for one another as kin. But as history would eventually show us, this was not the case from the perspective of the settlers, who continued to encroach on the land for their own benefit. So what led to this discrepancy of interpretation?

The misappropriation and exploitation of treaties was not limited to settler-Haudeosaunee relations, it was in fact replicated across Turtle Island by various settler entities, from the French and English colonial administrations to the American and Canadian states that eventually succeeded them. In Breathing Life Into the Stone Fort Treaty, Aimée Craft looks at one such example, Treaty One, which oversaw relations between peoples on the lands of what is now Southern Manitoba. Craft uses the tensions coming from Treaty One’s implementation to make the point that when enacting a solemn relationship between peoples, it is important to account for the interpretations of both parties.³Aimée Craft, “Breathing Life into the Stone Fort Treaty” (Thesis, 2011), 1. Unfortunately, this was never the case in practice, resulting in a series of broken relationships, promises, and lies that have led to the marginalization of Indigenous peoples today.

A point Craft makes is that the one-sided interpretation of the numbered treaties has largely relied on legal frameworks originating within the settler state.⁴Craft, “Breathing Life,” 15. Without the perspective of Anishinaabe understandings of treaty-making, the process of implementing Treaty One was doomed towards a reading that justified colonial expansion in the West.⁵As was intended by the Crown. For instance, Anishinaabe understandings of treaty-making are deeply rooted in the creation and maintenance of reciprocal relationships, ones rooted deply in the ethics of peace, justice, friendship, and accountability.⁶Craft, “Breathing Life,” 34. Yet because colonial understanding of these frameworks was rooted with territorial acquisition in mind, they were seen largely as land cessions and static agreements that weren’t honoured in full if they were at all. It didn’t really help that the Crown often viewed these agreements in ways that ignored the complex order of Indigenous epistemologies, ones that could not be codified within Western systems of writing.⁷Returning to Leanne Simpson’s writing, what many people continue to ignore is the fact that these systems of diplomacy and treaty making are embodied knowledges that have been practiced since time immemorial, not just between human relations, but nonhuman ones as well. Treaties were not one-off gestures, but something that were meant to be enacted with reciprocity and mutual care. This is also seen in how Claus chooses to use silver-plated pins instead of full silver. See note 8.

In Invaders, this superficial understanding of treaties is shown through in Claus’ methodical interventions into the fabric, punctuating it with pins of plated silver, each representing the Crown’s refusal to adhere to the original spirit of kinship outlined in the original agreements.⁸Hannah Claus, “Invaders,” hannah claus, 2019. In Hannah Claus’ artist statement, she specifically refers to the act of polishing silver to ensure it does not break down over time. This is a process that needs to be replicated in the maintenance of treaty relationships, one that we are all a party to. The three blankets represent the broken chains of the covenant, the tenets of peace, friendship, and respect that remain unfulfilled in the eyes of the Indigenous peoples who were party to these relationships. Claus poignantly confronts the viewer’s place on the land through the gesture of representing these broken bonds, indicating how something that was meant to provide comfort, warmth, and care for all parties was instead violated by settler lies and deceit.

Amidst the broken promises and lies that this state, Claus’ work challenges us to examine how we as treaty people move forward beyond these exploitative relationships, perhaps moving towards ones that promote reciprocity and harmony between peoples. Craft proposes a template for this new way of thinking, by highlighting the lineage of Indigenous treaty-making from the perspective of Anishinaabe Inaakonigewin (law). Unlike in Western legal systems, the frameworks within Anishinaabe Inaakonigewin did not originate from a central authority, but from many different sources such as the natural world, relationships with kin, and an interconnected web of life that stretches beyond the corporeal world.⁹Craft, “Breathing Life,” 72. Each of these orders is in turn, informed by the practice of reciprocity, whose bonds are mediated through acts of care and love.

Being ensconced and having been raised within the settler worldview, I know it can be hard to appreciate this way of seeing, as the capitalist world order has often vested value in hierarchies that promote alienation through its hyper individualist tendencies. In turn, this has cemented power in centralised institutions and individuals, paving the way for the continued exploitation of our relations human or otherwise. As settlers, we’ve often forgotten that with any sort of relationship comes an obligation to fulfill our duty to care for all our relations. It becomes paramount that we should be making space for all the different ways of understanding these treaties beyond our own, valuing them as relationships that are rooted in reciprocity and mutual respect, and ones that must be tended to like any other.

Looking back at how I was influenced by Hannah Claus’ work, I am starting to realize that in order to unsettle, one must be unsettled, and that this is a good thing. After over five-hundred years of violent exploitation, coercion and genocide, Indigenous peoples have faced much worse. For us to continue to stand to benefit from the systems that result from these forms of violence and oppression should give us pause at the very least, for our passive acceptance of them is what has allowed them to endure to this day. Standing there being confronted by Hannah Claus’ Invaders, I realize I stand as the embodiment of these forms of oppression, and that it is no longer possible to ignore this. Yet I also feel a sense of hope and optimism, in that artists and writers such as Claus and Craft continue to challenge the notion that treaties were static relationships that serve codify existing epistemes of power.

The very fabric of Claus’ blankets serves as a powerful reminder of our shared duty to mend these relationships, as was promised by our ancestors. They also speak to the very fabric of our co-existence. They signify the acts of loving care that have gone that are embodied in the visual expression of Indigenous cultures, and how these tenets are inseparable from their polity and sovereignty. In recognizing this, perhaps we can work towards a shared future, where we work towards a way of being where we can collectively learn to incorporate the practice of reciprocity and care into our everyday lives. Only then do I think we can move towards fulfilling the obligations and spirit of the treaties as Indigenous peoples have envisioned them from the very beginning.