Unit 2: Rights, Treaties & Truth and Reconciliation • Room 8 • Mr. Waugh
| Time | What happens | You need |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:10 | Entry + 7-min intro video (NotebookLM build from the source doc) | Projector, video |
| 0:10–0:22 | Fact priming: hand out Page 2 (Timeline & Map); walk it; vocabulary | Page 2 ×28 |
| 0:22–0:30 | Team prep: deal role cards + clause cards + evidence cards (see Page 1 deal list) | Pages 3–5 cut |
| 0:30–0:50 | The trial: 4 evidence rounds, chips rule active, justices question | Chips, slips jar (Page 6) |
| 0:50–0:55 | Round 5 — the reveal (script below) | This page |
| 0:55–1:05 | Modern-implications debrief; justices announce preliminary ruling | Exit prompts (plan) |
| 1:05–1:10 | Exit ticket / 45–60 s voice note (oral option = documented pathway) | Plan p. exit prompts |
| Group | Role card | Clause cards | Evidence cards |
|---|---|---|---|
| A (7) | Treaty Table One — Mi'kmaw Negotiators 1760 | 1, 3, 7, 8 | R1a, R2a, R3a, R4a |
| B (7) | Treaty Table Two — British Crown Negotiators 1760 | 2, 4, 5, 8 | R1b, R2b, R3b, R4b |
| C (7) | Modern Voices Panel (4 speaking seats + 3 researchers) | 2, 3, 6 (shared) | R1a + R1b, R2a + R2b |
| D (7) | Justices | 6 (shared) | Question slips jar (Page 6) + note paper |
Every non-justice student gets 2 chips. You must spend one chip before you may speak a second time, and you cannot spend a second chip until everyone in your group has spent their first. Justices do not use chips — they ask up to two questions per round and may call on submitted slips instead of hands.
| Dimension | Points | What a 4 / 3 looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence use | 0–4 | 4 = cites a specific clause/case/date from a card |
| Historical/treaty accuracy | 0–4 | 4 = no invented facts; corrects a mix-up when heard |
| Listening & rebuttal | 0–4 | 4 = answers the argument actually made, not a rehearsed line |
| Participation equity | 0–3 | 3 = chips rule honored; slips count as participation |
| Respectful language | 0–3 | 3 = argues positions, never identities |
| Total | 18 | Same 18-pt shape as the paper docket (CIT9-TR10) |
One copy per student • keep for the whole trial
Mi'kma'ki includes all of present-day Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, much of New Brunswick, the Gaspé peninsula, and parts of Newfoundland. Traditional districts include Sipekne'katik, Kespukwitk, and Unama'kik — four more stretch across the Gulf region. Halifax (founded 1749) sits inside this territory.
Key fact for the trial: none of the Peace and Friendship Treaties contains a line surrendering land. Mi'kma'ki is unceded.
4 cards • one per group • deal after the video
✂ Cut into 4 cards. The "must be able to say" line is your group's floor, not your ceiling.
You are studying the position the Mi'kmaw negotiating team brought to the table. You are not role-playing an ethnicity — you are arguing a historical position.
Your job: show what Mi'kmaw leaders wanted and understood.
You are studying the position the British negotiating team brought to the table. You are arguing a historical position, not defending an empire.
Your job: show what the British wanted and why they signed.
Four speaking seats: Mi'kmaw harvester · commercial fishing family member · government regulator · town resident. Three researchers feed you evidence.
Your job: bring the 2020s into a 1760 argument.
You run the fairness of the trial. You never argue a side.
Your job: question, keep the room honest, and rule.
8 cards • deal per the facilitator sheet • quote them out loud in the trial
✂ Cut into 8 cards. Cards marked (verbatim) are real treaty or statute text — quote exactly.
The 1752 Treaty promises the Mi'kmaq "free liberty of Hunting & Fishing as usual" (verbatim phrase). Harvesting continues the way it always has — no licence, no season, no permission from the Crown.
"And that a Truckhouse shall be established at Fort Edward or elsewhere, for furnishing the Indians with necessaries in Exchange for their Peltry and other commodities." A Crown trading post: furs in, supplies out.
None of the Peace and Friendship Treaties (1725–1779) contains a single line surrendering, selling, or ceding land. Unlike the later Numbered Treaties in Western Canada, land was never on the table. The treaties were about peace, friendship, and trade.
The treaties follow decades of imperial warfare — including after the falls of Louisbourg (1758) and Quebec (1759). They exchange promises of peace, the return of captives, and safe movement for trade and travel. Both sides wanted an end to the fighting.
The truckhouse was also a control tool. The British wanted Mi'kmaq trade directed to Crown posts instead of French merchants. A promise of supply and a machine of monopoly can live in the same sentence — each side read it its own way.
"The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed." Treaties older than Canada itself are part of its highest law.
Mi'kmaw tradition records the promises lasting "as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the rivers flow." Carried by ceremony and Elders, not paper. Mi'kmaw reading: judge the promise by its spirit and intent, not only the literal written words.
1752: Governor Peregrine Hopson and Chief Jean-Baptiste Cope. 1760–61: signed after Britain won the war in the region — Louisbourg fell in 1758, Quebec in 1759. The British held the military upper hand; both sides still needed the peace.
8 cards • play the pair that matches the round being argued
✂ Cut into 8 cards. Every card ends with a "So what?" — answer it out loud.
1993: Donald Marshall Jr. catches and sells 463 pounds of eels in Pomquet Harbour — no DFO licence. 1999: the Supreme Court acquits him. The 1760 truckhouse clause protects catching and trading fish for a moderate livelihood, under Section 35.
So what? Why did a 1999 court care what a 1760 clause promised?
Sipekne'katik First Nation launches a self-regulated lobster fishery — community-issued tags, outside the federal season. Commercial crews protest; blockades and violence follow. The fight is over who holds regulatory authority.
So what? Is the dispute about rights, or about who enforces the rules?
Mi'kma'ki is unceded: no treaty gave the land away. Crown ownership was never legally transferred by treaty, yet the Crown governs, sells, and licenses land across the province today.
So what? If the land was never given up, what do modern governments owe before using it?
Big projects on unceded land: Mi'kmaw position — free, prior, and informed consent required, not a brief meeting. Government position — consultation yes, but a full veto would block projects the wider economy needs.
So what? Where is the line between being heard and having a say?
The Mi'kmaw side carries the treaties as oral history — ceremony, Elders, memory. Courts increasingly accept oral history as evidence. Spirit and intent asks: what did the promise mean to the people who made it?
So what? Should a spoken promise weigh the same as a written one?
The treaties survive on paper — in colonial legal English, drafted under pressure. Governments and courts set legal limits from the written words. Text is public, fixed, and citable in court.
So what? What is gained — and lost — when only the paper counts?
Mi'kmaw reading: the treaties are agreements between independent nations — alliance, not surrender. Language that reads as "submission" may reflect mistranslation or the assumptions of the British scribes who wrote it down.
So what? Who gets to write the official version — and who remembers it?
British reading: the treaties brought Mi'kma'ki under Crown sovereignty and law. Modern governments inherit that sovereignty — and with it a duty to govern for everyone, including regulating for conservation.
So what? Can a government govern a territory one people says was never given up?
Anyone may submit one instead of speaking • justices read the sharpest between rounds
✂ Cut into 12 slips (8 printed + 4 blank). Keep them in a jar at the Justices' table.