Moniyaw came uninvited into our territories, without permission.

The invasion started 300 years ago. First it was only a few men who said they were exploring our lands. They said they wanted to trade with us and buy our furs at the trading posts they set up in our territories. For a while, we traded with them in good faith. Trading with them gave us access to goods we did not otherwise have.

They also set up churches they called missions. For a while, we looked at their church leaders with respect and listened to them with trust.

But then more and more moniyaw came into our territories, and our lands started to change.

By 1870, moniyaw did the unthinkable. They wiped out nearly every single buffalo that we relied on for our livelihood. They did this because of greed. This started a cycle of poverty and starvation for our communities.

Buffalo Bones, 1880

We always understood moniyaw thought and acted differently from us. We knew moniyaw would take more than they needed. Their money was the most important thing to them. They took too much from the land, without giving proper thanks.

They didn’t stop with the buffalo. Anything they saw as valuable, including fur, fish and timber were over-harvested, without giving proper thanks. They poisoned wolves and foxes with strychnine, contaminating and killing wildlife.

As the buffalo and other animals became scarce, we relied more and more on their trading posts. Trading posts and forts, like the ones at Cumberland House, Fort Pitt, Fort Carlton and Fort Edmonton centralized our economies. This changed the way we travelled and harvested.

Their soldiers and police dealt harsh and unfair penalties on us if we didn’t live the way they wanted.

Their missionaries travelled through our territories, trying to covert us to their religion. They changed our Cree names into English ones. They started to open mission schools like Beauval (1895), Battleford (1883), St. Anthony’s (1891) and Lebret (1884) where they expected our children to learn how to become like them.

Moniyaw brought diseases like smallpox and tuberculosis into our lands. We had no way to fight these new diseases, and by 1870 almost half of us died.

We were told the ownership of our territories was transferred first to Hudson’s Bay Company and then to Canada. None of knew how this could be true. We did not know, and we did not agree. Chief Sweetgrass said,

“We heard our lands were sold, and we did not like it; we don’t want to sell our lands; it is our property, and no one has the right to sell them.”

Chief Sweetgrass, 1877

Canada believed they were sovereign over the lands, and we weren’t. Moniyaw believed this because of their Doctrine of Discovery. This Doctrine told them they could take the land because they considered us to be savages.

Cree people were never conquered. We did not give up our lands.