Tobacco In Indigenous Culture

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Journal #2
Tobacco in Indigenous culture is different than English culture. In Indigenous culture, tobacco is incredibly symbolic as it is used to open up to the creator. Moreover, Tobacco is also a proper way to great someone. Not only do you greet a person with tobacco but the earth as well. This past summer I had the opportunity to go to the Petroforms in Whiteshell. Before the tour started my guided explained that we would all proceed to place tobacco on the earth before seeing the petroform to show respect to the creator. The presenter we had explained that when a tree is cut down, they also leave tobacco since they are taking the tree away from its family. Unfortunately for many Indigenous people they will never know some of these practices. This is for many reasons, but a main …show more content…

Additionally, treaties are formal agreements between Indigenous people and European people. The biggest issue with treaties is that the Indigenous people and the European settlers didn’t speak the same language. For example when the Indigenous people would sign the papers they didn’t understand what they were doing. Consequently, before the European settlers arrived Indigenous people had their own treaties with each other. But unlike the treaties with the European settlers, mainly the treaties were oral. Another difference was that the Europeans only viewed the land as property where as the Indigenous people viewed the land as life that could not be owned or sold. The indigenous people felt they had the rights to the land as there’s since they were occupying the land for many years prior to the settlers, but the settlers argued that they had the treaties with Indigenous people’s signatures signing over the land to them. As priory stated Indigenous people didn’t speak the same language so they didn’t know what they were saying so in some cases these treaties just have x’s on them. Unfortunately, these treaties with improper signatures are still

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