The district involved in the adhesions consisted of some 128,000 square miles and represented - to quote one contemporary press report - "the last unceded Indian territory in the whole Dominion." Footnote 211 Together with the territory acquired in 1905-06, Treaty Nine took in more than two-thirds of what is now the province of Ontario and paved the way for the development of untold resource wealth. The government of the province and the rest of its people undoubtedly benefited from the treaty, and many of the Indian people claim that they did too. Michael Patrick, at the end of his long life, felt that the Indian people had kept their side of the agreement, though, like any elder, he worried about what the future had in store:

We, in our native world, are beginning to lose too much. Not many people can take care of their own. We should ensure that all people possess the necessary skills to survive on their own. I have heard that what the government promised in benefits to native people, money is running out ... Before it's too late, we must begin to talk to our people to encourage self sufficiency for the future... Footnote 212

Whether, given the political realities of the treaty period, the northern Cree and Ojibwa could have expected different treatment is a matter for historical argument. But one thing does seem clear. Though Treaty Nine did not really cover "the last unceded territory" in all of Canada - as the people of northern Quebec, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories will readily testify - it represented the end of a policy leading back to the British Indian Department of the eighteenth century. No future agreement with the Indian people of Canada will ever look this way again.

It is time to move on and have all people in Canada to be Canadians, Newfoundlander raised in BC, living in Ontario, like me, or FNs, or French speaking citizens of this expansive land. We can't have 50 governments.