The treaties of peace and friendship were more about peace and friendship, not about the land. When we made agreements with the British, we hadn't really agreed to give up the land. The British only assumed that they defeated us, and they defeated the French and took over sovereignty of the land.
It was only after 1867, with the creation of Canada with the British North America Act, that the federal statute laws and the provincial statute laws divided responsibilities for Indians and we became a federal responsibility. The federal government took over colonizing the indigenous people, taking control over our lands and putting us on Indian reserves.
We have our own traditional government that signed the treaties with the British. We call it the Mi'kmaq Grand Council. It's our traditional governance structure. Our own people have recognized since 1888, when the federal government instituted federal statute law, that this was the way we're supposed to elect our chiefs, through a democratic system.
I am a hereditary chief and I come from a long line of chiefs. As a hereditary chief, I welcomed Queen Elizabeth in Halifax when she visited Canada—welcoming another hereditary leader. It was her family and my family that signed the treaty in 1760. There was no land surrendered back then.
It's a given notion, which is really a false notion, that the federal government took over the responsibility for the Indians at Confederation.