I am going to answer that by sharing two observations.
We do a role-playing exercise in which we recreate the signing of Treaty Five and students play the roles of the Cree, the Métis and the white negotiators. When it comes time to sign the treaty, two versions are handed out, and one of them is written in French. The exercise is actually done in French. The white negotiators clearly see what the clauses, criteria and so forth are, and they sign the treaty. Then, a student hands out the second version to the Cree. The entire text is written in wingding characters, in other words, symbols, and they can't understand a word of it.
So they ask what we want them to sign, and we tell them that all they have to do is mark an X to sign, that the agreement covers everything they have just discussed and that they have nothing to worry about. That is when we see authentic reactions. The students say, “You're asking us to sign, but we have no way of knowing that what we just spent three days negotiating actually appears in the agreement”. So they are told, “it's this way or the highway”, otherwise everything they've discussed could go out the window. What you said made me think of that exercise.
My second observation has to do with something else that is taught in the Canadian history class. Manitoba has both official languages but is not a bilingual province. Legally, the difference in the terminology is quite significant. Services are available in French in areas where they are deemed necessary by the government. They aren't guaranteed. That has been the source of many problems and conflicts for Manitoba's French-speaking community.