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Yet the Crown’s obligations remain largely unfulfilled. Our people suffer disproportionately high rates of suicide, incarceration, and child apprehension. We face shorter life expectancies and higher rates of chronic disease. These are not abstract statistics — they represent real lives being cut short, real families being torn apart, real potential being squandered. And this suffering continues while Canada prospers from the vast resources extracted from our traditional territories.

The painful truth is that many Canadians remain willfully ignorant about the foundations of this country. There exists a pervasive mythology that Canada was built on empty land or that Indigenous Peoples were simply in the way of “progress.” This narrative conveniently erases the fact that Canada’s existence rests upon agreements with sovereign Indigenous nations — agreements that recognized our rights to our lands and resources, and promised shared prosperity.

Instead, what has followed has been centuries of dispossession and marginalization. While Canadian resource companies generate billions in profits from our territories, too many of our communities lack basic infrastructure. The wealth generated from our lands flows outward, leaving behind environmental degradation and broken promises.

When King Charles visits, he will likely speak of reconciliation. This word has become comfortable for Canadian institutions — it suggests healing without accountability, moving forward without looking back. But reconciliation without truth is meaningless. And the truth is uncomfortable: Canada has failed to honour its Treaty obligations, and the Crown bears significant responsibility for this failure.

What we need is not more symbolic gestures or carefully worded apologies. We need a fundamental reset in the relationship between the Crown, Canada and Indigenous nations. The Treaties were signed as agreements between equals, and they must be implemented as such.

King Charles has an opportunity during this visit. Instead of simply receiving the adoration of crowds, he could demonstrate true leadership by acknowledging the Crown’s unfulfilled obligations and committing to a new path forward. He should meet with Indigenous leaders not as subjects but as representatives of sovereign nations with whom his ancestors made sacred commitments.

The prosperity that Canadians enjoy today is built upon our lands and resources. The comfortable lives that many lead are made possible by the agreements our ancestors signed in good faith. Yet the benefits of this arrangement have been overwhelmingly one-sided.

It is time for a reckoning with these truths. It is time for Canada and the Crown to fulfill their Treaty obligations — not as charity, but as the repayment of a debt long overdue. Our people deserve clean drinking water, adequate housing, quality education and healthcare. More fundamentally, we deserve to share in the wealth generated from our territories and to exercise our inherent right to self-determination.

King Charles’ visit should be more than ceremonial pageantry. It should mark the beginning of a new chapter in which the Crown and Canada finally honor their commitments to Indigenous Peoples. We do not approach this as supplicants seeking handouts. We come to the table as nations with inherent rights, seeking the implementation of agreements that made Canada possible.

The path forward requires courage and honesty. It requires acknowledging uncomfortable truths about Canada’s past and present. But most importantly, it requires action — meaningful, substantive action that addresses the inequities that continue to harm our communities.

As King Charles walks on these lands, let him remember that he walks on Treaty territory. And let that remembrance inspire not just words, but long-overdue action.

We are not subjects. We are partners. It’s time the Crown remembered that.