This article examines the importance of treaty education for students living in a province entirely ceded through treaty. Specifically, we ask and attempt to answer the questions "Why teach treaties?" and "What is the effect of teaching treaties?" We build on research that explores teachers' use of a treaty resource kit, commissioned by the Office of the Treaty Commissioner in Saskatchewan. Working with six classrooms representing a mix of rural, urban and First Nations settings, the research attempts to make sense of what students understand, know and feel about treaties, about First Nations peoples and about the relationships between First Nations and non-First Nations peoples in Saskatchewan. It is revealing that initially students are unable to make sense of their province through the lens of treaty given the commonsense story of settlement they learn through mandated curricula. We offer a critique of the curricular approach in Saskatchewan which separates social studies, history and native studies into discrete courses. Drawing on critical race theory, particularly Joyce King's notion of "dysconscious" racism, we deconstruct curriculum and its role in maintaining dominance and privilege. We use the term (un)usual narrative to describe the potential of treaty education to disrupt the commonsense. (Un)usual narratives operate as both productive and interrogative, helping students to see "new" stories, and make "new" sense of their province through the lens of treaty.

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This article explores the possibilities of treaty education for reconciliation with First Nations people, as corrective to the foundational myth of Canada and as a means of fostering ethically engaged citizenship. Lack of historical understanding demonstrated by Canadians regarding treaties and the treaty relationship is examined in relation to discourses of liberal democratic citizenship. Drawing on ‘remembrance as a source of radical renewal’ ‘ethical relationality’ and ‘justice-oriented citizenship’, the argument is made that treaty education has the potential to help all students learn from and through events and experiences of the past in ways that inform not only their historical consciousness, but their dispositions as Canadian citizens, and their relationships with one another. While the discussion in this article is specific to treaty education, it is relevant to broader conversations about the role and value of including more diverse stories/experiences in national histories. Throughout the discussion, attention is paid to the interconnections of citizenship and history education, particularly with respect to possibilities for engaging differently in the world, alongside one another, politically, socially, culturally and ethically as part of the necessary and urgent process of reconciliation.

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