Committee Description
North-West Rebellion:
The year is 1885, and tensions are rising in the prairies. Louis Riel has returned from exile. The Métis have petitioned Ottawa for years, demanding land recognition and treaty rights… to no avail. With the mobilization of the Canadian military and Indigenous forces, delegates must balance Indigenous sovereignty with Canadian expansionism, all while protecting their personal interests and goals. The choice is yours. How will you forge the path forward?
Background Guide
Topics of Debate
Topic A: Recognition of Indigenous Land Rights
The prairies hold memories older than the Dominion itself. Long before surveyors carved grids into maps, the Métis and the First Nations lived by patterns the land taught them; rivers and borders, buffalo paths as roads, and stories through spoken word created intellectual compasses and maps, guiding the way. But by 1885, those maps were being overwritten. Promised lands vanished into paperwork. Petitions turned into silence. This topic asks delegates to confront the heart of the conflict: who has the right to define the land? Recognition is more than a legal question here. It is dignity, survival, and the protection of a way of life that was never meant to be bargained away.
Topic B: War vs. Negotiation
The air in the prairies is thick with choices. Each side watches the other across a widening divide; rifles being issued in one camp, while messages being drafted in another. Delegates are faced with a choice: War, which offers clarity, though at a terrible cost, or negotiation, which offers peace, though wrapped in uncertainty and broken trust. Delegates stand at the crossroads Riel himself faced: confront a government that refuses to listen, or risk everything on a diplomatic path already worn down and stretched thin. This decision is not only strategic, but moral.
Dais
