When Daniel Coleman went into his office in McMaster University on a beautiful April morning in 2006 he was startled to see over thirty police vehicles parked on campus, and soon discovered that the campus was providing lodging for the officers who had raided the site of an Indigenous land dispute near the town of Caledonia. This discovery changed how Coleman thought about Indigenous issues, which he'd long supported, bringing home that there is no part of life in Canada where you are outside of the broken relationship between the nation of Canada and the Indigenous nations who have lived here since time immemorial. This began Coleman's journey, working closely with Indigenous scholars, to understand more fully that relationship and to find a way to repair not only it, but our relationship with the land we call home. In Grandfather of the Treaties Coleman introduces the founding wampum covenants that the earliest European settlers made with the Haudenosaunee nation and shows how returning to these covenants, and the ways they were made, could heal our society.

For decades Daniel Coleman has worked closely with many Indigenous scholars to understand the land he calls home and the complex and painful histories between Indigenous and European nations that have formed Canada. In Grandfather of the Treaties, he has drawn on this experience to craft an extensive study of the wampum covenants that underpin our nations, one that takes readers from wampum's first emergence among Indigenous nations to how these covenants can help us shape a better future for all. In this wide-ranging book Coleman seeks to fill a deep hole in most Canadians' knowledge of how our nation was formed. As we relearn our history, we can recommit to our earliest promises, which were meant to last "as long as the sun shines upon this earth, as long as the water still flows and as long as the grass grows green at a certain time of the year."