Indigenous North America, like Europe, was populated by many nations of people with different languages, cultures, religions, ways of life and traditional territories. When First Nations met with each other they negotiated alliances that were mutually beneficial. These alliances established peaceful relationships among them which included trade, passage, peace and friendship, and other obligations and responsibilities.

Starting in 1701, in what was to eventually become Canada, the British Crown entered into solemn treaties to encourage peaceful relations between First Nations and non-Aboriginal people. Over the next several centuries, treaties were negotiated and signed to define, among other things, the respective rights of First Nation people and governments to use and enjoy lands that First Nations people traditionally occupied.

In the 18th century, the French and British formed strategic alliances with First Nations to help them advance their respective colonial interests on the continent. For example, in what are now New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the British made a series of "Peace and Friendship" treaties with the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet tribes between 1725 and 1779.

The British Royal Proclamation of 1763 prohibited the purchase of First Nation lands by any party other than the Crown. The Crown could purchase land from a First Nation group that had agreed to the sale at a public meeting of the group. These directives, for the colonies and later Canada, formed the founding principles of all future treaties for lands.

Several treaties were signed after the Royal Proclamation and before Confederation in 1867. These include the Upper Canada Treaties (1764 to 1862) and the Vancouver Island Treaties (1850-1854).

For the Crown and its subjects, the Royal Proclamation provided legal principals for treaty-making between the Crown and First Nations. However, First Nations had their own process of treaty-making that had existed for thousands of years. Although, the ceremony and the items used within the First Nations' treaty-making process may differ from culture to culture it followed the general format of: introductions, gift-giving, time spent getting to know each other, negotiations and the formalization of the Treaty through ceremony, usually involving the smoking of a pipe. After the pipe ceremony, the Treaty would then be seen as a tri-party agreement between the two parties with the Creator as a witness. These actions were seen as relationship-building by many First Nations' cultures and were used by Western European traders, settlers and Treaty Commissioners in order to establish protocols between First Nation and non-First Nation parties.

Between 1871 and 1921, the Crown entered into treaties with various First Nations that enabled the Canadian government to actively pursue agriculture, settlement, transportation links and resource development of the Canadian West and the North. Because they were numbered 1 to 11, these treaties were often referred to as the "Numbered Treaties" and covered northern Ontario, the Western provinces, including Manitoba, and parts of British Columbia and the Northwest Territories.

The First Nations who signed the Numbered Treaties saw the process as the formalization of a long standing relationship with the Crown, which had been formed through interaction and trade with Western European settlers and traders. They negotiated Treaties in order to protect their cultures, land base and languages. First Nations did not view the Treaty process as a surrender of their land, but as an agreement to share the land and its resources with Canadians.

From the Canadian perspective, under these treaties, the First Nations who occupied these territories ceded tracts of land to the Crown. In exchange, the treaties provided for such things as reserve lands and other benefits like agricultural equipment and livestock, annuities, ammunitions, gratuities, clothing and certain rights to hunt and fish. The Crown also made promises regarding the maintenance of schools on reserves, or the provisions of teachers or educational assistance to the First Nation parties to the treaties.

The written text of Treaties 1 through 5 cover the land mass of Manitoba, however, there are also bands from Treaties 6 and 10 in Manitoba of which the described boundaries are outside the boundaries of the province. The Treaties were negotiated and signed by Treaty Commissioners on behalf of the Crown when lands were required for settlement or at the request of the area's First Nations. Through their own varied processes the First Nation peoples chose leaders and spokespeople to represent them during the Treaty negotiations.

The Treaties in Manitoba are:

Although the Dakota people were not a part of the Numbered Treaties they are recognized as having use and occupation of territories within Manitoba and have secured alliances and arrangements with the Crown.