My colleagues and myself at Friends of the Nemaiah Valley have worked hard on our mandate to protect the natural environment and way of life of the Xeni Gwetin people of the Nemiah Valley for over fourteen years now. We have been able to share in many victories, from the ?Elegesi Qayus Wild Horse Preserve Declaration in 2002, the Wild Horse Ranger program that followed for ten years, the subsequent removal of two major logging companies from the Brittany Triangle, the defeat of the Prosperity and New Prosperity Mines, the Vickers decision on rights and title in 2007, and its vindication by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2014. And most recently, the Declaration and creation of the 320,000 ha. Dasiqox Tribal Park by the Xeni Gwetin and Yunesitin communities. Underlying these successes has been our commitment to fundamental research by professionals and Graduate students. Along the way we have done our best to support cultural events like the Youth and Elders Gatherings, the Youth Wagon Ride, and the Nemiah Valley Rodeo. We were instrumental in bringing the First Voices program to the Naghtaneqed School. Five and a half years ago I became the founding president of RAVEN (Respecting Aboriginal Values and Environmental Needs). This organization has become increasingly successful within its primary mandate to raise funds for First Nations litigation in protection of indigenous legal rights and the environment. I am retiring from this position at the end of 2014, but will remain as past president for another year. Both of these organization now have staff, resources and a wide range of dedicated professional expertise that they can call upon. As a consequence of all this, I am often asked what my vision is for the Chilcotin and indigenous rights in Canada generally. If Canada is to become a just and mature country, it must come to terms with its colonial past and present. First Nations sovereignty must become a fact within secure and independent homelands under First Nations governance. The Canadian government and the provinces need to re-enter the relationship with Those Who Were Here First in a new spirit of co-operation and recognition that First Nations are fully equal partners with the rest of Canada in a grand enterprise to create a just country. I would go further and insist that Aboriginal Title is still, and will remain, the underlying title to all lands where it has not been definitively extinguished and voluntarily given up. This will require an examination of all the old, numbered treaties to determine what the intent of the First Nations chiefs who participated really was, how they understood them. Where there are no treaties, as in much of British Columbia and certainly in the Chilcotin, Aboriginal Title underlies the Crown and thus First Nations must remain the final authority on what happens on those lands. There will be consequences for creating this new partnership, some of them economic, and certainly social ones. But this will not exactly be a new partnership, rather it will be a renewal of the original one as symbolized by the two row wampum and partially recognized in Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1992. In the end, Canada will not only become a just country, but will continue to be a sufficiently wealthy one in a much healthier natural environment. I would like to see this underlain by an Environmental Bill of Rights which insures no draw down of the nations natural capital. I use the term “nation” here advisedly. For we become a nation, rather than a mere political entity, only by becoming a just country first. The Chilcotin Plateau is the thousands year long home of the Tsilhqotin people. I see this becoming a Tsilhqotin homeland under Tsilhqotin governance, where those who have settled here are welcomed as permanent or long time guests with rights in property not unlike those they now have. Such guests and residents can, and do, contribute to the culture and wealth of the plateau country. However, what does not serve the long term interests of the Tsilhqotin people and their lands and waters are the activities of large, foreign resource companies whose only goal is profit from natural resources. It has been said that capital is aggressive, that it needs to expand and continually seek out new resources and new lands to exploit in order to survive. This has been the case in Canada through five hundred years of colonialism and it is still gong on. It is what is behind industrial logging and mining that leave the land devastated, wildlife without a home, and waterways polluted. It is a process largely lacking conscience. The Tribal Park concept has been adopted by the people of Xeni Gwetin and Yunesitin as one way to secure lands for their own cultural survival, for sustainable livelihoods for their people, and to protect the environment at the same time. I see it as a model whose time has come and as a stepping stone that will remain in place as sovereignty is attained to the wider area. Dasoqox Tribal Park in particular, linking as it does several already protected Provincial Class A Parks, is yet too small, and does not yet have provincial recognition. Given the stage we are now at, such recognition needs to be a part of its development. Dasiqox also needs to be expanded to the west to connect to Tweedsmuir Park and the Great Bear Rainforest protected areas. I hope to see other First Nations invited to join some of their territories to it within a multi-nation alliance. I am extremely sceptical of discussions with the province of British Columbia. There is no historical precedent for the situation we are now in following the Supreme Court of Canada decision acknowledging Tsilhqotin title to a limited part of the territory. The province will continue to woo and flatter Tsihqotin and other First Nations leadership with symbolic gestures and fine words that, in essence, change nothing. This is an old, old story in Canada and other colonized nations. Ultimately, it is all about access to land and resources by governments that view their mandate as one to grow the economy in partnership with business. Because my scepticism runs so deep, I am gratified at the willingness of Xeni Gwetin anf Yunesitin to embrace the Tribal Park concept and am so very pleased we have been invited to work with them in its development. I believe their vision is the correct one. I also believe that government will be willing to talk endlessly with Tsilhqotin leadership - for many years if need be - without advancing one iota towards a just settlement and mature relationship. Talk is cheap and requires that nothing be given up. In the meantime, industrial resource extraction, despoliation of land, water, and wildlife will continue. Opportunities for an independent indigenous government will be lost or deferred until it is too late. I ask of Tsilhqotin leadership and their advisors that they be on guard, to give up nothing of the great (though limited) success they have had in the courts, and to continue to insist on much more than just one more limited agreement that gives them only partial control over their future and hands back to the province much of what they have gained through almost two hundred years of resistance. My New Years rant. Thanks to those who took the time to listen.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 20:18:02 +0000
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