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Copyright © 2007, The Vancouver Sun
Vaughn Palmer
Vancouver Sun
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
VICTORIA – From across British Columbia comes a rising chorus of native voices, speaking out against proposals for settling treaties with aboriginal people.
"The B.C. treaty process is corrupting, dividing and destroying our people," says David Luggi, the Carrier Sekani tribal chief. "The white man is using this process to bankrupt us, to deny our rights and to insult our ancestors."
The process offers "no recognition of our rights" and demands "surrendering title" Luggi said, explaining the decision to pull out of what he called "B.C. Treaty Commission death row" earlier this year.
Other native leaders have banded together in a unity protocol aimed at pressuring governments to adopt more flexible and more generous bargaining positions.
"The government negotiators come to the table with one position," says Robert Morales, one of the unity leaders. "When we raise our concerns, they say ‘this is a voluntary process, if you don’t like it, get out.’ "
As for the $1 billion spent by senior governments since negotiations got underway in the early 1990s, some native leaders see that money as further evidence of the bankruptcy of the process.
"The Canadian and British Columbia governments would never have spent that money if they could have gotten away without it," says Arthur Manuel, a leader of the activist Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade (INET).
"You know how cheap those governments are when it comes to helping us out when we really need it," he said in a recent open letter to aboriginal people. "You know it is a joke when someone says ‘I am from the government and I am here to help you.’ "
Above all, natives need to recognize why this expensive drive for "modern treaties" was unfolding only here in British Columbia, where almost no treaties were signed historically, he said.
"They know they are in an economically vulnerable position, they know we own our traditional territory and they want to define the words and terms and trick us into giving our land to them.
"They would not have spent $1 billion on the treaty process if you did not own the land."
Look to the contents of the proposed treaties themselves, Manuel said — the Lheidli T’enneh final agreement, voted down by native people earlier this year; the Tsawwassen and Maa-nulth agreements, scheduled for ratification votes this month.
"They are trying to extinguish our ownership through the provision in the final agreements," he said. "They want to keep themselves rich and keep us poor. They want to keep everything the way it is now."
So writes Manuel in a lengthy article in the B.C. Treaty Negotiating Times, a newspaper produced by the INET and distributed through the native community.
Part critique, part manifesto, the Times goes a long way toward illuminating native concerns about the current round of proposed treaty settlements.
Natives don’t like how the broad aboriginal rights guaranteed in the Constitution would be "modified" into the narrow language of final agreements.
They oppose the treaty-induced requirement for first nations people to begin paying federal and provincial taxes.
They object to the refusal by senior governments to pay compensation for past encroachments on native lands and way of life.
"They owe us compensation back to 1846," Manuel says, referring to the year when the border was fixed between Canada and the U.S. "They’ll never be able to pay it back because the money has been spent."
Ahead of all other objections, there’s the sacrifice of so much native land to make treaties. A chart in the Times details the yawning gap between the vastness of traditional territories and the tiny amounts of land included in the final agreements.
In the case of the Nisga’a treaty, the Times says 2.5 million hectares of traditional territory, valued at $7 billion, was translated into a settlement of 200,000 hectares plus $200 million. As for the three treaties up for consideration this year, three headlines provide the flavour of the commentary:
"Tsawwassen offered 0.2 per cent of traditional territory."
"Maa-nulth consider relinquishing billions in lands suited for tourism."
"Lheidli T’enneh bribed to vote ‘yes’ on final agreement."
Presuming the Tsawwassen and Maa-nulth agreements go the way of the rejected Lheidli T’enneh agreement, one can readily imagine the celebrations among native critics of the treaty process.
They’d presumably open the drive for a new process, believing first nations had been greatly strengthened at the bargaining table.
And then? Well, for today, I’ll let Arthur Manuel have the last word on behalf of his Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade:
"We are entitled to some form of benefit from every dollar that’s earned in this country. They have to understand that our land is the basis of the Canadian economy. Without our land, there is no economy."