Tag Archives: Indigenous Peoples

Archive Quarterly – Fall 2025

11 Thursday Dec 2025

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Journal of “the west wasn’t won” archive project

FALL FEATURES:

Stein Valley and the Voices for the Wilderness

The Nlaka’pamux and St’at’imc nations first declared protection of the entire area in 1985.

A decade of organizing; profile-raising concert festivals; and unflinching determination at endless negotiations with government resulted in the Stein Valley Nlaka’pamux Heritage Park and an unspoiled wilderness.

Here, Chiefs Ruby Dunstan and Byron Spinks of Lytton share their roles, then and now, and personal connections to the Stein.

Park Board member John Haugen explains a little about the UNESCO process for World Heritage Site designation, and Vancouver-based sound ecologist Hildegard Westerkamp shares her photos and recollections of the first festival in the alpine.

At the first Stein Valley Festival, 1985. Photo by Hildegard Westerkamp.

Deer in the headlights.

Hunting moratoriums are issued across Indigenous Nations as resource extraction activity reduces habitat below critical levels amid over-hunting.

Many Peoples have enacted and posted rules on the ground, gone to court for injunctive relief against industries licensed by the crown, and put themselves on the roadblock: between the deer and the headlights.

A bull moose in Taku River Tlingit territory, where the people have appealed to BC hunters not to hunt moose, in spite of BC’s opening of Limited Entry Hunt lotteries. Photo: Taku River Tlingit First Nation.

The Nuxalk Defense of Ista, 1995

Head Chief Nuximlayc’s statement on the 30th Anniversary: “They had been harvesting five million cubic meters of wood – every year – in Nuxalk territory. After the EU stopped buying it, after that, the timber harvest dropped to 200,000 cubic meters. That’s why we still have trees today.”

Nuxalk leaders of the House of Smayusta invited environmentalists to stay and join the reoccupation of Ista, King Island, in September 1995. Many were detained for defying the court injunction, and, later, the court’s jurisdiction.

Nuxalk hereditary Chiefs at Ista, September 1995. Photo from Nuxalk Nation.

When DFO cut the Líl’wat Elders’ fishing nets

A five-week roadblock of the Lillooet Lake Road ensued, after fisheries officers came in and destroyed the Elders’ salmon fishery in 1975.

Wénemqen of Tilálus was 16 years old at the time, and he recalls the roadside discussions, the visiting Chiefs, patrolling the road, media tactics, and jail.

54 people were arrested for “obstructing a public highway” – their own road. The bogus charges were thrown out; the jurisdiction issue remains.

 Líl’wat people sit on the road through their village, blocking traffic from Pemberton to Lillooet. Photo – Lil’wat Peoples Movement, archived online with riseupfeministarchive.

That day in Court: the Sparrow decision turns 35

In 1986, Chief Joe Mathias of Squamish spoke to the BC Aboriginal Peoples Fisheries Commission about recognizing DFO’s right to define conservation.

Reflecting that each community represented at that meeting was grappling with multiple – if not dozens or hundreds – of fishing charges, Mathias asked the Committee to challenge the federal government’s monopoly on “conservation.”

A few years later, the BC Aboriginal Peoples Fisheries Commission developed the Inter-Tribal Fishing Treaty of Mutual Support and Understanding. Image: the Treaty logo.

More:

World Council of Indigenous Peoples

held its first Annual General Meeting in Tseshaht, Nuu-chah-nulth, in October of 1975. Delegates from nineteen countries attended the three-day conference, identifying their barriers to equality as self-determining Peoples and Nations occupied by settler states with foreign values. Their work set the pace for ongoing representation in the international United Nations forum for diplomacy and cooperation.

Welcoming people from around the world to the first WCIP conference. Photo: Ha-SHILTH-sa newspaper, Dec. 1975.

Canada’s “Strategic Words and Tactics Team”

was revealed to Native leaders by sympathetic individuals in government in the 1970s and 80s. The Team has kept busy. Canada’s policy to deny “undefined Aboriginal rights” – including title – provides instead a suite of legislation which enables First Nation Band Councils to surrender their rights, in favour of rights defined by Canada.

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Archive Quarterly

is published in Vancouver, Musqueam

by Electromagnetic Print.

Fall 2025 AQ:

48 pages

8.5×11, black and white

ISSN 2819 585X (print)

ISSN 2819 5868 (online)

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The Cowichan decision in five points

30 Thursday Oct 2025

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Concerning, how does a declaration of Aboriginal title affect the non-Native people now living in the ancestral village of Tl’uqtinus, where Cowichan title has been judicially declared?

Tl’uqtinus – tah-look-TEEN-oosh (*an approximate anglicism) – is a 1,846-acre area which overlaps the City of Richmond, lying along the Fraser River.

      On August 7 of this year, the Supreme Court of British Columbia gave a ruling on the Cowichan Tribes’ claim to Aboriginal title to that area. This case is now the longest-ever Aboriginal title case, running over 500 days in trial.

      The judge made a declaration of Aboriginal title to most of the area, which is a seasonal Cowichan fishing village. Madam Justice Young decided that, “The Crown grants of fee simple interest in the Cowichan Title Lands, and the Crown vesting of the soil and freehold interest in the Richmond Tl’uqtinus Lands (Highways) in the Cowichan Title Lands, unjustifiably infringe the Cowichan Nation Aboriginal title to these lands.” She concluded that most of the current land titles in the area are “defective.”

Since then, panic has gripped the province of British Columbia – just as it has after every successful Aboriginal rights case since the first one in 1964. The Province of BC, Canada, and the City of Richmond are appealing the ruling instead of entering negotiations with the Cowichan Tribes.

      The judge suspended the effect of her declaration for eighteen months, to provide time for transition, but all levels of settler government have made it clear they intend to fight cooperation with Cowichan interests and title every step of the way – as they have after every declaratory recognition of Aboriginal land rights since 1875.

The following analysis is based on an extensive survey of Aboriginal rights litigation arising west of the Rocky Mountains; an extensive survey of the circumstances leading up to such litigation and the clear public statements made by Indigenous plaintiffs, as well as the statements of claim; an extensive inventory of provincial behaviours since colonization; and a review of non-Native reaction to the Cowichan title case.

1. Aboriginal title is not the same as fee simple title

What Canada has all along been calling “Aboriginal title” – a sui generis and abnormal concept – are actually national titles, flowing from centuries and millennia of law and governance.

      “Aboriginal title” is a colonial construct used by the crown to obscure Indigenous Peoples’ land rights and subject them to the discretion of the crown. The Cowichan, among others, have now outlived that construct. They, like the Tsilhqot’in just before them, have forced the court to recognize the practical aspect of Aboriginal title. The court, in Cowichan, has ordered that the government of British Columbia must negotiate a resolution to the title conflict. (See the Summary of Declarations below)

      In case after case, for fifty years, crown courts have reduced the meaning of their own invention, “Aboriginal title lands,” to mean nothing more than the right to use and occupy “small spots,” or “postage stamp title” – around fishing rocks, hunting blinds, and “fenced village sites” – as if these were private holdings on crown land.

         Settlers have been left not understanding what Indigenous Peoples’ land titles really are, while the courts have attempted to define them out of existence.

2. Co-existence of Aboriginal title and fee-simple ownership

Because what “Aboriginal title” actually refers to is those national titles, and the underlying title belonging to that Indigenous Nation or People, the underlying Indigenous land title co-exists with individual property ownership in almost exactly the same way that fee simple title holders relate to what they thought was underlying crown title.

      There have always been individual land titles throughout Indigenous Nations. The nations are made up of Clan and House Lands, and titles which must be upheld in regular actions of governance and social obligation. Not unlike the taxes and bylaws of today’s settler regime.

Recently, many people have piped up to the tune that Aboriginal title, as a right to the land, cannot co-exist with fee-simple property ownership. This represents a level of ignorance that has moved into the hysterically incompetent. The same people who loudly make that statement are quite happily paying their taxes to BC and Canada, in full recognition of the idea that their fee-simple ownership co-exists with underlying crown title. They also fully expect to go along with crown appropriation schemes, maybe for a hydro right-of-way, or for a city works infrastructure project; to receive their non-negotiable compensation for that part of their property that was used; and to go on with their land-holding.

3. Displacement

Native plaintiffs have never set out to displace individual property owners in title litigation.

     Ever since the Nisga’a title case in 1973, every court action has specifically excluded claims to ownership of the fee-simple title of individual homes and properties. This includes the Cowichan claim.

Indigenous Peoples demand recognition of their underlying title.

       In this way, Native communities have protected settlers from their own colonial government’s theft, bad faith and lies.

     In many instances, First Nations have attempted to negotiate with the crown for the buy-out and return of lands which the crown sold to settlers or developers. These negotiations were not litigation.

4. Cowichan fishing rights

Tl’uqtinus is a fishing village. A thousand Cowichan people would go there – well into the 20th century – to harvest salmon returning up the Fraser River. They navigated the Salish Sea from their main territory on “Vancouver Island” with enough people and provisions to live for the season. Their big houses and a few residents stayed year-round on the lower Fraser at Tl’uqtinus.

       As of this decision, the Cowichan are one of only five Indigenous Peoples west of the Rocky Mountains to have a judicial declaration of their right to fish for food. This fact is provided to assist non-Native readers understand the extent of colonial repression of economic, social and cultural rights which they must now correct along with land title.

      The other peoples with recognized Aboriginal fishing rights – not just the very recent legislative “accommodation” of Aboriginal rights without explicit recognition and protection, or the modern-day treaty provisions by agreement – are the Musqueam (Sparrow 1990); the Heiltsuk (Gladstone, 1996); the Saik’uz and Stellat’en (Thomas, 2024); the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nuu-chah-nulth, 2021); and the Douglas Treaty nations (1850-54).

5. “Aboriginal title” is a politically-motivated colonial construct

What Madame Justice Young did not point out in her reasons for judgement in this case, is that “Aboriginal rights” is an invention of Imperial and Colonial British courts, along with Britain’s Privy Council and Foreign Secretary, to set aside the land rights of Original Inhabitants invaded and annexed by the British Empire.

There is currently no legal reality to Aboriginal title in Canada: it remains undefined as sui generis: Aboriginal title land can’t be (won’t be) registered by provincial Land Titles offices; the government says it has no market value because it can only be “surrendered” to the crown by agreement.

This archaic and internationally repugnant discrimination has been the subject of many UN treaty bodies’ observations concerning the situation of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. It is also the reason that the judge in Cowichan can do nothing more than urge the government to negotiate the surrender of the declared Aboriginal title lands, in exchange for rights by agreement. That is Canada’s policy. There is no mechanism to mobilize or actuate Aboriginal title land.

One participant at the Richmond City Hall meeting described the situation to a reporter, “If this brick in the wall comes loose, the whole thing’s going to come down.” That is the perspective of a non-Native person who knows absolutely nothing about the Cowichan Tribes.

A few more observations

The Richmond meeting, October 28

When Richmond’s Mayor Brodie called a little meeting for last Tuesday night, which was, in his words, “intended to influence the court,” the Cowichan representatives naturally did not attend. The Indigenous experience in the court of public opinion has been dismal: the 2002 BC Treaty Referendum; the 1992 Charlottetown Accord; etc.

      Unfortunately, while the province of BC has wasted no time appealing the decision in toto, and loudly repeated its historical refusal to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ equality to other Peoples, the Cowichan Tribes are not going to make a lot of public statements to reassure the Richmond citizens (however much they undoubtedly would like to), when those political statements could then be interpreted by the appeal court to undermine their legal position.

      Settlers might be interested to take their own initiative, to learn about the Cowichan Tribes, and to see if their racism survives education.

Life on Aboriginal title lands

Newcomers to BC have lived with the practical reality of national Indigenous titles underlying their fee-simple holdings since at least 1985, in the Sechelt Self-Government Agreement. Well, Indigenous titles have laid under the settler land tenure system all this time; the title-holders have just been very patient in waiting for the newcomers to gain consciousness in relation to their surroundings.

      More recently, the 2014 Supreme Court of Canada Tsilhqot’in decision – for the very first time – made a declaration of Aboriginal title to marked, mapped areas on the ground. Those areas also include lands which were sold to settlers by the crown that didn’t own them. No one has been evicted (although one guy who dredged a salmon spawning stream to improve irrigation will surely be reprimanded). In the Haida Rising Tides Agreement, 2024, settlers seem to have survived provincial recognition of Haida title to Haida Gwaii. In 2002 the Haida filed a statement of claim to their entire territory with the BC Supreme Court, but, such was its indefatigable certainty, BC was compelled to provide a series of stop-gap agreements since then, Rising Tides being the most recent, which have stopped that litigation from proceeding.

      Other jurisdictions where non-Native property owners have interests which are actively recognized, respected, and served by Indigenous Nations are in Tsawwassen, since the 2007 treaty; in Powell River, since the 2007 Sliammon treaty; in Nisga’a, since the 2000 Final Agreement; in Westbank, where people bought 99-year lease holds following the Westbank Self Government agreement; and in Kamloops, following an adjustment of the Indian Act to mobilize housing development on-reserve in the urban center.  

The difference here is that “Aboriginal title” is an “undefined Aboriginal right.” Extinguishing undefined Aboriginal rights is the lead purpose of government Agreements with First Nations today, whether it be under the BC Treaty Commission, or in the new Sectoral Agreement Strategy where the same suite of treaty rights are determined one at a time by stand-alone deals like the “Education Jurisdiction Agreements,” or, for Children and Families, under the federal enabling legislation in Bill C-92; or, for Lands, under the First Nations Lands Management Act; or in Health, Resources, or Taxation authorities.

The written decision in Cowichan

The decision in Cowichan Tribes v. Canada makes excellent reading. The judge has included many selections from the Quw’utsun Elders’ testimony at trial. Their way of life is truly awe inspiring, and the many descriptions of Quw’utsun ways of governance are enlightening. Justice Young has also included much of the pivotal evidence concerning the history of Tl’uqtinus, such as descriptions of the village provided by Captains of the British Navy, maps of the area made by colonists and showing the village site, et cetera.

      At the same time, Young has included all the parties’ positions on the issue, and the real extent of institutionalized settler denial and racism is there for all the world to read, in the Province, Canada’s, and the City of Richmond’s outrageous statements.

Title Insurance

      The State of Hawaii has adapted to a similar stolen-and-settled land situation by enabling “Title Insurance.” In the same way that homeowners buy fire or flood insurance, they also buy title insurance specific to mitigating the inevitable recognition of underlying Indigenous title to their property.

      This development followed a successful Indigenous Hawaiian title case against the state in about 2004.

Pleading ignorance

Pleading ignorance is very rarely a reasonable explanation for illegal behaviour with ongoing harms. What plagues the people of Richmond today is not Aboriginal title, but racist denial and the courts’, politicians’, and media’s refusal to do anything more than insult the title holders.

      The Supreme Court of Canada first swerved to avoid even hearing the title argument in 1965, in the Snuneymuxw hunting case, White and Bob. The courts have protected settler ignorance for as long as possible, but perhaps the Cowichan decision is a watershed moment – following many precipitous moments.

      The Tla-o-quiaht won an injunction against logging Meares Island in 1985 on the basis of their Aboriginal rights. The Nisga’a started negotiating their land claim in 1976 on the basis of their 1973 Calder ruling. The BC Treaty Commission was formed in 1992 to settle land claims. By 1981, Native claims were being pursued by almost every Indigenous tribe “in” BC, under the Office of Native Claims Commission, 1974. Canada’s policy on Native Claims has been so unfair that few agreements have been reached, west of the Rockies.

      No one can claim to be surprised that Indigenous Peoples have land rights.

Helpful quotes from previous rulings:

“The province has been violating Aboriginal title in an unconstitutional, and therefore illegal, fashion ever since it joined confederation”

  • Justice Vickers, BC Supreme Court, Tsilhqot’in 2007

“Aboriginal title and rights have never been extinguished by any action taken by the province of British Columbia.”

  • BC Court of Appeal, Delgamuukw, 2003

“The domestic remedy has been exhausted.”

  • Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Washington DC, Hunquminum Treaty Group v. BC 2009 (Note – the Hunquminum Treaty Group is a Cowichan organization)

EXCERPTS from the decision in Cowichan

Cowichan Tribes v. Canada (Attorney General), BC Supreme Court, August 7, 2025

The Full Ruling:

Cowichan v Canada BCSC August 7 2025Download

From the Introduction to the case, by Justice Young:

•         Between 1871–1914, Crown grants of fee simple interest were issued over the whole of the Claim Area, including the Cowichan Title Lands.

      The first purchase of Cowichan Title Lands was made by Richard Moody who was the first Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for the Colony of British Columbia and was tasked with ensuring that Indian reserves were created at sites of Indian settlements. Because occupied Indian settlements were appropriated, and could not be sold, most of the Crown grants in the Cowichan Title Lands were made without statutory authority.

•         British Columbia was admitted into Canada on July 20, 1871 under the BC Terms of Union. The effect of Article 13 of the BC Terms of Union was to extend appropriation of Indian settlement lands post‑Confederation, limiting the Province’s ability to sell the land without first dealing with the Cowichan’s interest. As a result, the post-Confederation Crown grants in the Cowichan Title Lands were made without constitutional authority because they were made under legislation that was constitutionally limited by Article 13.

•         The Crown grants of fee simple interest deprived the Cowichan of their village lands, severely impeded their ability to fish the south arm of the Fraser River, and are an unjustified infringement of their Aboriginal title. Subsequent dispositions of the Cowichan’s land, including BC’s vesting of Richmond with fee simple interests and the soil and freehold of highways, are also unjustified infringements. Additionally, some of Canada and the VFPA’s activities on the Cowichan Title Lands unjustifiably infringe the Cowichan’s Aboriginal title.

•         The Province has no jurisdiction to extinguish Aboriginal title. The Crown grants of fee simple interest did not displace or extinguish the Cowichan’s Aboriginal title.

*emphasis added

Summary of the Cowichan Ruling, Justice Young

D.       SUMMARY OF THE DECLARATIONS

[3724]  In summary, I make the following declarations:

•         The descendants of the Cowichan Nation, including the Cowichan Tribes, Stz’uminus, Penelakut and Halalt, have Aboriginal title to a portion of the Lands of Tl’uqtinus, the Cowichan Title Lands, within the meaning of s. 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982.

•         The Crown grants of fee simple interest in the Cowichan Title Lands, and the Crown vesting of the soil and freehold interest in the Richmond Tl’uqtinus Lands (Highways) in the Cowichan Title Lands, unjustifiably infringe the Cowichan Nation Aboriginal title to these lands.

•         Canada’s fee simple titles and interests in Lot 1 in Sections 27 and 22 (except those in the YVR Fuel Project lands), Lot 2 in Section 23, and Lot 9 in Sections 23 and 26, and Richmond’s fee simple titles and interests in Lot E in Sections 23 and 26 and Lot K in Section 27, are defective and invalid.

•         With respect to the Cowichan Title Lands, Canada owes a duty to the descendants of the Cowichan Nation, including the Cowichan Tribes, Stz’uminus, Penelakut, and Halalt, to negotiate in good faith reconciliation of Canada’s fee simple interests in the YVR Fuel Project lands with Cowichan Aboriginal title, in a manner consistent with the honour of the Crown.

•         With respect to the Cowichan Title Lands, British Columbia owes a duty to the descendants of the Cowichan Nation, including the Cowichan Tribes, Stz’uminus, Penelakut, and Halalt, to negotiate in good faith reconciliation of the Crown granted fee simple interests held by third parties and the Crown vesting of the soil and freehold interest to Richmond with Cowichan Aboriginal title, in a manner consistent with the honour of the Crown.

•         The descendants of the Cowichan Nation, including the Cowichan Tribes, Stz’uminus, Penelakut and Halalt, have an Aboriginal right to fish the south (i.e., main) arm of the Fraser River for food purposes within the meaning of s. 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982.

E.       CONCLUSION

[3725]  Most of the Cowichan’s Aboriginal title lands at Tl’uqtinus were granted away over 150 years ago. Since that time, the Cowichan have pursued the return of their land, first through the JIRC process, causing Gilbert Sproat to write to the Lieutenant Governor in 1878: “The ancient fishing ground on the Lower Fraser of the Cowichan nation … has been sold and now belongs to a white non-resident. What can be done in such a matter?” Although it has taken a very long time, the Cowichan have now established their Aboriginal title to that land. These declarations will assist in restoring the Cowichan to their stl’ulnup at Tl’uqtinus and facilitating the revitalization of their historical practice of fishing for food on the Fraser River and teaching their children their traditional ways. Nevertheless, much remains to be resolved through negotiation and reconciliation between the Crown and the Cowichan.

[3726]  Additionally, the determinations in this case will impact the historic relationships between the Cowichan, Musqueam and TFN, and relations moving forward. The fact is all the parties have continued interests, rights and obligations around the south arm of the Fraser River and limited resources need to be shared and preserved.

[3727]  Much has been written about reconciliation. The principles of reconciliation defined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada include the process of healing relationships that required public truth sharing, apology and commemoration that acknowledges and redresses past harms. Litigation is the antithesis of a healing environment as the adversarial system pits parties, and sometimes kin, against one another. Yet at times it is necessary in order to resolve impasses such as those that arose here, halting negotiations. Now that this multi‑year journey has concluded, it is my sincere hope that the parties have the answers they need to return to negotiations and reconcile the outstanding issues.

F.       COSTS

[3728]  The plaintiffs have been successful in this trial and are entitled to their costs. If the parties cannot agree on the scale or apportionment of costs they may apply to the Court for a hearing on the matter.

                 “B. M. Young, J.”                  

The Honourable Madam Justice Young

How did the National Day of Action become Canada’s “Aboriginal Day”?

19 Thursday Jun 2025

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The Assembly of First Nations called for a National Day of Action in 2007. The call was answered in over 100 locations across Canada, where people stopped traffic, trains, and TV news on June 29th.

AFN Chief Phil Fontaine made the call for immediate action to address the situation of Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

      At the end of the first National Day of Action, June 29, the AFN press release explained:

“The national chief called on the federal government to honour its promises to First Nations; to implement the plan agreed to at the first ministers meeting on aboriginal issues in Kelowna, BC; to apologize to survivors of residential schools; and to work with First Nations to give life to their rights as recognized in Canada’s constitution.”

Indigenous communities and organizations took the chance to promote the urgency of issues on the ground, while they could rely, for the day, on “law enforcement officials for their commitment to a measured and non-confrontational approach,” according to the AFN Chief’s press statement, June 2007.

A poster advertising the first ever National Day of Action in 2007.

A second National Day of Action was called for May 29, 2008. And a third – unannounced – continued in their tracks in June 2009.


“The message we gave was, our rights are being trampled on and Canada goes out to international governments and makes it look like everything’s alright, and it’s not. Canada is actually in denial. The government may put out a positive message, but if you go back to the First Nations, they’re not happy with any of it.” Chief Desmond Peter, pictured, at an information roadblock on Highway 12 through Tsk’wáy’laxw. May 29, 2008. (The St’át’imc Runner newspaper, July 2009)

On June 19, 2009, Canada’s Governor General broke in to what was becoming an annual thing: 24-hour roadblocks truly marking the solstice season with “the longest day of the year” for Canada.

      GG Michaelle Jean declared, in a three-paragraph news release, that “National Aboriginal Day is celebrated on June 21, 2009.”

      Remarking on the first anniversary of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s formal apology to Indian Residential School students in 2008, Jean said:

      “The time has come to move beyond the injustices of the past and build a future together that history will show brought us together in respect, dignity, equality and solidarity. This is how we will break down the solitudes that, for too long, have isolated us from one another. In the spirit of this new age, let us look to our youth, whose full participation in creating a new era of harmony is our best chance for success.”

Ever after, Canada looked to the youth and funded all manner of song and dance displays, made funds available for celebrations in every town and city, and called it reconciliation in action.

The National Day of Action was displaced from the calendar, as communities supported their young people to enjoy some pride in their identity and talents, and pick up a cheque for their otherwise little-noticed culture.

      The issues which brought out the information roadblocks, signs, banners, speeches, and occupation of railways, were not reconciled.

      In Vancouver, 2009, an “Aboriginal Solidarity Day” took place at Trout Lake on June 29th, and on June 24th the Olympic Resistance Network marched downtown; but by June of 2010 there was no continuation of the coast-to-coast-to-coast event.

The first National Day of Action got results. Federal damage-control went into effect within days of the first call to action in 2007.

      “Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice has been conducting a cross-country campaign to deflect wide-spread direct action campaigns during the June 29 Day of Action. In particular, a long-outstanding specific claim has apparently been settled, expanding the Roseau River First Nation reserve territory on the eve of June 21, National Aboriginal Day (although important questions have already been raised about the future uses of the land parcel). Chief Terrance Nelson has publicly acknowledged this settlement. While he has emphasized that problems with Ottawa remain, he has called off his threat to block major rail lines. This use of recent specific-claims reforms as an immediate tool to neutralize protest this month reflects the wider tendency of the present government to drive policy change primarily in response to immediate political embarrassment.” So reported James Lawson, a teacher at UVic, in the Socialist Project’s “The Bullet.”

The 2007 Day of Action had raised the visibility of severe circumstances, endured under protest, for generations. They are circumstances that have been rationalized all along by Canada’s quest for development, and to “build this country.”

      Land claims negotiations were going nowhere. In BC, $975million in funding to the BC treaty process over 15 years (most of it to federal and provincial teams), had settled nothing.

      Canada’s Supreme Court continued in its unilateral and assimilationist strategy to turn “Aboriginal title” into “the right to be consulted,” confirming the “pleasure of the crown” over poorly defined rights in its 1997 Delgamuukw ruling and subsequent interpretations; and in its Haida and Taku, ruling, 2004; and in Tsilhqot’in Nation, 2007.

      Prime Minister Paul Martin’s very brief attempt to release $5billion in Transformative Change Accord funding, to housing, education, land issues, and more, had just brought down his government. The Liberals were swept away by a vote of no-confidence in Parliament just days after the first chapter of that Accord was signed in BC, the Kelowna Accord, at the end of 2005. Martin tried to push a Private Member’s Bill through to disperse the assembled budget, but it failed and suddenly in its place – six months later – a $2billion Indian Residential Schools Survivors Settlement Agreement was presented.

    One of the cringey details amplified in the call for action was the federal government’s ongoing 2% limit on annual funding increases to Aboriginal communities, clamped on in 1986 at a time when the housing deficit in Native communities was estimated to be worth $400million, and climbing. Reckoning by the federal subsidy of about $10,000 per new house build, at that time, those 40,000 houses still haven’t been built. The 2% cap didn’t move until 2016.

The National Day of Action was called to touch the brakes on Canada’s relentless extractive industries, shipping the natural wealth of Indigenous Nations off the continent by the super tanker, and leaving First Nations futures in the clear-cuts, toxic tailings dumps, encroaching settler suburbia, and hydro and pipeline rights-of-way.

    The unmitigated Canadian legacies were then, and are now: denial of the registrable values of their land titles; running circles in policy whirlwinds around education and child welfare – that all puffed out before any traction was gained; virtual landlessness; and the shackles of an Indian Act which, to date, prevents all manner of economic development on-reserve.

      In the further spirit of Canada’s “reconciliation of Aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the crown,” (Van derPeet, 1996) First Nations have since been invited to import Canadian legislation over themselves by consent, thereby releasing their own laws along with the arbitrary Indian Act controls of all manner of socio-economic development. This is not seen as a suitable resolution by many.

Arguably, the National Day of Action never completed its work.

      On May 29, 2008, Ontario’s Minister of Aboriginal Affairs said of the NDOA, “I’m confident this day will serve to strengthen relationships based on mutual respect and understanding.”         

     “Aboriginal Day” 2025, however, brings an escalating situation in Canada’s idea that it can fast-track industrial development over Indigenous rights.

On June 29, 2007, Minister of Indian Affairs (as it was then) Jim Prentice said, “The express purpose of this day was to raise awareness of the serious issues facing Aboriginal People in this country.” But since Canada has taken charge of telling Canadians what those issues are, controlling the narrative with its flood of publicly-subsidized propaganda in aid of “Aboriginal Day,” it is made to seem that those serious issues don’t foremost include land and jurisdiction; reparation and restoration; and self-determination at an international standard of recognition, not the starvation afforded by a Canada UNDRIPA that has nothing in it.

Another consideration in taking the date was described by BC Premier Gordon Campbell in June 2009:

      “National Aboriginal Day, June 21, is an important opportunity for all Canadians… In just 236 days, the eyes of almost every continent will turn to British Columbia for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. They will see our spectacular natural environment. … And they will no doubt see, and judge for themselves, our relationships with First Nations.”

      “We have signed modern-day treaties with six First Nations… We can all take pride as a province for the steps we have taken together to build a New Relationship… So as we celebrate National Aboriginal Day, and move towards Canada Day, we should recognize the tremendous contributions First Nations have made to our province and our country.”

“I congratulate the federal government on continuing this process of reconciliation by declaring June National Aboriginal History Month. The celebration of National Aboriginal Day on June 21 will now be bolstered by a month of cultural awareness.”

Campbell’s brief self-congratulatory affirmation of the announcement of Aboriginal Day was answered immediately, by many, including Chief Kakila, Hereditary Chief Clarke Smith of Tenas Lake, Samáhquam, St’át’imc:

      “Mr. Premier. Your words and statements are empty. Canada and BC Government purposely created laws against us Aboriginal people for over 100 years. … How can you even think that BC is trying to build a New Relationship? … All the Supreme Court Decisions such as the Delgamuukw mean nothing to you Greedy Leaders. Court Rulings you don’t follow. … Perhaps you need to really read the Delgamuukw Supreme Court Decision, it states that the “BC Government cannot extinguish Aboriginal Title and the Rights that flow from such Title.”

“All the evidence is in the Minutes of Decisions your governments made over the last century or so. How to rid of the Indians.”

The last-minute declaration by the Governor General in 2009 didn’t change the reality.

One Tribal newspaper carried three June events which dulled the media spin.

      “Ancestors Block Trans-Canada Highway Expansion. Neskonlith, Secwepemc. The disturbance of human remains believed to be more than 2,800 years old has halted work on the Trans-Canada Highway near Chase.”

     “Alberta oil held up on Highway 52. On June 20, the Kelly Lake Cree Nation, near Beaverlodge, about 500 kilometres from Edmonton, began stopping all oil and gas rigs from passing along Highway 52, a remote highway mainly used by crews traveling between Alberta and B.C.”

     “Mohawks at Akwesasne stop border guards. Canadian border guards at the Akwesasne Reserve international crossing are involved in a militarization of the Canada-US border. However, the presence of Canadian police carrying guns on and around the Reserve is not welcome. It has been described by Akwesasne leaders as an open conflict. Mohawk sovereigntists blocked entry to the guards. Canada and USA are also demanding new ID for natives crossing the border, apparently in violation of the Jay Treaty.”

In 2007, the Assembly of First Nations stretched its considerable wingspan to shelter more than 100 community-based demonstrations. In 2009, the unmistakeable message of the Governor General was that only celebrations of reconciliation are safe on Canadian streets.

With the T-shirt for the day, on May 29, 2008, in Ottawa. Photo by Powless, on Flickr.

Archive Quarterly ~ Spring 2025

24 Saturday May 2025

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AQ Spring Edition Features:

Rejection of Funds, April 1975

At the 7th Annual General Assembly of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, all Indian Bands agreed to refuse federal transfer payments and program funding – rejecting government control.

The BC Association of Non-Status Indians joined them, “amalgamating the on- and off-reserve people and changing the political movement once and for all. The solution was the same for both of us: a just settlement of the Indian land question, and respect for our own governance.”

With quotes from media at the time, and comments from published interviews with Hereditary Kwagiulth Chief Hemaas, Bill Wilson and Grand Chief Saul Terry, St’at’imc; and Hereditary Wet’suwet’en Chief Ron George, unpublished 2018 interview.

Documentary resource: Nesika ~ The Voice of BC Indians, Volume 3, Issue 13, May 1975. Reporting on the Rejection of Funds and Militant May.

Nesika May 1975 rejection of fundsDownload

Bill C-31, 1985, and the first Reinstatement of Non-Status Indians

The federal objective “to keep lands reserved for Indians under the power of male Indians,” was one of the primary reasons for the first legislation respecting Indigenous Peoples, in 1869.

In order to achieve this, Canada defined who was, and who was not, a “Status Indian.” This Status, providing the right to live on-reserve and be a member of an Indian Band or First Nation, and pass Status to children, was increasingly denied to Native women.

With 40 legal actions against the government’s Registrar for wrongful misappropriation of entitlement, and a 1982 recommendation of the United Nations ICESCR treaty body, Canada removed some of the sexist restrictions to coincide with their new constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Documentary Resources: Bill C-31

Bill C-31 – Act to Amend Indian Act June 12 1985Download

First Ministers Conference on the Constitution, April 2, 1985

The Constitution Act, 1982, was passed for Canada with a British condition: the rights of Aboriginal Peoples, in Section 35, must be elaborated.

A formula to amend the Constitution was included in Section 37 of the Act: the country must hold First Ministers Conferences immediately, and specifically protect key aspects of the “existing rights” of Aboriginal Peoples in an amendment to the Constitution.

In 1985, Canada’s Prime Minister Brian Mulroney chaired the conference. He made an elaborate speech which, 40 years later, has still not been realized: “As a Canadian and as Prime Minister, I fully recognize and agree with the emphasis that the Aboriginal Peoples place on having their special rights inserted into the highest law of the land, protected–as we all want ours–from arbitrary legislative action.”

His statements were completely undermined by a report leaked ten days later.

Documentary Resources:

First Ministers Conference, Ottawa, April 2, 1985. Morning Session. Verbatim Transcript.

Including Statements of: Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, DAVID AHENAKEW (Chief, Assembly of First Nations), KEVIN DANIELS (Metis National Council), SAM SINCLAIR (President, Metis Association of Alberta), Louis (Smokey) BRUYERE (President, Native Council of Canada), MR. JOHN AMAGOALIK (Inuit Committee on National Issues)

1985 First Ministers Conference on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters – Indian self-government .April 2. transcript morning sessionDownload

First Ministers Conference, Ottawa, April 2, 1985. Afternoon Session. Verbatim Transcript.

Including Statements of: Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, GEORGE WATTS (Assembly of First Nations), HAROLD CARDINAL (Prairie Treaty Nations Alliance), CHIEF SOLOMON SANDERSON (Assembly of First Nations), HARRY W. DANIELS (Vice-President, Native Council of Canada), ZEBEEDEE NUNGAK (Inuit Committee on National Issues), M. SIOUI (chef de la Nation huronne Wondat de la Province de Quebec), JOHN CROSBIE (Canada), JIM SINCLAIR (Saskatchewan), ROLAND PENNER (Attorney-General, Manitoba), GEORGES ERASMUS (Northern Vice-Chief, Yukon and Northwest Territories, Assembly of First Nations), RICHARD HATFIELD (New Brunswick), JOHN AMAGOALIK (Inuit Committee on National Issues), BRIAN R.D. SMITH (Attorney General, British Columbia), JOE COURTEPATTE (President, Alberta Federation of Metis Settlement Associations, Metis National Council), FRED HOUSE (President, Louis Riel Metis Association, British Columbia), PETER LOUGHEED (Alberta), WILLIAM BENNETT (British Columbia)

1985 First Ministers Conference on Aboriginal Constitutional Matters – Indian self-government – April 2.afternoon sessionDownload

“The Buffalo Jump of the 1980s,” the draft Nielsen Report to Cabinet: April 12, 1985

A draft memorandum for Cabinet, produced by the Deputy Prime Minister, Erik Nielsen, was leaked to the press at the same time the federal government was making overtures to Aboriginal self-government in the First Ministers Conference and reinstating Non-Status Indians in Bill C-31.

The Nielsen Task Force Report draft for Cabinet was titled, “The Buffalo Jump of the 1980s.”

The Report recommended slashing financial support for Indigenous political organizations.

Anticipating tens of thousands of people regaining Indian Status with changes to the Indian Act under Bill C-31, the government’s “Buffalo Jump” plan also hinged on devolving fiduciary responsibilities for Native health care, education, and economic development to the Provinces.

At the same time, the near-final Sechelt Self-Government Agreement made an example of an Indian Band which agreed to extinguish their title and rights, accepting instead a municipal role with small lands, powers of taxation, and the ability to engage in business – which is not possible under the Indian Act.

For First Nations faced with the failing First Ministers Conference – where Premiers showed no intention to support Aboriginal self-government in the Constitution; and the impending cut to federal funding; the direction of the intended “Buffalo Jump” stampede became clear.

Documentary Resources:

“Buffalo Jump of the 1980s” – Nielsen Report – “Funding cuts drive FNs into compromising programs,” Ottawa Citizen, April 19, 1985; AFN press release, May 8, 1985.

“Buffalo Jump of the 1980s” – Nielsen Report – Funding cuts drive FNs into compromising programsDownload

The Nisga’a Final Agreement: A 25th Anniversary Retrospective

Excerpts from a negotiation that exceeded a century:

“You saw us laughing yesterday because you opened the book and told us the land was the Queen’s and not the Indians’. That is what we laughed at. No one ever does that, claiming property that belongs to other people. We nearly fainted when we heard that this land was claimed by the Queen. The land is like the money in our pockets, no one has a right to claim it.” Chief Am-Clamman of Kit-wil-luk shilts, 1887.

With statements from 1884-1889 collected by Reverends of the Methodist Missions,

Excerpts from the Northwest Coast Commission at Port Simpson and the Nass, 1887,

The 1913 petition of the Nisga’a to the British King,

The Allied Tribes statement, formed in alignment with the Nisga’a position,

The role of the White and Bob hunting case, Nanaimo, in the Calder title case,

The Calder title case, and federal land Claims policy announced in 1973, in response to it,

Synopses of events across BC and Canada from 1912 to 1997, in court and on the ground, as they affected the Nisga’a case,

Debates of the BC politicians as they explained the Nisga’a Final Agreement,

Excerpts from the 2000 treaty,

And the court cases – by BC politicians and Nisga’a people – that followed it.

Documentary Resources:

Letter from the Methodist Missionary Society to the Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs respecting British Columbia troubles, May 1889.

Including: Protest of Port Simpson Chiefs to Mr. O’Reilly; Statement of Skidegate Chiefs;  Affidavits of: John Ryan, Chief Paul Legaic, Louis Gosnell, Chief Alfred Doudoward, Charles Abbott, Chief Herbert Wallace, Richard Wilson, Chief David Mackay, Chief Arthur Calder, Charles Russ, George A. Gibson, Chief Scaban, Chief Ness-Pash, Chief Clay-Tsah, Chief Tat-Ca-Kaks, Job Calder; more.

Letter from Methodist Missionaries to Superintendent General 1888. With statements of Tsimpshean and Haida ChiefsDownload

Papers Relating To The Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Condition of the Indians of The North-West Coast, 1888, Government Printer at Victoria.

Including: Testimony of Chiefs George Kinsada, Adam Kishni, Moses, Albert Shakes, Samuel Seymour, Frederick Allen, Arthur Gurney, Nease Youse, Tallahaat, Sabassah, Hawillah, Job Calder (or Nouse), husband of Victoria, chiefess of the Naas Indians, Mountain, Matthew Naas, Charles Russ, Neis Puck, Kledach, David Mackay, Arthur Calder (son of Chieftainess Victoria), Hawillah, Am-Clamman, Paul Kledach (son of Chief Kledach), Paul Legaic, Richard Wilson, Alfred Doudoward. Charles Abbott, Gemmuc, Donald Bruce, Matthew Aucland, A. Leighton, and petitions and Letters;

And Statement of BC Premier William Smythe, 1887; Reserve Commissioner O’Reilly, Report and memos of Commissioners; etc.

1888 North coast commission into the condition of the Indians. Tsimpshean.Nishga Commissioners Planta and Cornwall for Dominion of Canada and Province of BCDownload

“Nisga’a Treaty – Final Agreement Act – Bill C-51 – Committee Stage”– notes and quotes from the Provincial Government’s debate televised on CPAC and recorded on the Government’s website, Hansard. January 18-20 1999.

Nisgaa debate CPAC Hansard BC Leg. 1998-99Download

Closing Statement: Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en Chiefs, 1990

At the end of 370 days of testimony, and at the end of the trial for title, Hereditary Chiefs made a statement to close the proceedings.

 “Three years have passed since we made our opening statements to this court; at that time you did not know who Delgamuukw and Gisdaywa were. We, the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en, must be compensated for loss of the Land’s present integrity and for the loss of economic rents. We ask that the court not only acknowledge our ownership and jurisdiction over the Land, but to restore it to a form adequate for Nature to heal in terms of restoration.”

AQ Spring 2025:

56 pages

8.5×11

ISBN: 978-1-7387902-9-6

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On the record – if you can find the record!

25 Tuesday Feb 2025

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Since 1951, when Indigenous people were allowed access to the colonial courts, the views of crown lawyers and judges are right there on the record.

Here are some case files from the archive project: factums, memos, early decisions, and case summaries from the time.
Most of these records are not maintained online. Only the ruling of the highest court is available, so, in cases that have been in the courts for decades and proceeded through numerous stages, the final result can be very difficult to understand. Lower court rulings are presented here.
In some cases, critical decisions are made in the court of appeal and are then never mentioned again. For example, in the famous Delgamuukw decision of 1997, the province of British Columbia abandoned its position that all the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en “aboriginal rights” had been extinguished. They did this in 1993 at the BC Court of Appeal stage, when the court commissioned an independent expert study of the issue. This change of position was an about-face from BC’s original defense, and explains a lot in the development of the case.
To use the same case for another example, it’s essential to understand that both sides in the Delgamuukw litigation agreed to pause the next stage of the legal proceedings while they spent time attempting to negotiate a comprehensive approach to jurisdiction and land decisions. They did this on the recommendation of the Court of Appeal, in 1993. But by 1994, the government’s local forest managers were pushing through logging plans without regard for that condition, attempting to pass off meetings as “consultation” while the plans were a foregone conclusion. Gitksan Chiefs blocked the railway to stop it, and were promptly back in court in a new action: Ryan v Schultz.
Cases which are not reported in the BC or Canada Law Review are also difficult to find, unless you go to the courthouse of the trial and buy a copy, like with transcripts.

Here is a list of some of the new uploads in Lawfare!

These artifacts are all part of a bigger stories. These additions are provided here to add to the record.

R. v. Adams (Thomas Russel) – 1990

1990, October 30 Provincial Court ruling, Campbell River
Haida
“I have no option but to find that the defendant was not required to hold an Indian Food Fish Licence for the herring spawn on kelp in his possession and he is therefor entitled to acquittal on both charges.”

R. v. Adams – DFO letter to counsel: November 21, 1984
“I have directed the Chief of Finance for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to draft a cheque for Mr. Thomas Russel Adams in the amount of $4,670.00, this being the amount received for the seventeen pails of roe on kelp seized by this Department. the other five pails were seized by the Department of Treasury United States Customs Service and therefore would not be included in the monies ordered returned by the court.”

Ahousaht First Nation v. Canada (Fisheries and Oceans) 2007

Federal Court of Canada
Nuu-chah-nulth
Case summary by Lawson Lundell LLP, July 20, 2007
“The Federal Court of Canada recently released its decision in Ahousaht First Nation v. Canada (Fisheries and Oceans). The court considered an application by 14 First Nations represented by the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council (“NTC”) for judicial review of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans regarding the implementation of a commercial groundfish pilot plan on the British Columbia coast (the “Pilot Plan”). The NTC challenged the Minister’s decision on the grounds that the Minister failed to fulfil his duty to consult and accommodate the NTC before implementing the Pilot Plan. After reviewing the process leading up to the Plan’s introduction Federal Court dismissed the application, finding that, although the consultation was not perfect, the flaws did not warrant changing the Minister’s decision.”

Bear Island Foundation and Temagami v. Ontario AG (c.1985)

Supreme Court of Canada.
Factum of Intervenor NIB-AFN
“The Royal Proclamation applies in the land claim area. It has the force of statute. The onus is on the Respondent to prove abrogation of the procedural requirements enshrined in the Proclamation.”
“There is no case law, except the judgments below, in support of the argument that the procedural requirements of the Proclamation were repealed by the Quebec Act.”

R. v. Bob (Bradley) 1979, August 2. British Columbia County Court.

Ruling. Unreported.
Lillooet
“The accused was charged with unlawfully fishing in contravention of a closure effected under the Fisheries Act and Regulation. The accused claimed he had a lawful excuse to fish because he was fishing pursuant to a reserve right, not an aboriginal or treaty right.”
“The historical background for the Defence… (includes) “Recognition of BC Indian Fish Rights by the Federal-Provincial Commission, prepared for UBCIC 1978. I refer to the instructions given to Dominion Commissioner, Mr. Anderson, dated August 25, 1870:
“While it appears theoretically desirable as a matter of general policy to diminish the number of small reserves held by an Indian Nation, the circumstances will permit them to concentrate on three or four large reserves, thus making them more accessible to missionaries and school teachers…”

Daniels v. Canada (Indian Affairs and Northern Development), 2016

Supreme Court of Canada.
Booklet, “Understanding the Daniels Case” by BC Metis Federation
“At its best, the Daniels ruling provides the possibility to “consider” Metis communities as self-determined and self-governing nations with a unique historical connection to the Crown and First Nations.”

R. v. Derriksan (1975)

BC Court of Appeal.
Okanagan
Ruling.
“Section 32 of the Regulations which makes special vision for licensing fishing by Indians reinforces the concept that Indians are not otherwise excepted from the Regulations.”

R. v. Douglas (c. 1985)

BC Provincial Court
Sto:lo
Defence counsel cross-examination of the crown’s witness, DFO officer Randy Nelson
“Q. In this letter you say: “neither released, so I hit their knuckles and arms harder and harder.” Do you agree with that statement?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay. Now in this letter you talk about Mr. Douglas and that’s Sam Douglas, the accused, right?
A. Yes, Your Honour.
Q. And you say as follows: “My concern …is that the D.F.O. negotiates with this animal, and that he is a representative on the Salmon Commission.” Now when you say “this animal” you’re talking about Sam Douglas, aren’t you?
A. That is correct in that letter, yes Your Honour.
…Q. Next paragraph: “If Mr. Douglas is continued to be met with, I would be most disappointed and would like to know the Department’s reasoning for this. It would make about as much sense as opening a Clifford Olsen Day Care Center.”
A That’s what the letter says, Your Honour.
Q. Now are you telling this Court, that this is humour on your part?
A. Humour… yes.”

Fletcher Challenger Canada Limited v. Miller… et al. 1991, Oct 21.

Supreme Court of BC.
(C915008 Vancouver Registry)
Court Transcript. Re. Walbran Valley. Defendant John Shafer and his Amicus curae, Bruce Clark:
“CLARK: Yes. The position in law is that since there is no treaty for the area in question, the legislature of British Columbia does not have jurisdiction. For the same reason the legislature does not have jurisdiction, this court does not have jurisdiction, because this court derives its jurisdiction under the Supreme Court Act which emanates from that legislature, which itself doesn’t have jurisdiction. …So what essentially we have is this jurisdictional question is genuinely preliminary to everything else.”
SHAFER: I’m a spokesperson for a native rights organization ca1led Concerned Citizens for Aboriginal Rights. It’s a group of 300 people in Victoria. All of my research and my readings indicated to me that there was — there was a major problem in the province concerning the fact that forest companies and third parties presumed to have the right to plunder unsurrendered native territory and I can see nowhere — in all my readings — I have yet to find a case where you will find an agreement between the native nations asking that Canada or BC rule over them.”

R. v. Gladstone BC Court of Appeal 1993, June 25.

Ruling.
Heiltsuk
“On or about the 28th day of April, 1988, at or near Vancouver in the Province of British Columbia, did unlawfully attempt to sell Herring Spawn on Kelp other than Herring Spawn on Kelp taken or collected under the authority of a Category J. Licence, contrary to Section 20 ( 3 ) of the Pacific Herring Fishery Regulation and did thereby commit an offence contrary to Section 6l ( 1 ) of the Fishery Act.”
Note – The judges of the BC Court of Appeal had widely differing reasons.

Haida Nation v British Columbia (Minister of Forests; Attorney General) BC Court of Appeal. 1997, November 7.

Ruling.
“The petitioners claim aboriginal title to a large area of British Columbia much of which is subject to tree farm licence no. 39 (T.F.L. 39) which was originally issued to the respondent MacMillan Bloedel in 1961.
“The preliminary issue of law is : whether the interest claimed by the Petitioners, namely aboriginal title, including ownership, title and other aboriginal rights over all of Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands), including the land, water, flora and fauna and resources thereof, is capable of constituting an encumbrance within the meaning of section 28 of the Forest Act.”

Haida Nation v British Columbia (Minister of Forests; Attorney General) 2000, Nov 21

BC Supreme Court

Ruling
“The evidence establishes that in September 1998, the Province published updated “British Columbia Consultation Guidelines” governing consultation with Aboriginal peoples concerning their Aboriginal rights and title, for all provincial ministries. Although the guidelines state that “…staff must not explicitly or implicitly confirm the existence of Aboriginal title when consulting with First Nations,”…

Haida Nation v British Columbia (Minister of Forests; Attorney Genera; Weyerhauser) 2002, Feb 27.

BC Court of Appeal.
Case analysis prepared for the Union of BC Municipalities by Bull, Housser & Tupper, Sept 2002
“The BC Court of Appeal delivered a landmark decision regarding the duty of the Crown and third parties to consult with First Nations who have asserted, but not proved, aboriginal rights or title. The order made by the Court was subsequently modified with supplemental reasons delivered on August 19, 2002.”
“The Court of Appeal made a declaration that the Province had in 2000, and the Province and Weyerhaeuser have now, legally enforceable duties to the Haida to consult with them in good faith.”

The west wasn’t won archive project relies on the work of volunteers for most aspects of building an archive! Drop a line to join the project, contribute documentation, or request research assistance, or… find out more.

Archive Quarterly ~ journal of The West Wasn’t Won archive project

13 Thursday Feb 2025

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This journal offers a curated collection of rare archival material in every issue: maps, timelines, new interviews, key excerpts from original docs, and more.

Honouring the indomitable spirit of Indigenous Peoples west of the Rocky Mountains, the young archive documents British Columbia and Canada’s colonial project and the way it’s carried out in deliberate violation of international law, Peoples’ rights, and its own founding constitution.

Subscribe!

Helping answer the need for reliable information in an area that is emphatically suppressed and denied! The West Wasn’t Won’s quarterly journal is just about to complete the first year in print.

Here is a preview of AQ, Winter 2025, the 4th issue! And a summary of important topics we covered in 2024. And a preview of forthcoming Special Issues each dedicated to one major topic: Title, Status, and Salmon.

Follow Archive Quarterly on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Archive-Quarterly/61556330064894/?_rdr

Winter 2025 cover of Archive Quarterly.

Winter 2025 AQ

FEATURES:
Sacred Places v. Ski Resorts
Skwelkwek’welt, Sútikalh, Qat’muk, and other favourite spiritual resorts have been protected from development by reoccupations, litigation, and widespread mobilization. The Spirit Homes have been protected at a cost of mass arrests, real and threatened violence, global travel, and community solidarity from the grassroots to the Chief and Council. Interviews with Kanahus Manuel and Rosalin Sam.
Petition of January 3, 1995
Text of the 30-year-old application to “an independent and impartial Standing Committee with juridical jurisdiction over boundary disputes between the Indians’ Hunting Grounds and the Crown Governments’ Public Lands.” With a 1997 interview given by Bruce Clark; and comment on the political situation from the extradition hearing, USA v. Pitawanakwat, 2000, which successfully relied in part in the Petition.
Defense of Meares Island
In March 1985, a provincial logging license in the heart of Nuu-chah-nulth territory was the subject of a court injunction. Read part of the ruling, which pointed out “The fact that there is an issue between the Indians and the province based on Aboriginal claims should not come as a surprise to anyone.” 40 years later, there’s a Tribal park and, still no surprise, no land title resolved in favour of the Nuu-chah-nulth.
Imperial BC in 1825
The Anglo-Russian Convention Concerning the Limits of Their Possessions on the Northwest Coast of America and the Navigation of the Pacific Ocean. Looking closer at the Russian American Company; the Fort on the Spanish-Russian border in California; and reading the Yup’ik, Aleut and Innu interventions in American assumptions of jurisdiction.
More: Sto:lo Chiefs snub the Queen’s Birthday Party in New Westminster, 1875, with a candid letter telling the government to give back the money for the dinner. Nielsen Report: the new Conservative government identified the Department of Indian Affairs for budget cuts in 1985, putting a cap on spending that wasn’t lifted for almost 30 years. After the secret Christmas Potlatch 1921 in Kwakwala territory, Indian Agents raided the homes of participants, seizing food, blankets, sewing machines, and ceremonial artifacts. Some 75 people were charged, and 45 of them were detained in Oakalla Prison to serve sentences up to six months. The Inherent Right Policy migrates from “extinguishment” to “recognition and reconciliation of rights” without changing the “cede, release, and surrender” component of settlements.

Fall 2024 AQ

FEATURES:
Hunting Aboriginal Rights
Inventing “uncertainty”: Canada’s Supreme Court consistently side-stepped the question of Aboriginal rights to hunt, refusing to hear legal questions put before them, and turning the constitutional question into matters of compliance with the BC Wildlife Act.
Legacy Cases reviewed; Excerpts from decisions in the years-long trials of Francis Haines, Tsilhqot’in, “Old” Jimmie Dennis of Tahltan, and Arthur Dick of Secwepemc.


Inquiries: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls An overview and timeline of reports by the Organization of American States’ IACHR; British Columbia’s Inquiry; Canada’s National Inquiry; and the report by Human Rights Watch. International inquiries at the UN treaty body level continue with concerns about the disproportionate disappearance and murder of Indigenous women – and the lack of investigation.


“Modern day” extinguishment policy
Tracking the transformation of the Native title and rights identified in the 1973 Calder case, into the Native Claims Policy that mobilizes negotiations to achieve “extinguishment by consent.” Through changing definitions and increasing funding, the Policy has not responded to advances made in courts and harsh international criticism.


20 years since “Consultation” and “accommodation”
Two cases of consultation and accommodation were decided together in the Supreme Court of Canada in November of 2004: Haida and Taku. With timelines leading to that litigation.
Reflections on change over the last two decades, with President Gaagwiis of Haida.
That Day in Court: comments from Victor Guerin about the 1984 case named for his father, Chief of Musqueam, and the first definitions of the duty to consult.
Department of Justice, memo: Re. Crown Consultation with Aboriginal Groups
Implementation of the procedural right since 2004, “characterized by bad faith, bias, incompetence, unprofessionalism, and errors of fact, law and jurisdiction so numerous” that litigation has proliferated.


More:
Sovereignty Peoples Information Network explained why they wouldn’t want a treaty with Canada anyway, in their response to the United Nations’ survey of treaties and constructive arrangements between states and Indigenous Peoples in 1994. Four of their members were in prison within 12 months.
Hudson’s Bay Company Governor Simpson arrives in the west, 1824. The Company’s plan was always more than trade, and brought the first Christian Missionaries to carry it out.

56 pages
8.5 x 11
Black and white
ISBN 978-1-7387902-6-5
Electromagnetic Print

Summer 2024 AQ

FEATURES
Bonaparte Highway Toll, 1974 – A new investigation of the summer blockade of Highway 12, at Two Springs, Secwepemc. With new interviews and a compilation of reports from the time, the coverage leads into a wider background for a detailed Timeline of the on-reserve housing crisis.
Ten years since Title – Reviewing the Declaration of Aboriginal title in “Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC” – with interviews, a book review of “Lha Yudit’ih ~ We Always Find A Way,” by Lorraine Weir and Chief Roger William; maps of the title area; a Timeline of the case; and a narration of the title case’s progress through the courts, from Lha Yudit’ih.
Celebrating fifty years of Native Women’s Associations across Canada! Jeannette Corbiere-Lavell joins us to discuss her legendary case to regain Indian Status after sexist provisions in the Indian Act withdrew it.
And: Grandmothers Healing Journey, with photos of the Fraser River canoe trip; and excerpts from the Indian Act as its amendments impacted women and children’s right to Indian Status.
First Class: Indigenous-focused graduation requirement – One year into BC’s Indigenous education mandate for secondary students, a class profile with one course made in Sto:lo that thrived.
More: 20 years since the Kelowna Accord; the first ever report of the Department of Indian Affairs (Minister of the Interior) in 1874; and a look at the “biggest demonstration in BC history” – Indigenous march on Victoria Legislature, June 25, 1974.

44 pages
8.5×11, black and white
ISBN 978¬1¬7387902¬4¬1
Journal of the west wasn’t won archive project
Honouring the indomitable spirit of Indigenous Peoples west of the Rocky Mountains.
Published by Electromagnetic Print

Spring 2024 AQ

FEATURES:
The 1964 treaty, title, and rights hunting case – White and Bob (Snuneymuxw/Nanaimo), with news from the time; an interview of that day in court with Kitty Sparrow; an excerpt from the Respondents Factum; the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision without a hearing; and circumstances at Fort Victoria from “The Smallpox War Against the Haida,” by Dr. Tom Swanky.
1874 BC Lands Act and the Attorney General of Canada’s disallowance of the Province’s unconstitutional assumption of jurisdiction to legislate and dispose of lands in unceded Indian territories.
Petition of the Douglas Tribes, 1874 – Chiefs of a hundred communities report Governor James Douglas’ broken promises of lands to be reserved for them against white settlement; conditions of life; and demands for judicial settlement.
Allied Tribes protest the Indian Reserve Commission of BC, 1924, by Petition to Ottawa to reject the Commission’s final report. Having cut off 80% of good arable land from the remaining, small Indian Reserves which survived Joseph Trutch’s arbitrary reductions, the McKenna-McBride Commission of 1912-14 added rocky barren lands to parcels that amounted to less than one percent per-person of lands that were given away to settlers by pre-emption.
“The Fourth World ~ An Indian Reality,” by George Manuel and Michael Posluns. A review of the 1974 book that exposes the four signal threats to Indigenous Peoples: the Priest, the Game Warden, the Doctor, and the Indian Agent. Sharing stunning reports of sharp dealing in federal and provincial schemes, while Native Community Development Officers (of which Grand Chief Manuel was one) promoted political responses.
More: BC’s 2024 attempted amendments to its Lands Act; what Canada’s UNDRIP Act actually says; the Potlatch Laws of 1884.

40 pages, 8.5×11
Black and white
ISBN: 978¬1¬7387902¬3¬4
Electromagnetic Print

Forthcoming Special Issues

TITLE contents:

Introduction:
Title
The Indigenous Territories
Fort Government
The Governor’s Picnic and the Chilcotin War
The Indian Reserves
Oakalla
The Void Off-reserve

Case Summaries concerning Aboriginal Title & Rights:
White and Bob, 1964-65, and Calder, 1969-73
Paulette et al v. The Queen, 1977 to R. v. Haines, 1978
Baker Lake v. Minister of Indian Affairs, 1980, to CPL v. Paul, 1988
R. v. Sparrow, 1990, to Delgamuukw & Gisdayway v. The Queen, 1991
Ryan v. Ft. St. James Forest District M’ger, 1994, to R. v. Côté, 1996
R. v. Pena et al, 1997, to Delgamuukw & Gisdayway v. The Queen, 1997
Halfway River v. BC, 1998, to Paul v. BC, Forest Commission, 2003
Haida Nation v. BC, 2004, to R. v. Marshall; R. v. Bernard, 2005
Cook v. BC Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, 2007, to West Moberly v. BC, 2011
Tsilhqot’in Nation v. BC, 2014, to Gamlaxyeltxw v. BC, 2020
Nuu-chah-nulth v. BC, 2021, to Nuchatlaht v. BC, 2023

Contrasting Titles:
Comparing the colonial court’s definitions of “Aboriginal title” to the declarations of title made by Indigenous Nations.

Declarations:
Indigenous Nations state their titles. Excerpts from the historical texts.

Summary:
Denial
Recognition and Extinguishment
Burdens of Proof
Adversaries in the Court Room
“Interpretation” and “ultimately by negotiation”
Innocent Third Parties
Good Faith, Bad Faith

Duress and Consent
No deed, no surrender. No consent, no jurisdiction.
Exhaustion of the Domestic Remedy
International Intervention

Timeline:
A chronology of events concerning the expression of Land Title and Jurisdiction west of the Rocky Mountains

Glossary of legal terms

STATUS contents:

Introduction:
The Indian Department
The Registrar
An Act for the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes 1857
Enfranchisement
Indian Act 1876
Indian Agents
The Little Brown Book

A Century of Forced Displacement:
On Family Lands – but not on-reserve
The Void
BC Association for Non-Status Indians, 1969
Native Women’s Associations, 1970s
United Native Nations, 1976
BC Native Housing, 1978
National Association of Indian Friendship Centres, 1950s
Citizenship, 1951 Indian Act
The Double Mother Rule
Taxation without Representation

Restoration of Indian Status; Erosion of Band Power:
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982
Bill C-31, 1985, and reinstatement without compensation
Erosion of Band powers to confer Status
Increased Population; static Reserve Boundaries
Charlottetown Accord 1992

Individual Cases concerning Indian Status:
Yvonne Bedard
Jeanette Lavell
Sandra Lovelace
Batchewana v Corbiere
Powley
Harry Daniels
Sharon McIvor
Descheneaux

Summary
Indigenous Control of Indigenous Citizenship
The Right to Nationality
Self-Determination
Traditional Authorities
Roads to Restitution

SALMON contents

Following the commodification of salmon by a colony designed to export food and resources. 

By the beginning of the 20th century, Newcomer fisheries Commissions were tearing out Indigenous selective weir fisheries in headwater streams, while dumping barge loads of unprocessed salmon at the entrance to the Fraser – when they ran out of cans to pack them in.

Conflict and criminalization of Indigenous fisheries is a century-long, ongoing clash of values between Native and Newcomer.

This Special Issue tracks a cycle of conditional government recognition and partial accommodation, amid headwater to saltwater Indigenous Peoples’ commissions and cooperation and competition. 

Featuring:

Band Fishing Bylaws On-reserve

Territorial Fisheries Commissions

Inter-Tribal Fishing Treaty

BC Aboriginal Peoples Fisheries Commission

and

Government Reports: Pearse-McRae; Toy; Cohen; more

and

Winning the Aboriginal right to fish:

Sparrow, van derPeet, Gladstone, Smokehouse, Ahousaht, Lax Kwalaams,  Nuu-chah-nulth, Thomas

and

Government Accommodation Programs:

A1 License Buybacks

Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy

Community Fishing Licenses

Aboriginal Aquatic Resources and Oceans Management 

PICFI

Pacific Salmon Commission

and

the duty to protect the resource

and

Mandated Negotiations v. Indigenous Peoples’ Rights…

Treaty of Imperial Non-interference

09 Sunday Feb 2025

Posted by in aboriginal title, Uncategorized

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Treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763

The famous “Indian Magna carta,” or Royal Proclamation, 1763, was preceded by a European treaty of non-competition that ended a global war among imperial colonizers.

British entry to the countries which are now called Canada was not a result of Treaty or Trade with Indigenous Nations, but of war with France.
The young Captain Cook, later to visit the northwest coast of America, fought in the British Navy at the battle of Montreal, for control of the St. Lawrence River. A younger George Washington was a British General fighting the “French and Indian Wars.”
France was allied and partnered in trade with many tribes since the early 1600s, when French colonists were left to make settlements at Aix la Chappelle and Port Royal. The eventual survival of French settlers and trading forts was due to integration among the geopolitics and economies of the Tribal Nations.


Part of that allegiance was an ongoing military defense against the British. In 1670, the Hudson’s Bay Company was granted a trading and exploration charter to enter North America, north of the French settlements.
The “French and Indian Wars” were fought fervently by British Subjects who had moved to settle Colonies along the Atlantic Seaboard, south and east of the Indian-French alliances. A relentless British campaign began in 1754, and in 1760 France abandoned its place in northeastern North America, along with its trading partners and political presence in “the Canadas,” with the conditions of French surrender to Britain in the Articles of Montreal.
France surrendered to Britain, but the Shawnee, Algonquins, and Iroquois confederates did not. Their former peace and friendship, enjoyed by France, was succeeded to – was guaranteed by Britain – in the 1760 terms of surrender, the Articles of Montreal. That surrender was only signed by France and Britain, not by Chief Pontiac, for instance, or any other of France’s Algonquin and other Indigenous Allies. However it guaranteed, at France’s insistence:
Article 40: The Savage or Indian Allies of his Most Christian Majesty shall be maintained in the lands they occupy if they wish to remain there; they shall not be disturbed on any pretext whatever for having taken arms and served his Most Holy Majesty.

Britain quickly betrayed the terms signed at Montreal in 1760: the trade routes it had succeeded to owed Native nationals a supply of guns and ammunition, among other things, but these were now rationed to a minimal amount that effectively ended the benefit that European trade had brought, and promised. British fur traders bought furs at a fraction of the usual price.
Pontiac, the central figure and leader of the Indigenous confederacy, still expected France would return. Under his leadership, the united Tribes of the east coast, Ohio River Valley, and Great Lakes burned or took over every British fort in their lands.

Meanwhile war had broken out between French, Spanish, Portuguese, and British imperial colonists across dozens of places around the world – from Cuba to the Mississippi River; from Bengal to Sumatra – and in mainland Europe. The Seven Years War ended with the Treaty of Paris, February 10, 1763.
The “Most Christian” Kings pledged to peace among themselves in that Treaty, and to refuse “assistance or protection, directly or indirectly, to those who would cause any prejudice to either of the high contracting parties.”
The Christian Kings’ peace was founded on this pledge of non-interference in the exploitation of non-European, non-Christian Peoples.

While refusing to protect any of the Indigenous Allies who had made their global trade routes and settlements possible, the British King continued to rely on the decisive military might of the Peoples they called “partners,” ultimately fighting British subjects.
In an attempt to end or mitigate Pontiac’s continuing war and sacking of British forts, among other things, the Royal Proclamation, October 1763, was an Act to protect Britain’s future in North America. That future would depend on the good will of the Indigenous sovereigns there, and their military might. Desperate to correct His colonial subjects’ violations of the 1760 treaty at Montreal, and the violations of mutual trading agreements made along the Eastern Seaboard with such Chiefs as Powhattan, the King issued this Executive Order to the Governors of the Colonies there.
The King relied on his promise in the 1760 Articles of Montreal, now referring to the Native nations as “His Majesty’s Allies” in the 1763 Proclamation. The Indigenous Peoples would not be “molested or disturbed” in their “Hunting Grounds” which are “Reserved to Them or any of them;” and the only judicial jurisdiction any colonial British court would have would be on “Lands surrendered to Us,” by the Native Peoples in public meeting, and “on any Lands not purchased by or ceded to Us,” the Governors would have no rights except to pursue and apprehend colonists for violations of British law.

British Governors were the first to renege on these terms, with the pursuit of Pontiac. The several inter-tribal confederacies were essentially held together by this Shawnee Chief. The confederacies were continually sabotaged; General Amherst’s distribution of smallpox by trade items killed a mass of people; and when a person of great significance was kidnapped, Pontiac made a treaty to cease fighting in 1766 to secure her return. In 1769, Pontiac was murdered by an acquaintance. A fee of a barrel of rum from the fort was paid, it is said.

An image of Chief Pontiac.

The fight for American independence was a direct result of King George III of Britain’s 1763 Royal Proclamation, October 17. The British subjects of the Americas had paid for and fought the French and Indian Wars; they paid taxes while having no representation in England; and their most insatiable wish was to expand westwards across the unceded and unsurrendered lands of the Cherokee, Idaho, Mohegans, Seminoles, and all.
The War of Independence for the United States of America began in 1774 and continued until 1783.


British-American wars were ongoing, and fought substantially by the central confederacies led by Tecumseh, who aligned with the British General Brock in a temporary and mutual truce: to stop American expansion and to guarantee protected Native homelands. After Brock’s demise in battle, General Proctor replaced him and sacrificed Tecumseh’s army to the Kentucky Rifles, abandoning Detroit and the promises to protect Indian lands.
So ended the War of 1812, but the fighting continued in raids, massacres, and skirmishes along the 49th parallel as Britain expanded westward, relying on the defense of the Plains Peoples to rebuff American advances. That defense was encouraged and enabled by arms provided by Britain, while the cost in warriors and lands annexed by the USA was paid entirely by the Native nations.
The Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846 brought open warfare to an end, drawing a line through Cree, Kootenay, Sinixt and Coast Salish nations without their participation or signatures.


Native militias fought in the French-British and then British-American wars for fully one century, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains. Every time, they were promised an alliance worth fighting for: protection of their freedom in their own lands, and fair trade.

See the first part of the February 10 1763 Treaty of Paris below, or view the full doc:

treaty of paris Feb 10 1763Download

See also a chapter from “The Story of Canada,” 1760-1774, Pontiac’s War. By T. Fisher Unwin, 1897, Published by Putnam and Sons:

The Story of Canada – 1760-1774. By T Fisher Unwin, 1897. Putnam and SonsDownload

Below, Tecumseh and General Brock, “The Meeting of Isaac Brock and Tecumseh” by Charles William Jefferys

Treaty of Paris February 10, 1763
The Definitive Treaty of Peace and Friendship between his Britannick Majesty, the Most Christian King, and the King of Spain. Concluded at Paris the 10th day of February, 1763. To which the King of Portugal acceded on the same day.

In the Name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. So be it.
Be it known to all those whom it shall, or may, in any manner, belong,
It has pleased the Most High to diffuse the spirit of union and concord among the Princes, whose divisions had spread troubles in the four parts of the world, and to inspire them with the inclination to cause the comforts of peace to succeed to the misfortunes of a long and bloody war, which having arisen between England and France during the reign of the Most Serene and Most Potent Prince, George the Second, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain, of glorious memory, continued under the reign of the Most Serene and Most Potent Prince, George the Third, his successor, and, in its progress, communicated itself to Spain and Portugal: Consequently, the Most Serene and Most Potent Prince, George the Third, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick and Lunenbourg, Arch Treasurer and Elector of the Holy Roman Empire; the Most Serene and Most Potent Prince, Lewis the Fifteenth, by the grace of God, Most Christian King; and the Most Serene and Most Potent Prince, Charles the Third, by the grace of God, King of Spain and of the Indies, after having laid the foundations of peace in the preliminaries signed at Fontainebleau the third of November last; and the Most Serene and Most Potent Prince, Don Joseph the First, by the grace of God, King of Portugal and of the Algarves, after having acceded thereto, determined to compleat, without delay, this great and important work. For this purpose, the high contracting parties have named and appointed their respective Ambassadors Extraordinary and Ministers Plenipotentiary, viz. his Sacred Majesty the King of Great Britain… (dukes, lords, etc.)…Who, after having duly communicated to each other their full powers, in good form, copies whereof are transcribed at the end of the present treaty of peace, have agreed upon the articles, the tenor of which is as follows:
Article I. There shall be a Christian, universal, and perpetual peace, as well by sea as by land, and a sincere and constant friendship shall be reestablished between their Britannick, Most Christian, Catholick, and Most Faithful Majesties, and between their heirs and successors, kingdoms, dominions, provinces, countries, subjects, and vassals, of what quality or condition soever they be, without exception of places or of persons: So that the high contracting parties shall give the greatest attention to maintain between themselves and their said dominions and subjects this reciprocal friendship and correspondence, without permitting, on either side, any kind of hostilities, by sea or by land, to be committed from henceforth, for any cause, or under any pretence whatsoever, and every thing shall be carefully avoided which might hereafter prejudice the union happily reestablished, applying themselves, on the contrary, on every occasion, to procure for each other whatever may contribute to their mutual glory, interests, and advantages, without giving any assistance or protection, directly or indirectly, to those who would cause any prejudice to either of the high contracting parties: there shall be a general oblivion of every thing that may have been done or committed before or since the commencement of the war which is just ended.
II. The treaties of Westphalia of 1648; those of Madrid between the Crowns of Great Britain and Spain of 1661, and 1670; the treaties of peace of Nimeguen of 1678, and 1679; of Ryswick of 1697; those of peace and of commerce of Utrecht of 1713; that of Baden of 1714; the treaty of the triple alliance of the Hague of 1717; that of the quadruple alliance of London of 1118; the treaty of peace of Vienna of 1738; the definitive treaty of Aix la Chapelle of 1748; and that of Madrid, between the Crowns of Great Britain and Spain of 1750: as well as the treaties between the Crowns of Spain and Portugal of the 13th of February, 1668; of the 6th of February, 1715; and of the 12th of February, 1761; and that of the 11th of April, 1713, between France and Portugal with the guaranties of Great Britain, serve as a basis and foundation to the peace, and to the present treaty: and for this purpose they are all renewed and confirmed in the best form, as well as all the general, which subsisted between the high contracting parties before the war, as if they were inserted here word for word, so that they are to be exactly observed, for the future, in their whole tenor, and religiously executed on all sides, in all their points, which shall not be derogated from by the present treaty, notwithstanding all that may have been stipulated to the contrary by any of the high contracting parties: and all the said parties declare, that they will not suffer any privilege, favour, or indulgence to subsist, contrary to the treaties above confirmed, except what shall have been agreed and stipulated by the present treaty.
III. All the prisoners made, on all sides, as well by land as by sea, and the hostages carried away or given during the war, and to this day, shall be restored, without ransom, six weeks, at least, to be computed from the day of the exchange of the ratification of the present treaty, each crown respectively paying the advances which shall have been made for the subsistance and maintenance of their prisoners by the Sovereign of the country where they shall have been detained, according to the attested receipts and estimates and other authentic vouchers which shall be furnished on one side and the other. And securities shall be reciprocally given for the payment of the debts which the prisoners shall have contracted in the countries where they have been detained until their entire liberty. And all the ships of war and merchant vessels Which shall have been taken since the expiration of the terms agreed upon for the cessation of hostilities by sea shall likewise be restored, bon fide, with all their crews and cargoes: and the execution of this article shall be proceeded upon immediately after the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty.
IV. His Most Christian Majesty renounces all pretensions which he has heretofore formed or might have formed to Nova Scotia or Acadia in all its parts, and guaranties the whole of it, and with all its dependencies, to the King of Great Britain: Moreover, his Most Christian Majesty cedes and guaranties to his said Britannick Majesty, in full right, Canada, with all its dependencies, as well as the island of Cape Breton, and all the other islands and coasts in the gulph and river of St. Lawrence, and in general, every thing that depends on the said countries, lands, islands, and coasts, with the sovereignty, property, possession, and all rights acquired by treaty, or otherwise, which the Most Christian King and the Crown of France have had till now over the said countries, lands, islands, places, coasts, and their inhabitants, so that the Most Christian King cedes and makes over the whole to the said King, and to the Crown of Great Britain, and that in the most ample manner and form, without restriction, and without any liberty to depart from the said cession and guaranty under any pretence, or to disturb Great Britain in the possessions above mentioned. His Britannick Majesty, on his side, agrees to grant the liberty of the Catholick religion to the inhabitants of Canada: he will, in consequence, give the most precise and most effectual orders, that his new Roman Catholic subjects may profess the worship of their religion according to the rites of the Romish church. as far as the laws of Great Britain permit. His Britannick Majesty farther agrees, that the French inhabitants, or others who had been subjects of the Most Christian King in Canada, may retire with all safety and freedom wherever they shall think proper, and may sell their estates, provided it be to the subjects of his Britannick Majesty, and bring away their effects as well as their persons, without being restrained in their emigration, under any pretence whatsoever, except that of debts or of criminal prosecutions: The term limited for this emigration shall be fixed to the space of eighteen months, to be computed from the day of the exchange of the ratification of the present treaty.
V. The subjects of France shall have the liberty of fishing and drying on a part of the coasts of the island of Newfoundland, such as it is specified in the XIIIth article of the treaty of Utrecht; which article is renewed and confirmed by the present treaty, (except what relates to the island of Cape Breton, as well as to the other islands and coasts in the mouth and in the gulph of St. Lawrence:) And his Britannick Majesty consents to leave to the subjects of the Most Christian King the liberty of fishing in the gulph of St. Lawrence, on condition that the subjects of France do not exercise the said fishery but at the distance of three leagues from all the coasts belonging to Great Britain, as well those of the continent as those of the islands situated in the said gulph of St. Lawrence. And as to what relates to the fishery on the coasts of the island of Cape Breton, out of the said gulph, the subjects of the Most Christian King shall not be permitted to exercise the said fishery but at the distance of fifteen leagues from the coasts of the island of Cape Breton; and the fishery on the coasts of Nova Scotia or Acadia, and every where else out of the said gulph, shall remain on the foot of former treaties.
VI. The King of Great Britain cedes the islands of St. Pierre and Macquelon, in full right, to his Most Christian Majesty, to serve as a shelter to the French fishermen; and his said Most Christian Majesty engages not to fortify the said islands; to erect no buildings upon them but merely for the conveniency of the fishery; and to keep upon them a guard of fifty men only for the police.
VII. In order to reestablish peace on solid and durable foundations, and to remove for ever all subject of dispute with regard to the limits of the British and French territories on the continent of America; it is agreed, that, for the future, the confines between the dominions of his Britannick Majesty and those of his Most Christian Majesty, in that part of the world, shall be fixed irrevocably by a line drawn along the middle of the River Mississippi, from its source to the river lberville, and from thence, by a line drawn along the middle of this river, and the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea; and for this purpose, the Most Christian King cedes in full right, and guaranties to his Britannick Majesty the river and port of the Mobile, and every thing which he possesses, or ought to possess, on the left side of the river Mississippi, except the town of New Orleans and the island in which it is situated, which shall remain to France, provided that the navigation of the river Mississippi shall be equally free, as well to the subjects of Great Britain as to those of France, in its whole breadth and length, from its source to the sea, and expressly that part which is between the said island of New Orleans and the right bank of that river, as well as the passage both in and out of its mouth: It is farther stipulated, that the vessels belonging to the subjects of either nation shall not be stopped, visited, or subjected to the payment of any duty whatsoever. The stipulations inserted in the IVth article, in favour of the inhabitants of Canada shall also take place with regard to the inhabitants of the countries ceded by this article.
VIII. The King of Great Britain shall restore to France the islands of Guadeloupe, of Mariegalante, of Desirade, of Martinico, and of Belleisle; and the fortresses of these islands shall be restored in the same condition they were in when they were conquered by the British arms, provided that his Britannick Majesty’s subjects, who shall have settled in the said islands, or those who shall have any commercial affairs to settle there or in other places restored to France by the present treaty, shall have liberty to sell their lands and their estates, to settle their affairs, to recover their debts, and to bring away their effects as well as their persons, on board vessels, which they shall be permitted to send to the said islands and other places restored as above, and which shall serve for this use only, without being restrained on account of their religion, or under any other pretence whatsoever, except that of debts or of criminal prosecutions: and for this purpose, the term of eighteen months is allowed to his Britannick Majesty’s subjects, to be computed from the day of the exchange of the ratifications of the present treaty; but, as the liberty granted to his Britannick Majesty’s subjects, to bring away their persons and their effects, in vessels of their nation, may be liable to abuses if precautions were not taken to prevent them; it has been expressly agreed between his Britannick Majesty and his Most Christian Majesty, that the number of English vessels which have leave to go to the said islands and places restored to France, shall be limited, as well as the number of tons of each one; that they shall go in ballast; shall set sail at a fixed time; and shall make one voyage only; all the effects belonging to the English being to be embarked at the same time. It has been farther agreed, that his Most Christian Majesty shall cause the necessary passports to be given to the said vessels; that, for the greater security, it shall be allowed to place two French clerks or guards in each of the said vessels, which shall be visited in the landing places and ports of the said islands and places restored to France, and that the merchandize which shall be found t herein shall be confiscated.
IX. The Most Christian King cedes and guaranties to his Britannick Majesty, in full right, the islands of Grenada, and the Grenadines, with the same stipulations in favour of the inhabitants of this colony, inserted in the IVth article for those of Canada: And the partition of the islands called neutral, is agreed and fixed, so that those of St. Vincent, Dominico, and Tobago, shall remain in full right to Great Britain, and that of St. Lucia shall be delivered to France, to enjoy the same likewise in full right, and the high contracting parties guaranty the partition so stipulated.
X. His Britannick Majesty shall restore to France the island of Goree in the condition it was in when conquered: and his Most Christian Majesty cedes, in full right, and guaranties to the King of Great Britain the river Senegal, with the forts and factories of St. Lewis, Podor, and Galam, and with all the rights and dependencies of the said river Senegal.
XI. In the East Indies Great Britain shall restore to France, in the condition they are now in, the different factories which that Crown possessed, as well as on the coast of Coromandel and Orixa as on that of Malabar, as also in Bengal, …

Native Peoples Caravan, Parliament Hill, 1974

29 Sunday Sep 2024

Posted by in Indigenous Declarations

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“The RCMP had the guns, the bayonets and the tear gas; we had a drum and a sheet of paper with our demands.” – Louis Cameron, Ojibway Warriors Society.

On September 29, 1974, the Native Peoples Caravan arrived in Ottawa. From uprisings that summer at the Two Springs occupation in Secwepemc and the reoccupation of Anishinaabe Park by the Ojibway Warriors Society, the Caravan was joined by people from coast to coast.

The next day, Monday September 30, they marched to Parliament Hill.

“The myth of a non-violent Canadian society was smashed to pieces in front of Canada’s Peace Tower on Parliament Hill on September 30th.”

Gary George’s 1974 article in “The Forgotten People,” reported the event, continuing:

“The clash was between club-swinging, helmet-wearing, riot-trained RCMP and placard-carrying Native men, women, children and non-native supporters, all calling for positive action to end the oppression of Native people in Canada. This incident marked the 30th opening of the Canadian Parliament, the official beginning of the Trudeau government’s rule with a majority of seats in the House of Commons.

        “The violence started when government officials refused to recognize the presence of the demonstrators. The pomp and ceremony of Parliament’s opening continued with few changes in tradition. When the estimated 200 demonstrators reached the stairs on Parliament Hill leading to the Centre Bloc they were stopped by RCMP and wooden barricades.

        “As more people marched up the stairs, the front line of Native people was forced against the barricades. This clash lasted for about twenty minutes before both sides stopped physical conflict. When it finally quieted down the police moved back about a foot and stood four men deep, arms locked, facing the demonstrators. Directly behind them were the press and white spectators. The Native drummers started beating out the American Indian Movement’s rally song. Men, women and children joined voices in the song, filling the air with the chant. …”

Deb Mearns, part of the reoccupation at Two Springs and one of the coordinators for the Caravan, recalled the many events leading up to the Caravan:

“When we were surrounded by the RCMP up in Cache Creek and we negotiated an end to the roadblock and we didn’t get charged, I remember being told by a reporter that managed to sneak into the roadblock that he saw and heard the townspeople in Cache Creek were going up to the police roadblock on Highway 12 and telling the police, “just go in and shoot them.”

      “It was not just the housing crisis. There were a number of issues involved. Louis Cameron came out after they had shut down their occupation, in Kenora, and we had already shut down the roadblock at Cache Creek, and we met in Vancouver at the Indian Center.

        “They were talking about doing a caravan so we started working on that very quickly. I was one of the front runners, going ahead and organizing where we would go and where we would stay. We were flying by the seat of our pants, I tell you. I don’t know how we made it.

        “When we got to Kenora, we used the last of our money to fly me to Ottawa, to make arrangements for us, and a Mohawk person met me there, picked me up at the airport. He told me the police were all inside the Indian Affairs office, expecting that’s where we were going to go. But he knew a place, and we went straight there – the old Union Carbide building that was owned by the federal government. It was abandoned. And it was perfect, you could see Parliament Hill from there.”

Vern Harper, one of its members and co-founders, gave a first-person account of the Native People’s Caravan in his 1979 book, “Following the Red Path ~ The Native Peoples Caravan 1974.” It begins with a quote to capture that day on Parliament Hill:

“The RCMP had the guns, the bayonets and the tear gas; we had a drum and a sheet of paper with our demands.” – Louis Cameron, Ojibway Warriors Society.

“The Caravan had set out from Vancouver only two weeks before, with little advance planning and no official funding. It had come to talk about housing, education and health care, but when the people of the Caravan arrived on Parliament Hill the Prime Minister refused to meet them.”

 – Harper, Following the Red Path.

The Native Peoples Caravan had clearly distinguished itself from government-funded, centralized Indigenous organizations. In the UBCIC’s newspaper, The Indian Voice, the editors acknowledged and thanked the Caravanistas, but distanced their Union, the Native Council of Canada, the Inuit Tapirisat and others from the grassroots caravan at the same time. See the newspaper clipping from The Indian Voice, below.

Vern Harper described the difference this way:

“We knew that official Native organizations like the National Indian Brotherhood and the Native Council of Canada weren’t being listened to. It was quite clear to us that these national Native organizations, which had been created by the government in the first place, were just being used. On the one hand, the government would say, “We’ll only talk to your leaders,” but when the leaders tried to talk to them the government wouldn’t listen. And so we decided that we would organize to bring Native people themselves to Parliament.

“We knew that they were ineffective, and that they were not really helping to change things for Native people. In fact, their main role seemed to be to keep the lid on Native protest and Native demands. The government had … funded these organizations in the first place, and it was able to use them to protect itself from any kind of confrontation or direct criticism. When Native people tried to go around the organizations, the government’s line was always, “We can only talk to your official representatives.” Even this was false, because the government wasn’t talking to the official Native leaders. But in 1974, the reality of Native organizations was well established. Many of the people on the Caravan had been in government-funded organizations and gone through that whole frustrating experience.”

The Manifesto, that piece of paper Louis Cameron mentioned, was four pages long.

“The hereditary and treaty rights of all Native Peoples in Canada, including Indian Metis, Non-status and Inuit, must be recognized and respected in the constitution of Canada. It is the continuing violation of our hereditary rights that has resulted in the destruction of the self-reliance of the Native peoples. We are …the most impoverished peoples of Canada.

… the Department of Indian Affairs operates to serve business and government interests – not the interests of the Indian people. We demand a complete investigation of the Department of Indian Affairs by Native People and the transfer of its power and resources to Native communities. …”

Deb Mearns explained the effect of the September 30 event in news media:

“It was a huge eye-opener for the Canadian public because we were an invisible people, and all of a sudden they were faced with us, the Anishinaabe, the Caravan to Ottawa – and how we were treated when we went to Parliament Hill to demonstrate, it was all over the media in Canada and the United States. It was a real awakening – they didn’t know anything about us. There was racism, and there was also a real shock for people to find out that we exist, and the conditions in which people lived.”

*

The Summer 2024 issue of Archive Quarterly features the reoccupation of Two Springs, Secwepemc, and the armed highway toll there, and how it led into the Native Peoples Caravan.

*

The following images from Vern Harper’s 1979 book, “Following the Red Path ~ The Native Peoples Caravan 1974.”

The following images from newspapers at the time:

The Manifesto of the Native Peoples Caravan:

1 NPManifesto Following The Red Path 1979 HarperDownload
2 NPManifesto Following The Red Path 1979 HarperDownload
3 NPManifesto Following The Red Path 1979 HarperDownload
4 NPManifesto Following The Red Path 1979 HarperDownload

Archive Quarterly ~ Summer 24

15 Monday Jul 2024

Posted by in aboriginal title, Non-Status Indian Era, Roadblock

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Featuring:

A special investigation of the 1974 blockade of Highway 12, at Bonaparte, Secwepemc.

After Elder James Morgan’s house burned down, and there was no access to funds or building materials to rebuild it, the Chief and dozens of others held down a narrow strip of the main transportation artery between Lillooet and the Interior – to levy a $5-per-traveller toll, raising funds to rebuild themselves.

With new interviews and a compilation of reports from the time, the coverage leads into a wider background for the on-reserve housing crisis. With a deep dive into on-reserve housing development since the Peoples were displaced from their usual homes.

The Native Peoples’ Caravan

The people at Cache Creek were soon joined by members of the Ojibway Warriors Society, the American Indian Movement in Canada, and allied that worked quickly together to coordinate the Native Peoples’ Caravan to Ottawa that Fall.

“Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia”

Tracking the first ever Supreme Court of Canada Declaration of Aboriginal title lands.

– Excerpts from the court rulings; Interviews with the Tsilhqot’in neighbouring nationals whose recognition of Tsilhqot’in title long predates the existence of Canada; Book review: “Lha Yudit’ih We Always Find A Way – Bringing the Tsilhqot’in Title case home” by Lorraine Weir with Chief Roger William; Maps and Timeline.

Celebrating fifty years of Native Women’s Associations

Jeannette Corbiere-Lavell joins us to discuss her legendary case to regain Indian Status after sexist provisions in the Indian Act – and being sued by the Attorney General – withdrew it.

Grandmothers Healing Journey, Honouring the Grandmothers on the Fraser River, and those who lived and died without their rights or recognition, far from their homes, in the cities. Artists reac out in an exhibition at the New Westminster gallery at the Anvil Building.

Excerpts from the Indian Act, as its amendments impacted women and children’s right to Indian Status.

BC’s Indigenous-focused graduation requirement

One year into BC’s Indigenous-focused graduation requirement: a class profile with one course in Sto:lo that thrived. “That class had the perfect combination of sxwōxwiyám – stories from long ago, and sqwélqwel – news from today.”

More:

20 years since the Kelowna Accord: why didn’t it work? Committing to “Closing the gap” in housing,
health, economies and education, felled the federal government.

The Department of Indian Affairs (Minister of the Interior), describes the conditions of landlessness and displacement that have led to today’s crises, in its first Annual Report, 1874.

The “biggest demonstration in BC history” – Indigenous march on the Victoria Legislature, June 25, 1974.

44 pages 8.5×11 black and white

Honouring the indomitable spirit of Indigenous Peoples west of the Rocky Mountains.

Archive Quarterly ~ Summer 24

Reconciliation means Municipalization

29 Friday Sep 2023

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Part 5 of this week’s blog, No More “Reconciliation Sticks”

In the 1970s, at least one informant in the Canadian government was relaying the state’s plans to Indigenous political leaders.

        The obvious question is, why did the Governors Attorney and General, the Superintendents, judges and Ministers have secret plans?

In one easily cracked nutshell, the Canadian state was already wildly liable for attacking the British Crown’s “Allies; the Tribes and Indian nations with whom We are Connected” – and fur trading partners – in their own protected territories, so peace and good faith would be hard to recover. And because, in the case of the Colony of British Columbia, the British wouldn’t give them any money for Treaties. So the politicians and judges could not very well speak out about what they had in mind – at least not plainly.

The many-headed word “reconciliation” aids them there.

In Canada, it has taken three centuries of brutal tactics, and the martial law of Indian Act Band Councils, and the colony has still not convinced the nations to become consenting colonial districts.

Today, Canada is more desperate than ever to manufacture this consent.

Using the “concept of reconciliation,” among many coercive tactics, a replacement Indian Act targets Indigenous communities under duress.

            Attempting to transform constitutionally and internationally protected peoples, owners of rich and substantial land bases, into virtually landless provincial municipalities, Canada has passed into law an entire framework to replace the Indian Act. You may remember the First Nations Governance Act, revised; the First Nations Fiscal Accountability Act; the First Nations Land Management Act, et al, as the omnibus Bill C-45, 2012, which sparked the Idle No More protests.

            The crucial difference with this municipalization plan, is that the present day First Nations’ entry into confederation would be achieved by consent. Consent to the state and recognition of “crown interests” are achieved incrementally in delegated jurisdiction agreements concerning education, child welfare, housing, health, and such; as well as in negotiation of land claims under the 1974(78) Comprehensive Claims Policy and the 1995 Inherent Rights Policy (the leading extinguishment programmes in Canada today),

There, reconstituted under Canadian law – having ratified an individual First Nation constitution; having released and indemnified the colonizers; having accepted cash as the full and final settlement of Aboriginal rights – the First Nations will be outnumbered in provincial unions of municipalities. There, First Nations will be dependent on five-year provincial funding agreements and occasional aid for natural disasters, and will not retain their autonomy, or sovereignty, or even those controversial Aboriginal rights.

Today’s article looks at the mechanism of the “concept of reconciliation” at play in the municipalization of Indigenous communities. Municipalization is the only future, under Canada’s runaway judges, consistent with their regularized practice of complete abrogation and derogation from “Aboriginal and treaty rights.” It is the only possibility that conforms to the reconciliation program, as described by the Supreme Court of Canada.

            It will not be achieved by any means consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

            But hey, if First Nations want to make Final Agreements that extinguish their rights, who’s to stop them.

From unilateral legislation to coercion

So, in the 1970s, Walter Rudnicki was working for the federal government. He shared confidential information with the leaders of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. He confirmed the intention of Canada to finally coerce the assimilation of every Indian Band as a provincial municipality, and thereby liberate itself from the burden of acquiring title. A consensual union would also indemnify the state of past harms.

Here’s the setting.

            The legendary 1969 White Paper, the Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, had just failed spectacularly up: forging extensive political allegiances from coast to coast to coast. It had been a play to unilaterally assimilate the nations by legislation, demolishing the Indian Act and every line of constitutional ink that described the burden of legally acquiring title to the Indian territories.

            The Nishga case, Calder v. The Attorney General of British Columbia, got a 1973 admission from the Supreme Court of Canada that Aboriginal title continues to exist in Canada, unextinguished.

            Trudeau the First and his Minister of Indian Affairs, Jean Chretien, passed the federal Comprehensive Claims Policy within the year. Any Indigenous nation could apply within the process it enabled, and they could get small cash and smaller land deeds as a final settlement of their title, rights, and interests in the surrendered area.

The Comprehensive Claims Policy, 1978 update, is the leading negotiating policy today.

Indigenous leaders did not particularly need an inside informant to confirm the meaning and intent of that. But it may have been helpful, in some cases, to have a little advance warning of the next strategy being formulated.

            It was helpful in 1981, in the case of Trudeau’s next best plan, the attempt to get a new Constitution from Britain: one which did not include any obligations to the now occupied nations.

            It was helpful in 2009, when British Columbia had tried to simply legislate the Bands under provincial jurisdiction.

Someone gave the Union of BC Indian Chiefs a copy of the September, 2004 “Secret Framework for Renewing Canada’s Policies with Respect to Aboriginal and Treaty Rights.” Emphasis in the original.

The draft Framework begins by reminding us that the Speech from the Throne, April 2004, stressed finding more efficient ways of concluding self-government agreements. (Self-government means municipalization under Canadian law and abandonment of original Indigenous titles and jurisdictions, at least the way Canada uses the term.)

            It mentions the “sectoral follow-up table on expediting land claims,” which are “a key component for transforming relationships.” (That is, until First Nations abandon original claims and accept delegated Canadian authorities in Final Agreements, they won’t get any.)

            It says,

“The Speech from the Throne and the establishment of the sectoral table on land claims and self-government reflects the reality that establishing cooperative relationships with Aboriginal peoples on quality of life issues must be underpinned by effective policies and processes for addressing Aboriginal and treaty rights.” (That is, there won’t be any improvement in on-Reserve quality of life until extinguishment agreements are signed – as above.)

            The Aboriginal participants at the same sectoral follow-up voiced the exact opposite set of priorities:

“Aboriginal groups emphasized that joint work on quality of life issues must be situated in the broader transformative agenda based on recognition and respect for Aboriginal and treaty rights.”

The secret draft writers resolved that stitch by reminding the secret reader,

“The Supreme Court of Canada has stated that the basic purpose of section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, is the reconciliation of the pre-existence of Aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the crown. Reconciliation has become the key organizing principle which the courts have used in addressing issues related to Aboriginal and treaty rights.” (That is, the court has taken the political lead and reduced legal rights to issues, so the government’s job is just to follow suit.)

            Note: We looked at that in Part 2 – Theft by Chief Justice, where the term “reconciliation” was coined.

The 2009 British Columbia “Recognition and Reconciliation Legislation” was crafted under Premier Gordon Campbell and his cabinet of hungry skeletons, particularly Mike deJong, Wally Oppal, and former QC Geoff “they never had any title and if they did it was extinguished by the presence of the crown” Plant.

            This legislative flop was certainly influenced by the 2004 secret plan – if nothing else, it must have been lent audacity. The province’s 2009 Re&Re Legislation even came with sign-off from the First Nations Leadership Council (FNLC)[i] and their lawyers from Mandell Pinder.

            Only thing was, the FNLC hadn’t mentioned anything about the legislation to its members, or their respective peoples and constituents, when the right honourable Mike deJong announced to media the “seismic shift” that was about to occur in BC.

            And consent is sacrosanct. The bluff was called, retracted, and turned to ash – like the White Paper Policy 1969.

            The government’s only working plan now is coercion.

Instead of consent, all these years, there’s only forcible imposition

Canada has forcibly imposed the Indian Reserve and Indian Band structures – on non-treaty and treaty nations alike.

            British Columbia plays a huge part in the necessity that mothered that invention.

The province of BC was written into existence in 1858, unbeknownst to any Indigenous leaders west of the Rockies, by the Queen of the British Empire – precisely one-half the circumference of the globe away. Then she forgot about it, and nobody in England wanted to pay for treaties there.

            There is no need for me to re-write what happened once the Indigenous protest reached a critical level. This is from Bruce Clark’s “The Error in the Tsilhqot’in Case,” 2018:

“In 1874 British Columbia enacted a Crown Lands Act that regarded all crown land as if it were public land available for disposition, even though the land is part of the continental reserve for the Nations or Tribes of Indians, not being “ceded to, or purchased by Us.” In a report to the Canadian Privy Council, Attorney General Télésphore Fournier recommended disallowance under section 90 of the Constitution Act, 1867, on the ground of conflict with the proclamation and section 109. The report was approved in a Minute in Council dated 23rd January 1875 and endorsed by the Governor General.”

“British Columbia then made a proposal to Canada to resolve the Indian problem by establishing a commission to investigate and “set apart” provincial Crown lands as “reserves” for Indian use. This led directly to the Indian Act, 1876. The Acting Minster of Interior Affairs in a report dated 5th November 1875 recommended approval of the provincial plan, which was done by the Canadian Privy Council pursuant to Minute in Council dated 10th November 1875. This entailed leaving the originally disallowed Crown Lands Act to its operation, i.e., reviving it. Attorney General Fournier was elevated to the Supreme Court and was replaced in office by Attorney General Edward Blake. Blake reported under letter dated 6th May 1876 to the Governor General explaining that “Great inconvenience and confusion might result from its disallowance.” As recommended, on second thought, the Governor General did leave the statute to its operation. Treaties were not made thereafter in mainland British Columbia. There was no need, since all Crown land was thereafter unconstitutionally regarded as public land available for disposition. It was as if the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the “subject to” proviso in section 109, BNA Act, duly had been repealed or had never existed.”

When Canada passed the Indian Act, everything an Indigenous nation would need to do to survive was criminalized. In the legislation, Indians were defined negatively as “a person is anyone other than an Indian.”

If Indigenous Nations didn’t consent to be governed by the Indian Act, why go along with it?

Because someone had to take those roles in the leadership and administration of the office; in the Band Council.

            No, they really had to.

You can’t have an economy based on the resources in a few acres of Indian Reserve, and you’re not allowed to sell anything anyway. Not even vegetables or produce, when it makes competition for settlers at their markets.

            In 1935 the Indian Act was amended to reflect that there must be one (1) Chief Counselor per Band, and that he should be elected by popular vote, in the prescribed fashion. This did not resemble any Indigenous structures.

            But without that, the Band can not receive the relief funds provided by the government which took their land. That relief program started approximately at the time the plains peoples were starving because the settlers wiped out the buffalo… to make sure they would starve.

            In BC, it started in 1927, after DC Scott and his colleagues in the Judicial Committee, in Ottawa, dismissed the Claims of the Allied Indian Tribes, formally. The relief was the “BC Special” – $100,000 per year, “In lieu of treaties.”

            There were more than 200 Bands at that time. The <$500 per Indian Band per year, a pittance – and most of it paid to the Minister of the Interior to administrate the fund, hasn’t quite kept up with inflation here in 2023.

This is what makes things like “economic reconciliation” sound attractive to First Nations. This is how “the reconciliation of aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the crown” is achieved: under duress.

Pitawanakwat, 2000

In an Oregon County court, Justice Stewart compared OJ Pitawanakwat’s situation in Canada with members of the Irish Republican Army in Ireland. She found it was manifestly the same. Just as Spain refused, in the 1990s, to extradite IRA members to Britain, Justice Stewart refused Canada’s extradition request.

            Pitawanakwat was present at the Gustafsen Lake police siege, 1995, and had subsequently been charged, detained, and released on bail after two years. He fled to the USA.

            Now, because of the facts that “his conviction was of a political character,” and in a “politically charged climate,” were recognized by an American judge, he lives there still, unable to return home to Anishinabek territory.

At Gustafsen Lake, they said no to the Indian Act; they said no to municipalization; and they said no to extinguishment in full and final settlements. The Attorney General declared war on them.

“We’re not going to agree to anything that will affect our economy.”

Thus spake the province’s negotiator at the St’át’imc Chiefs Council protocol table, in 2008. He might as well have been speaking on behalf of the Canadian state.

The “reconciliation” proposed by Canada would be achieved, if ever, because it is the only prescription for change that Canada will agree to. And that change is: Indigenous nations must submit to their bisection and reduction to scattered postage-stamp communities, where less than a quarter of their own Band membership has room (or housing) to live. They also must relinquish all claims against the province, the state, and “anyone else” for past harm. They must reconstitute themselves, starting with a new Constitution for each First Nation, and enter the hallowed halls of the Union of BC Municipalities.

The conditions under which that kind of “consent” would be achieved, would not hold up under international scrutiny.

It would be achieved under a colonially imposed, extra-legal regime, rather than by authentic governance procedures. It would be achieved by denying Indigenous titles, and capitalizing on the financial ruin which has resulted from this. It would be achieved by refusing to recognize authentic and legitimate holders of the rights to political decisions, who can be marginalized by the imposed ratification procedures.

But, to the great credit of humanity – which will go down in history forever – Indigenous Peoples may be cash poor, but they’ll surely survive these lean, mean years and live their own way.

Thank you very much for reading. Takem i nsnukw’nukw’a.

[i] Executives of the First Nations Summit (BC Treaty Process); Assembly of First Nations (BC region); and Union of BC Indian Chiefs.