Statement of Intent, Samuna Hwnuachalewum - Oct 10, 2002
Delivered to the BC Treaty Commission via mail
Statement of Intent, Samuna Hwnuachalewum - Oct 10, 2002
Request to the Government of Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
We are the families of the Somena Nation and allied families.
We who sign this document ask that the Government of Canada recognize us as a separate nation and stop treating us as part of the Cowichan Indian Band, also known as the "Cowichan Tribes."
Part I Reasons for our Request
History of Independence
Although we are natives of the Cowichan Valley and are sometimes called "Cowichans," the Cowichan peoples are traditionally not one nation, but seven nations. Those seven nations are the Somena, Comiaken, Quamichan, Clemclemaluts, Khenipsen, Koksilah, and Kilpahlas. This is why the Cowichan Indian Band calls itself the "Cowichan Tribes" and lists Somena and the other nations on its official emblem. Even though the Chief and Council of the Cowichan Indian Band lists the name of our nation on its emblem, we have never agreed to be ruled by the Chief and Council or to be part of the Cowichan Indian Band and we insist on being independent of them.
The "Cowichan Indian Band" and its "Chief and Council" were created by the government of Canada pursuant to Canada's "Indian Act". None of this is part of our tradition. The government of the Cowichan Indian Band is organized almost exactly like a European style municipal government except that the leader is called a "Chief" instead of a "Mayor." There is no word in our language for "chief."
Our system of self-governance is different from the European traditions you are familiar with. It is also different from the traditional forms of governance of other native people of North America. But our system is not difficult to understand.
Traditional Leaders
Like all the other Cowichan nations, the Somena Nation is made of large, self-governing families. The leaders of our families are our sulqween, loosely translated as "elders". The sulqween of all the families of the Somena Nation are the leaders of the Somena Nation. We have at times in the past had other leaders whose honor and integrity have allowed them to be influential among all the families of the Somena Nation. These leaders were called "si'em" which means honored persons. These honored persons have sometimes been called in English "hereditary chiefs" because they generally came from the most honored family. But that is a mistranslation of the word "si'em." Si'em are very different from the hereditary chiefs of other native peoples of North America.
Whether you understand our form of governance or not, it does exist. We still follow the guidance of our sulqween as our ancestors have for countless generations. This system of self-governance has existed in the Somena Nation in an unbroken tradition for thousands of years. It is older than the government of Canada. It is older than England or France. It is older than Christianity. It is older than the city of Rome. We have continued to follow the wisdom and leadership of our sulqween in our traditional ways even after you passed your Indian Act. The words of our sulqween have continued to be more important to us than the bylaws of the Chief and Council of Cowichan Tribes. The Chief and Council of Cowichan Tribes have never replaced our traditional sulqween as the leaders of the Somena Nation.
Grievances
We have watched as you gave the Chief and Council tens of millions of dollars per year. Millions of dollars of that money was intended to benefit our people, but was entrusted to the Chief and Council of the Cowichan Indian Band. We have watched as that money has been misused, squandered and embezzled. The most recent example of this is the $350,000 that the Cowichan Indian Band misappropriated from a forestry program to their mouldy homes program. Both the Province of British Columbia and the federal Department of Indian Affairs have acknowledged that this was a misappropriation of funds.
It has been extremely difficult for us to even obtain audited financial statements to determine where the money entrusted to the Chief and Council has gone. Even now, we find that at least five million dollars of money you gave to the Cowichan Indian Band was transferred to the Khowutzun Development Corporation (KDC) owned by the Cowichan Indian Band and run by a close relative of the Chief. We have never been able to obtain any audited financial statements of the KDC despite repeated requests.
The courts of Canada have ruled that the government of Canada has a fiduciary duty towards our people. Our own traditional laws hold that you owe us for the damages you have done to our people. We hereby inform you that we have no confidence in the Chief and Council of the Cowichan Indian Band. We hereby inform you that no money entrusted to the Cowichan Indian Band for our benefit is actually benefiting us in any substantial way. The fiduciary responsibility that the government of Canada has towards the Somena people has been neglected for the past 150 years by Indian Agents and the Department of Indian Affairs who refuse to intervene despite our repeated requests for intervention. Under both our laws and yours, you cannot compensate us or fulfill your fiduciary obligations by handing money to the Chief and Council of the Cowichan Indian Band and ignoring what happens to that money. You must stop giving them our money now. It is significant that neither the Chief of the Cowichan Indian Band, nor any member of the council, are members of the Somena Nation. Our people are not represented on council. Some may claim to be Somena, but the reality is that they are not, according to their own lineage.
Misappropriation of funds is only one of many grievances we have towards the Chief and Council of the Cowichan Indian Band. They have attempted to evict elders from their homes. They have repeatedly hired their own close relatives to highly paid positions in the band office. They have given their friends and relatives preference in housing assignments. On June 1, 2002, they began taxing us without our consent, despite our objections, and without the referendum required by a unanimous vote of the band members at an annual general meeting in August 2000. They did not even notify us of the new tax. After the tax was being collected and some of our people refused to pay it, the Chief and Council held a meeting on July 23, 2002 at which they insulted our sulqween and shouted them down when they tried to speak. The timing of the meeting in mid-afternoon was calculated to make sure that some opponents of the tax who work or go to school could not attend. Then, there was blatant fraud in the vote count at that meeting.
For these reasons, and many, many others, we do not wish to be considered part of the Cowichan Indian Band any longer. The most recent letter recieved by Meaghan Walker-Williams from the Department of Indian Affairs completely ignores the Comprehensive Funding Agreement's conditions of "Accountability Framework" and the refusal of Cowichan Tribes Chief and Council to properly develop, implement and adequately maintain a "conflict of interest policy" or a mechanism for redress of grievances. This leaves us with no alternative but insist that we no longer be considered part of Cowichan Tribes. We will not live under the tyranny of "Cowichan Tribes Chief and Council" and the apathy, intentional ignorance and dereliction of duty of the Department of Indian Affairs.
Never Signed Any Treaties
Like the other Cowichan nations, the Somena Nation has been a separate nation for thousands of years. We have never agreed to any treaty with Canada or Britain. We have never agreed to be ruled by anyone other than our own traditional leaders - our sulqween and si'em. We have never been conquered. We have never signed any treaty giving up our rights. We still have a right to govern ourselves in our traditional way. The Constitution of Canada recognizes this right, but the Department of Indian Affairs has been slow to adapt to the 1982 Charter and Constitution.
Part II Actions Requested
Therefore, we request the following from the government of Canada:
Recognition of Independence from Cowichan Indian Band
We ask that the Government of Canada recognize us as a separate nation and stop treating us as part of the Cowichan Indian Band. We are entitled to a greater degree of independence and self-governance than is recognized in the Indian Act, and we would welcome a treaty with Canada that recognizes this. In the meantime, if you insist upon treating us as an "Indian Band" under your Indian Act, we ask that we at least be treated as a separate Indian Band from the Cowichan Indian Band.
We have been told by an official of the Department of Indian Affairs that the department is encouraging native communities to choose their leaders in their own ways rather than in the standard way specified in the Indian Act. We have been told this is called "custom elections" in the jargon of the Department of Indian Affairs. We have already chosen our own leaders in our own traditional ways. Our leaders are our sulqween. We now ask that you recognize them as our leaders. We ask that they be recognized as sulqween, leaders of independent families, not as a Chief and Council. The institution of Chief and Council is foreign to us.
If you recognize the Somena Nation as a separate Indian Band and insist on coming into our territory and holding elections for Chief and Council, we hereby declare that such a Chief and Council of the Somena Nation will only have as much authority as the sulqween give them. The parliament in Ottawa does not have the authority to come to our territory, conduct elections to create a Chief and Council, and give that Chief and Council the power to tax us. The parliament in Ottawa does not have the authority to tax us itself, so it certainly cannot give that power to anyone else. The parliament in Ottawa does not have the authority to choose our leaders for us, or to determine the method by which they are chosen, or to give our leaders any non-traditional powers. The Parliament of Canada also does not have the "right" to give permission to anyone in our territories to collect taxes in our territory and on our property.
Separate Treaty Negotiations
The Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group (HTG) is currently engaged in treaty negotiations with the Canadian representatives of the Queen of England. In its statement of intent filed with the British Columbia Treaty Commission, (BCTC) the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group lists the Somena Nation as one of the nations it claims to represent in those negotiations. We insist that the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group does not represent the Somena Nation. Until the families of the Somena Nation and allied families choose someone to represent us in treaty negotiations, no one may speak for us or agree to anything on our behalf.
A respected Speaker (Willie Seymour), who the elders of Somena wanted to represent us at the Treaty Group's work, was fired without cause from the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group despite the elders declaring their support for him to continue working for our people's interest. This was done so that a corrupt councilor was able to have her daughter put on the payroll of the Treaty Group and given the latitude to bill our Treaty Group for over $200,000 to photocopy work that had previously been conducted by an elder of Somena. When Thi Lelum (Big House) Speaker Willie Seymour objected to this and other practices of HTG, he was fired. Elders protested, but the Treaty Group executive did not care to hear them or respect their wishes.
We specifically reject the Framework Agreement that the HTG has signed and we also reject any treaty related measure, interim agreement, agreement in principle or treaty of any kind that has been or will be negotiated between the HTG and the representatives of the Queen of England regardless of whether any such agreement, measure or treaty is negotiated in our name by HTG, signed on our behalf by the Chief and Council of the Cowichan Indian Band, or ratified by a majority of the Cowichan Indian Band membership. No treaty or agreement is binding upon the Somena Nation until it is unanimously approved by the families of the Somena Nation and allied families. We will not pay any part of the debts that the HTG has incurred. We did not agree for the HTG to represent us. We did not consent to them borrowing money in our name. We object to the manner in which the negotiations were conducted. We will not pay back the money that they squandered. Furthermore, many members of the Somena people have told the HTG in writing and in person to stop negotiations on our behalf. Our request to not be included in these sham negotiations has never been heard or respected by the HTG.
If the Queen of England would like to send representatives to talk to us about a treaty, we will talk to them. But we do not want to go into debt to pay negotiators who do not listen to us and we do not want to be represented by the HTG. We are convinced that they are incapable of acting in our best interests.
Direct Payment of Funds
We ask that the millions of dollars currently being allocated for our benefit no longer be entrusted to the Chief and Council of the Cowichan Indian Band. We ask that any funds allocated for our benefit by the government of Canada or any province of Canada be entrusted only to persons designated by our sulqween. We further ask that until our sulqween notify you in writing of who is authorized to receive such funds on our behalf, that all monies that are supposed to be used for Somena people be held in trust so as not to be further squandered by the mismanagement and inept leadership of "Cowichan Tribes"
Recognition of Separate Territory
We ask that all territory on land and sea owned, controlled, or used by our ancestors that has not been legitimately transferred to foreign owners and all land now owned by members of the Somena Nation and allied families be recognized as our territory.
Our ownership, use and control of our territory is not adequately recognized by the Indian Act and we would welcome a treaty with Canada that corrects this problem. In the meantime, if you are not willing to recognize our ownership, use and control of all our territory, we ask that the land owned by members of the Somena Nation be recognized as a separate Indian Reserve from the Cowichan Indian Reserve. This includes land any of our members purchase later. This also includes land owned by anyone who joins our nation later.
Membership
The short name for our nation is "Somena," also known as "Somenos" or the "Somena Nation." The word "nation" in English implies a European style nation. The Somena Nation is a group of independent families in the Salish tradition, not a European nation. To make this clear, the formal name of our group of families is the "Families of the Somena Nation and Allied Families." The allied families are families politically allied with the Somena families, but who are more closely related to other Cowichan nations than to Somena. In this document, we are all sometimes referred to as the "Somena Nation". This includes the allied families. In our tradition, families are more important than nations.
In order to be a member of the Families of the Somena Nation and Allied Families, a person must first be a member of one of our families. Each family decides for themselves who is and who is not a member of that family according to custom and traditions of thousands of years. A family is a member of the Families of the Somena Nation and Allied Families if all the sulqween of the other families agree to accept them as a member family.
Self-Governance
Each family chooses their own sulqween according to tradition. Each family is responsible for its own affairs and land use. The sulqween from different families get together to settle matters between families or to resolve matters that affect the whole nation.
In relationships with other nations, the sulqween of the nation may choose one or several si'em to speak for all of them.
Refusal to Recognize Cowichan Indian Band Authority
Whether or not the government of Canada recognizes us as an independent nation, the Chief and Council of the Cowichan Indian Band do not have any right to rule us. They are an institution created by the Indian Act. They are not part of snuweyeth, our tradition. We have never signed any treaty or given up any of our rights to self-governance. Therefore, we have a right to continue to carry on our own affairs in accordance with snuweyeth rather than the Indian Act. Our right to do this exists whether it is recognized or not, but our right to self-governance is recognized to various degrees in international law, in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and in Section 35 of Canada's Constitution.
We do not have to accept the authority of the Chief and Council of the Cowichan Indian Band and we now say they have no power over us. They do not have any authority to pass bylaws for us to follow. They do not have any authority to accept money on our behalf from the government of Canada, from the Province of British Columbia, from persons leasing our land, or from anyone else. They do not have any authority to speak for us or to negotiate treaties for us or to choose who will negotiate for us. They do not have any authority to grant or withhold business licenses or other permits and permissions. They do not have any authority to control the extraction of timber, gravel or other natural resources in our territory. They are not entitled take for themselves portions of lease money that is earned from leases on our lands. They do not have any authority to settle land ownership disputes in our territory. They do not have any authority to issue or withhold certificates of possession for land. They do not have any authority to tax us. They have no say over our membership rolls. They do not have any authority over us at all. They have never had any right to rule us.
Request to the Government of Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Signatory page for the __________________________________________________ family
As stated in the Request to the Government of Canada, we wish to be recognized as members of the Families of the Somena Nation and Allied Families.