'Treaty' negotiations a half-billion-dollar lie
Cowichan Valley Citizen
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Byline: Meaghan Walker-Williams
Column: Cowichan Beat
Source: The Citizen
About three weeks ago, I was handed copies of a series of documents that are basically the federal government's guidelines or playbook for certain aspects of treaty negotiations.
I guess what happened was that about four years ago somebody in the Department of Justice and another few people in the Department of Indian Affairs grew a conscience overnight and decided to leak this stuff to some friends of mine back east.
The Summit also received these documents but never bothered to circulate them to the people in treaty negotiations or First Nations peoples in B.C.
One of these documents is entitled "Guidelines for Federal Self-Government Negotiators;" subtitled "Language for recognizing the inherent right of self-government in agreements and treaties." True, the Delgamuukw decision had not actually come down yet. However, what I find chilling is, when I read the proposed language by HTG's staff about self-government, it was straight from these federal packages.
Another friend of mine who was a former provincial ministerial aide confided recently that when he began to ask about the B.C. treaty process, he was told basically, "Look, the deal is First Nations have these 'theoretical rights' and the B.C. treaty process is a way that they are going to give up these theoretical rights for practical realities."
And yet, littered throughout these documents are references to international law and the peril that Canada could put itself in, legally, should certain clauses, phrases and words be used in the treaties of the B.C. treaty process. There are not many such references but there are enough to convince me that what we are dealing with as indigenous peoples, when we are sitting across from the feds at the table, is a very dishonest bunch of people.
When one of the Native law specialists came to meet with us last week she related some of her experiences about when she had worked for the Department of Justice and the DIA. This is not an exaggeration. She was called in to do some work up in the Interior. She began to actually negotiate with the Native people across from the table. She was very quickly called to task by her employers and confronted with near hysteria when they asked her, "What the HELL are you doing?" She said "negotiating a treaty." She was specifically told that she wasn't there to do that. She was there to simply sit across from the table, shuffle papers and look serious.
After one such session, she literally felt ill watching these farces go on. After the treaty team for indigenous people concluded their presentation and left, the entire team of feds just laughed and laughed and laughed. It was not long after this experience that she left her work for the federal government.
I am not saying this to insult the intelligence of those who may have really believed that what was happening in negotiations was negotiations. But it has be explained to those who may have been led to believe in this process. A half-a-billion-dollar lie has been told to Native people and non-native people in Canada by the federal government. The lie is that treaty negotiations are supposed to actually result in treaties.
The sick part of the lie is that they have even hijacked the word "treaty" and are improperly using it in place of what is actually the "land claims agreement" process. A land claims agreement is NOT a treaty. It is based on the concept of extinguishment of aboriginal rights, rights that are supposed to be protected by the Constitution of Canada and by international law covenants. I have strongly suspected for a long time that there are people in the treaty process who know this, who are supposed to be working for us but who have decided to ignore this reality.
When I see the numbers of people who have turned their backs on the B.C. treaty process and refused to continue listening to lies upon lies upon lies by the federal government, I am greatly encouraged. The government thinks we are stupid people. The government thinks that if it can just tell enough lies and throw enough money at some of our people to help spread those lies that our people can be convinced to give up on our rights.
The reality is, even if people in our community have not understood on some level that we have been lied to, we have felt it in the core of our being when we have attended these meetings. We knew something wasn't right. I also suspect that this is why the HTG has refused to take our negotiations into a Big House model, the Big House naturally being the core of our governance as indigenous people. And we know that in the Big House, when somebody puts that paint on, and stands up they speak not in lies, half-truths or with a forked tongue.
The best example I saw of this was at the very first meeting of the treaty groups I attended. It happened to be in the S'amuna' Big House. I saw a white man stand up in S'amuna' Big House and babble as if he was there to tell me what I needed to know about what it means to be indigenous. He kept saying, "My Chief blah blah blah." I asked him point-blank: "I don't mean to be rude, sir, but you don't look any Indian I've ever seen. Where are you from?"
He looked at me like he was about ready to kill me. But he could not answer. He just sputtered and stared at me with his mouth wide open. By the way, that's the same hwinitum who supposedly negotiated the Nanaimo people's AIP we've been hearing so much about.
It has cost the feds and the province and our treaty people half a billion dollars over nine years to tell a big lie about us as Aboriginal people. It doesn't cost any money to tell the truth. And the truth is: As indigenous people, our rights cannot be stolen. Our rights cannot be bartered away without our consent. That's where the rubber meets the road. If these rights are only "theoretical," then why has the government wasted ALL this MONEY in pretending to let us actually have a choice as to whether or not we shall give up these rights? Why don't they just mow down our big houses again, and snatch back our lands and proceed to tax us? Why? Because they need to convince us that they can't do it. But half a billion dollars in lies later, they still haven't managed to fool us.