Indigenous reports force feds ahead of UN review

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Canada, Indigenous Peoples, Sovereignty, UN, United Nations

75% of reports to Committee on racial discrimination sent by Indigenous organizations.

Last week, Canada switched arrogance and condescension for gestures of off-kilter desperation at the Assembly of First Nations’ general assembly. That is probably because on August 14 and 15, Canada will be under the microscope at UN headquarters in Geneva. Fifteen Indigenous Peoples’ organizations have already submitted extensive reports for the Session, detailing Canada’s “seek and destroy” approach to their internationally recognized human rights.

It is a typical Canadian tactic to invent meaningless distractions right before a review by a UN treaty body: their delegates to the Session can then reply to the Committee’s independent experts by talking about “initiatives” or “joint meetings” which do not substantially exist, instead of answering directly.

This time Canada sent four federal ministers to the AFN’s annual assembly, July 25-27, where they implied that Ottawa is going to rescind the Indian Act. Bennett (Minister of Indigenous Affairs), Wilson-Raybould (Minister of Justice), McKenna (Environment) and Goodale (Public Safety), all made vague references to bright promises yet to come.

The only concrete message from Ottawa to the AFN Chiefs – only half of whom showed up at the all-expense-paid meeting in Regina – was that it will no longer claw back unused capital funds to First Nation communities after twelve months of dispersal.

This miserable material figure can and should be unsuccessfully compared to the immaterial, yet golden, future intimated by Bennett’s and Wilson-Raybould’s reported remarks.  “How will your nation and Indigenous government be organized? What is your territory?” Their remarks, on the other hand, will certainly be judged against the picture of Indigenous life under Canada which has been detailed in reports to the UN CERD.

“ Skeena watershed and coastal Indigenous communities depend on the salmon for food, their economies and cultures. This (LNG, Prince Rupert) project is a prime example of what’s wrong with Canada’s approach to engaging Indigenous communities in large-scale industrial developments: It continuously fails to honour the legal obligations to Indigenous Peoples in protecting their traditional resources; The Canadian government generally consults with Band Councils, which were created under the colonial Indian Act, and often fails to consult hereditary leadership or respect traditional governance systems; …”

. Skeena Indigenous Groups’ Submission to UN CERD. July 6, 2017

It is interesting to note that only weeks after this report to the CERD was posted for the Session, Petronas announced its withdrawal from this proposed project, “Pacific NorthWest LNG.”

The UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has dealt Canada sharp rebukes over the last two decades: stop extinguishing Indigenous Peoples’ titles; stop ignoring murderers who target Indigenous women; stop trying to destroy the Lubicon Cree to get oil access.

The UN treaty bodies have an internationally recognized judicial power to issue recommendations to member states in keeping with upholding international human rights conventions. Each committee periodically receives reports from the state under review, and also from non-governmental organizations, civil society, academia, and now from Indigenous Peoples’ organizations.

It is typically the reports from Indigenous Peoples and NGOs which have, in the past, resulted in strong recommendations from UN Committees to Canada. Many of those have produced changes in the government’s behaviour, although such changes have been isolated and usually only in direct connection to the issues reported. In British Columbia this includes instances of forgiveness of government treaty negotiation loans to small Bands; dissolution of treaty societies formed to negotiate in the BC treaty process – against community members’ protests; and possibly the current standstill in BC Treaty Commission business altogether.

Extinguishment “negotiations” are an ongoing problem that is at the center of the CERD’s focus on Canada:

“There are no viable options other than legal court action to counter the BCTC “treaty” process about these overlaps into St’át’imc territory. As negotiations with the outside First Nations progress, the eventual outcome will be the extinguishment of significant portions of St’át’imc territory without the St’át’imc having been involved in any negotiations to this effect.”

. SHADOW REPORT BY THE INTERIOR ALLIANCE: CANADA’S ONGOING                               COLONIZATION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES.   UN CERD COMMITTEE JULY 2017

In contradiction to the Interior Alliance’s extensive documentation of the extinguishment effect of Canadian “negotiations,” however, Minister Wilson-Raybould remarked to the press on her government’s plans: “They are explicit in rejecting certain long-standing federal positions—such as the focus on extinguishment, surrender or denial of rights.” Incidentally, that’s what Canada told the CERD in 2007.

 

Extinguishment, surrender and denial are precisely what Canada offers Indigenous Peoples. There is a veritable firestorm of examples of this, enveloping Indigenous Peoples. It is highly suspect that a Canadian Minister climbs a prominent national stage and says “we’re just about to change,” (again) only days before Canada has to answer a lot of very pointed questions in front of the world.

Consistent Canadian practices are to assimilate and co-opt economic development, to municipalize isolated communities under provincial legislation, to criminalize traditional economies, to rigidly maintain dependency by an overbearing and constantly metamorphosing bureaucracy which can never be finally functional. There is the “First Nations Land Codes” – where a community votes to recognize Canadian supremacy in its traditional territories, just for the privilege to enjoy managerial duties on-reserve. There are the “Strategic Land Use Planning Agreements” – where communities have shared maps of their territories showing cultural values and inadvertently given tacit approval to development in huge “low cultural value” lands. In the national Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, crucial voices have undoubtedly been denied. Indigenous Peoples’ rights under Article 1 of the International Covenants on Civil and Political, and Social, Economic and Cultural Rights are completely denied. Canada specializes in the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their homes and communities, requiring parents and families to submit and surrender to provincial courts which have no jurisdiction whatsoever in the case of children and families who are not Canadian until they produce a referendum from their nation joining Canada.

Minister Wilson-Raybould, apparently speaking for those Indigenous individuals who have exercised their right to choose a nationality, appealed to the Chiefs to imagine their future as Canadians whose Indigenous rights are recognized and respected.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court of Canada expresses the state’s right to own Indigenous nations it has no treaties with. It is certainly a matter of interest in any investigation of racial discrimination. Apparently the key to Canada’s jurisdiction over nations with which it has no constructive agreements is owing to the fact that the British monarch, appointed by the Christian god, had sent a sailor with orders to discover and possess others’ lands in His name, and he was successful in this because the Christian god was superior, so the Supreme Court of Canada seems to say, to any of the existing nations’ gods. We know it is the presence of other Christian nations which is at issue in the matter of the Canadian court’s opinion on sovereign possession, because the issue was finally settled in 1846, according to Canadian judges, when the USA agreed in the Oregon Treaty to withdraw from pursuing any interests north of the 49^th parallel. From that date, Great Britain and now Canada enjoys sovereign possession of all lands from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean above that parallel, except Alaska, as per SCC, because all other Christian nations had, by that time, also promised Great Britain they would pursue no interests there.

Unfortunately for that internationally repugnant display of Canadian faith, which is the state’s current legal precedent, it is not clear that any Indigenous Peoples have formally joined and adhered to Canada. Wilson-Raybould was referring to that popular understanding among the Chiefs. The CERD has been made aware of that understanding, and again in the reports for this Session:

“In particular, we bring to the Committee’s attention the state’s use of its own  imposed Indian Band administration, under the Indian Act, on the state-defined Indian Reserve, to manufacture the appearance of Líl’wat consent to Canada’s disposal of the remainder of Líl’wat customary titles to lands and wealth outside the Reserve.

“Líl’watmc ask that the Committee question Canada about the origins of any rights of jurisdiction it may have in relation to Líl’wat which could justify Canadian licensing and development without the consent and against the Interests of the Líl’watmc under the Convention, and resulting in the continuing displacement and dispossession of Líl’wat.”

Líl’wat report to UNCERD, July 2017, with the International Human Rights                                         Association of American Minorities

The picture developed by fifteen Indigenous Peoples’ organizations shows Canada’s unabated attempts to assimilate Indigenous Peoples – their worldview, identity, economies, individuals, children, histories, and especially their lands and natural wealth – into Canada. Unilateral, non-consensual assimilation is categorically prohibited as a matter of human rights norms, and yet that end of the spectrum of Canada’s colonization is not the worst.

“If Ontario and Canada insist on excluding us from meaningful consultations on the Agreement in Principle, then we insist that Canada and Ontario exclude the areas where our First Nations’ asserted Aboriginal title and rights overlap with the “Algonquins of Ontario” claims, or at least suspend negotiations over  such areas, until such time as we have engaged in meaningful consultations and reached an acceptable accommodation.

“Despite our objections in March 2016, the “Algonquins of Ontario”, Canada and Ontario have proceeded to hold a referendum vote on the AIP.”

ALGONQUIN NATION SECRETARIAT  TO THE UN CERD COMMITTEE                                                          July 2017

 

“How does one start to describe the horrific conduct of Canada in their relentless efforts to extinguish the rights of Indigenous peoples within their ancestral homelands?”

“While the Supreme Court of Canada has determined that the Canadian and provincial governments have a duty to consult, negotiate, and accommodate Indigenous rights, the governments use these consultation and negotiation processes to coerce, terrorize, terminate, extinguish, and discriminate against Indigenous peoples and our rights.”

Submission to the UNCERD 93rd Session, July 31-August 25, 2017.                                             On behalf of the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Maliseet Nation

 

“Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek, also known as Grassy Narrows First Nation, is located on the English-Wabigoon River system in North Western Ontario, and is infamous for mercury contamination from an upstream pulp and paper mill. … In 2016, a former mill worker came forward to confess the mill had illegally buried barrels of waste along the river, leading to the persisting contamination and inability of the river system to recover naturally.”

Chiefs of Ontario report to UNCERD, July 2017

 

“On November 29, 2016, the Canadian Federal Cabinet directed the National Energy Board to approve the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. This pipeline poses an unacceptable risk to the health, safety and livelihoods of First Nations throughout British Columbia, and will contribute to the negative environmental and health impacts experienced by Indigenous Peoples downstream of the tar sands, and of all peoples throughout the world as a result of accelerating global climate change. The Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, Musqueam, Coldwater, Upper Nicola, Stk’emlupsemc te Secwepemc, Aithchelitz, Shxwhay Village, Yakweakwioose, Kwawkwaw-apilt, Tzeachten, Skowkale, Soowalie, and Squiala peoples have commenced legal proceedings seeking to challenge the federal approval for the Trans Mountain project… It is well established that diluted bitumen contains toxic chemicals that are a threat to drinking water, health, and the well-being of salmon and other beings.”

Submission to the UNCERD 93rd Session, 2017.                                                                                 Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs.

Minister Bennett, for the federal department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, said to the AFN Chiefs last week: “We want to partner with you on building on the strengths and assets you have in your communities. You have the power to determine the future of your communities.”

The international community is quite aware that Canada still wishes to build on the strengths and benefits belonging to Indigenous communities, whether Canada co-opts the participation of those communities through “benefits sharing” or “land management” or other agreements achieved under duress. The international community is also aware that Indigenous Peoples have the power to determine the future of their communities, and that Minister Bennett and her government may well have nothing to do with that.

As the Union of BC Indian Chiefs’ report articulated, “We are presently witnessing a great divide between the words of the Canadian government and its actions on the ground. We would like to highlight the term “rights ritualism” for the consideration of the Committee in respect to Canada’s present actions: a way of embracing the language of human rights precisely to deflect real human rights scrutiny and to avoid accountability for human rights abuses. Countries are often willing to accept human rights treaty commitments to earn international approval, but they resist the changes that the treaty obligations require.”

 

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Living Treaties, Lasting Arrangements

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Comprehensive Claims Policy, Federal Liberals Comprehensive Claims Policy, Living Treaties Lasting Arrangements

Report of the Task Force to Review Comprehensive Claims Policy, 1985

This report is a timepiece – exposing a brief window of candor on the part of Canada’s political engineers. It is an analysis of the federal approach to minimizing Indigenous scope for land title restitution – after the Supreme Court failed to unanimously agree that Aboriginal rights no longer existed, after Calder in 1973, Canada wrote its Comprehensive Claims Policy. The report includes corresponding insight and recommendation.

The report is attached here in 7 parts via the link above.

It came in the midst of the First Ministers’ conferences on implementation of constitutional Aboriginal rights, 1982-1987.  Written after the 1982 Constitution Act, grappling with Section 35 where “Aboriginal and treaty rights are hereby affirmed” and before that First Ministers Conference series imploded in 1987 (accomplishing nothing except a formal return to “talk and log” politics), this report is unique in its unequivocal, explicit recognition of extensive Indigenous rights and the corresponding Canadian obligations. The Task Force received submissions from 60 Indigenous nations and organizations during its work.

Note that this volume is now all but inaccessible. Also note this report’s extensive and useful bibliography.

Oweekeno-Kitasoo-Nuxalk Tribal Council: re. land claim settlements

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Canada, Land claims

Delivered to the First Nations Summit meeting in Vancouver, February 4, 1991.

oweekeno-kitasoo-nuxalk-re-land-claim-settlement-to-fns-meeting-feb-4-1991

Excerpt:

In the beginning the Creator bestowed upon our forefathers all the lands, waters, air and all its natural resources. This is a fact we all know as it has been handed down to us for generations and generations. With the blessings of the Creator, which today we now call Aboriginal Title and Rights, our First Nations cultivated our tribal territories in harmony with nature and perpetually sustained all natural resources and our peoples through good government, peace and order. Before we talk about land claims today, let us all stand so that we may share with you a few words with the Creator…

… When we talk about land claims we must never forget that the Creator provided all our First Nations with tribal territories adjacent to each other.

… Today, because the leaders of both the Governments of Canada and British Columbia, who we will call the “Crown”, want to totally eliminate our claim to traditional tribal territories, there are efforts made that appear to be dealing with the resolution of land claims, self-government and whatever other “aboriginal title and right” the First Nations claim to still hold. We must not forget the fact that our ancestors gained international recognition that the Crown must gain the consent of the First Nations if they want to take our traditional tribal territories. We must not forget the fact that the Crown, in spite of treaties with many First Nations throughout Canada, have consistently imposed cultural genocide policies and practices on all our First Nations. It is these two key facts that prove the Crown is still trying to eliminate our claim to traditional tribal territories while appearing to try to resolve the Indian problem.

If the Crown is serious and sincere about resolving the land claims question with all our First Nations, then it must consider the following recommendations:

BC Treaty Advocate Elected Chair of UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

Grand Chief Edward John has spent the past 20 years in the BC treaty process, which produces extinguishment Agreements.

Originally posted to the Vancouver Media Co-op, June 10, 2012

The 11th Session of the top forum for Indigenous peoples in the world began with a lurch. The sixteen-member Forum elected, by acclamation, Grand Chief Edward John to be their Chair. The announcement was made during a preliminary meeting, May 6, 2012, at the start of a two week meeting in New York City. Hailing from Tl’azt’en (in northern BC), this Chief will be familiar to anyone who has followed the machinations of the BC treaty process over the last twenty years: John was the founding Chair of the First Nations Summit, an organization formed to “represent First Nations” involved with the BC Treaty Commission (BCTC).

Perhaps, in 1992, the election of a man affiliated with this Summit to Chair the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues – understood to be advancing the cause of self-determination, land rights, and everything else contained in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, would not be an obvious contradiction in terms. However, twenty years later, after the ratification of two extinguishment treaties in that process, this election must be a point of confusion.

When Nisga’a ratified an agreement with British Columbia and Canada in 2000, they released the Nisga’a claim to 100 per cent of their traditional territory in exchange for about 8 per cent of the land back, in Fee Simple Title and with BC holding the underlying title. No alarm bells were rung by Chief John. Every First Nation in BC was watching that process very closely, as they believed, rightly, that future negotiations in the BC treaty process would follow the Nisga’a template.

When, in 2007, Tsawwassen became the first Indigenous people to ratify a Final Agreement produced in the BC Treaty Commission, the text of that document stated:

Tsawwassen First Nation releases Canada, British Columbia and all other persons from all claims, demands, actions, or proceedings, of whatever kind, and whether known or unknown, that the Tsawwassen First Nation ever had, now has or may have in the future, relating to or arising from any act, or omission, before the effective date that may have affected or infringed any aboriginal rights, including aboriginal title, in Canada of the Tsawwassen First Nation.

This clause is also to be found in the Nisga’a Agreement. It is a surrender, rather than the basis of continuing nation-to-nation relations. Tsawwassen made these concessions for a settlement of less than 1 per cent of their traditional territory, held in Fee Simple. The total cash value of the deal was $33.6 million plus self-government funding of $2.9 million annually over the first five years of the treaty – according to government press releases.

Perhaps Chief John takes a leaf out of then-Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl’s book, who declared at the time, “Who am I to say if it’s a good deal or not?”

John is still the Chair of the First Nations Summit today.

Maa-nulth agreed to the same releases when it ratified a Final Agreement in this process later in 2007. Other identical provisions in all three Agreements include the release of Indian Status, including tax-free status; the “modification” (extinguishment) of their aboriginal rights to be only those rights exhaustively defined in the Agreements; the dissolution of the Indian Band; and the termination of Indian Reserve lands: “Fee Simple Lands are not ‘lands reserved for the Indians’ within the meaning of the Constitution Act, 1867, and are not ‘reserves’ as defined in the Indian Act.”

The role of the First Nations Summit in these “negotiations” is, in part, to give advice to the federal government for the allocation of treaty negotiating loans to First Nations for the purpose of developing and ratifying Final Agreements under the BC Treaty Commission. These negotiating allowances average a million dollars a year, and the 80 per cent which is a loan comes due the moment a First Nation leaves the process or begins implementation of their Final Agreement.

Staying at the table is an offer most First Nations cannot afford to refuse, especially for those who have been at it since 1993, but the only alternative is to ratify an Agreement and extinguish title. Treaty negotiating loans are not included in government audits of First Nations accounts – perhaps because such a loan would immediately place that community in third party remedial management.

Chief John has stayed with the process throughout and failed to take any meaningful action to indicate his disapproval of the situation, if he does indeed disapprove. He obviously hasn’t resigned in protest.

Self-determination, recently enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, goes out with ratification of these Agreements as well, replaced by what the governments, the Treaty Commission, and the First Nations Summit call “self-government” – powers which amount to little more than municipal business under the heavily qualified “Governance” chapters. The presence in each Final Agreement of identical chapters which circumscribe any exercise of self-determination betrays a theme, one which previous leaders dubbed “the BCTC Death Row.”

According to Chief Negotiator Robert Morales, Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group, in 2007, “there is one negotiation going on at 47 tables. These were to be government-to-government negotiations, but that’s not how it turned out.”

By 2006, the First Nations Unity Protocol Agreement included all but one of the treaty-going groups in the province, and had made clear the flaws in the process. Morales said, while Chair of the First Nations Summit Chief Negotiators’ table at the time, “The experience we’re having at the Tables and in meetings is that government comes to every table with the same language, with one approach, whether the Nation is small or large, urban or rural. We have realized that we can’t change those policies on our own, even at my table where 6,000 people are represented.”

Since Morales’ statements, letters, and FNUPA actions, which included blockading a Nanaimo ferry sailing with canoes, the HTG has been in abeyance from the negotiating table and entered a petition describing the exhaustion of domestic remedies within Canada to resolve the outstanding land title issue. That Petition was heard in Washington last year by the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and a result has not yet been announced.

At the Opening Ceremonies of the PFII 11th Session at UN Headquarters, Deputy Secretary–General of the United Nations Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro noted in her address, “…we don’t have to go far to see examples of Indigenous peoples facing discrimination, even extinguishment.”

As she spoke, Chief John was sitting in front of her.

On the second day of the meeting, an intervention by the North American Indigenous Peoples Caucus delivered by Steven Newcomb claimed that “Negotiations such as in Canada under the Comprehensive Claims Policy… lead to the extinguishment of Indigenous peoples.”

The CCP is the basic platform of the BC negotiations, in direct contrast with the 19 Recommendations by the BC Task Force forming the terms of reference or guidelines for the process in 1992. Those guidelines attracted people to the process because they said, in sum, that the government would be open to all types of discussion and conclusions that would lead to real, workable treaties.

Several independent members of First Nations involved in the treaty process have taken their concerns to an urgent action committee of the United Nations’ Committee for the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), in 2009. In reports on Canada’s human rights record regarding Indigenous peoples, the CERD has criticized the process, as in 2007, when they wrote:

While acknowledging the information that the “cede, release and surrender” approach to Aboriginal land titles has been abandoned by the State party (Canada) in favour of “modification” and “non-assertion” approaches, the Committee remains concerned about the lack of perceptible difference in results of these new approaches in comparison to the previous approach.

To date, only four Final Agreements have resulted from the negotiating process implemented by the BC Treaty Commission, one rejected in the community ratification vote, one awaiting federal approval, and two in implementation, but all of them leading to the extinguishment of title of the Indigenous nations concerned.

Aside from these, the negotiation process in BC remains stalled largely due to the evident desire of the governments to pursue policies of extinguishment of Indigenous sovereignty rights, and the equally evident desire of the BC Indigenous nations to resist this demand. But they cannot leave the process without triggering the maturation of the negotiating loan.

While Chief John and the Summit Executive exchange polite letters and press releases with Canadian government officials conducting studies on the BC treaty process, and welcoming “recommendations which outline how the federal government can accelerate treaty negotiations in BC” (First Nations Summit Press Release: May 4, 2012), the cost of remaining in the process grows – and the process remains one of municipalization of Indigenous nations which currently have the internationally recognized right to self-determination and demonstrable title to their territories.

Sliammon First Nation is about to go to a ratification vote this summer.

Jackie MukSamma Timothy, a Sliammon Hereditary Chief, wrote of the situation:

So called “Canada’s” ignorance of our existing and affirmed Title and Rights and the threat of limited financial support for non-participating Nations forced my people into entering the treaty process. And they keep us on the negotiation table, by threatening to demand all the negotiation funds back at once or to limit our financial support by the federal government accordingly. For my Nation it is impossible to pay the amount back or to forgo financial aid. Moreover, the longer the process takes the more power shifts to the benefit of so called “Canada” and “BC”, because in the end any agreement resulting in any kind of payment is better than none, given the fact that we have to pay the loans back. Loans that would not even be necessary without Canada’s wrong-doings and their ignorance of our existing Title and Rights.

The number of irregularities in the BC treaty process is staggering and climbing. It is not unusual for communities to fail to hold a vote annually in order to approve continued borrowing for negotiation funding, or to have votes against continuing the loans ignored, according to vocal Indigenous dissidents. Hereditary Chief Kakila, Tenas Lake, wrote in a letter to the BC Treaty Commission, 2007:

We are advised by the Honourable Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Jim Prentice that these twelve people (the IN-SHUCK-ch Treaty Society) have since 1993 borrowed $9,717,059.00 to engage in these negotiations. We remind that those are the debts of those people alone. In fact, on October 15, 1994, at a duly convened Samahquam General Assembly, for said purpose, the membership specifically voted, by majority, “no” to any proposed Loan Agreements emanating from the British Columbia Treaty Commission.

Most of the original nineteen recommendations of the British Columbia Task Force, which were agreed on by the three negotiating parties forming the BC treaty process, have long since been abandoned: for example, every Final Agreement produced has been taken to court by neighbouring nations for failure to resolve “overlap” claims. Most negotiations currently underway were initiated by a small minority of community members – over whom the rest of the people in the communities cannot regain control: court actions such asSpookw v.Gitxsan Treaty Society et al, 2011, and the recent blockade by members of the Gitxsan against the Gitxsan Treaty Society show how serious this flaw is. By insisting that the small, mostly isolated communities are “autonomous” in their dealings with the treaty process, the First Nations Summit has absolved itself of any responsibility for those First Nations which it claims to represent.

Both the Tsawwassen and Maa-nulth Final Agreements were ratified in votes where “public relations crisis-management” firms were hired by the government to produce pro-treaty propaganda, and where treaty negotiating teams promoted only those prominent community members who endorsed the Final Agreement, and where immediate fiscal rewards for a “yes” vote were offered to community members.

Bertha Williams, a Tsawwassen Member, wrote in a letter to Rudolfo Stavenhagen, Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, July 23, 2007:

I would like to reference some very key items that raise very serious question about the legitimacy of this vote. Under “Members Benefits” two cash incentives to voters are stated.“ In particular it states that “each elder over 60 will receive $15,000, shortly after ratification day” and “approximately $1,000 per member on Effective Date.” I feel that these cash incentive are a bribe to vote YES to the Final Agreement. These are the cash guarantees that are written right into the agreement and that are openly promoted, but I know that there are additional monies paid out just to get people to vote on this agreement. As already set out above, the vote will take place without meeting basic requirements for such a fundamental, constitutional vote.

People are not informed about the real content of the agreement they are voting on, but rather the provincial government is paying for the preparation of propaganda material that points to the few mainly cash incentives of the agreement, but fails to point out all the downfalls, such as the extinguishment of our Aboriginal Title to our territories, the loss of the tax exemption and the long-term loss of programs and services that will all result in the further impoverishment of our people.

Many feel that, as a lawyer whose organization gives advice on the allocation of negotiating loans, Chief John is and was aware of how the loan process itself would leave small and isolated communities trapped between descending into a deeper cycle of debt the longer they stuck to their negotiating claims – or acceding to the extinguishment terms offered by Canada, which can afford to wait the process out. That message has been clearly and repeatedly delivered to the Executive of the First Nations Summit by such groups as the First Nations Unity Protocol, as early as 2006.

But Chief John is considered respectable. Earlier this year he received a National Aboriginal Achievement Award, and he is on the Board of Cultural Survival, an international agency which claims to, “publicize Indigenous Peoples’ issues through our award-winning publications; mount letter-writing campaigns and other advocacy efforts to stop environmental destruction and abuses of Native Peoples’ rights; and we work on the ground in Indigenous communities, always at their invitation.”

Most of the Indigenous nations whose territories lie within the Canadian Province of British Columbia have no treaties with Canada. 

The recent appearance of Edward John on the Aboriginal People’s Television Network to state that he does not support extinguishment is not an adequate gesture, when read together with his continued involvement, as Chair of the First Nations Summit, in this well-documented extinguishment process.

The Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues sends the world a mixed message in its choice of Chair, when considering its stated mandate. Perhaps the message will become very clear when the Permanent Forum reports its recommendations, which will be received by the UN Economic and Social Council to advise member states on Indigenous peoples’ rights the world over.