I really didn’t think reconciliation was possible in a country that has continually denied the genocide that has occurred on our lands.  I knew the Tsilquot’in decision was coming and was going to be a big one, but I had not been prepared for Chief Justice Beverly McLauchlin’s words that read, “governments and others seeking to use the land must obtain the consent of the Aboriginal title holders” (emphasis added).  I cried the same spontaneous tears that I cried this morning when I saw my newborn nephew squish up his little wrinkly face and let out a howl to let us know another Wet’suwet’en was born. But, as I sat there reading the decision, it was Gisday’wa’s face I saw.  I imagined his old cheeks slowly wrinkling into a grin, as our hereditary chief who passed only a few short months ago, would have felt joy and relief with news of this victory for the Tsilquot’in.  So, while I celebrate this win, it is with a heavy heart that feels the pain our people, culture, languages, and lands have endured through centuries of denial and oppression.  I hope he and all those who have fought on the lands, in the courts, and on the streets—our people who have lived and died as the dispossessed--can feel this somehow and can see a light at the end of the dark tunnel for our children. 

It took about three hours to read through the decision and I was waiting impatiently for the catch.  The limitations and restrictions.  Eagerly I read and analyzed every word and phrase to see what this would mean for my nation, for the Tsilquot’in, and our brothers and sisters.  In sum, McLauchlin concluded:

I would allow the appeal and grant a declaration of Aboriginal title over the area at issue, as requested by the Tsilhqot’in.  I further declare that British Columbia breached its duty to consult owed to the Tsilhqot’in through its land use planning and forestry authorizations (Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44).    

What made this declaration truly unique from all previous decisions was the amount of detail included in an attempt to clarify the issues that abound on unceded Indigenous lands.  The ruling, for example, not only clarified what title meant for the Tsilquot’in but, what it meant for all our nations who have yet to have title recognized.  By summarizing the case law to date, McLauchlin noted that all the communities asserting title to lands must continue to be meaningfully consulted and accommodated.  She stressed this did not just mean sending a few letters and continuing on with business as usual.  Rather, she stated,

I add this.  Governments and individuals proposing to use or exploit land, whether before or after a declaration of Aboriginal title, can avoid a charge of infringement or failure to adequately consult by obtaining the consent of the interested Aboriginal group (Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44).

As we can see in the media, there is a hope that this will be a new day for relationships, specifically for resource extraction on the territories.  For the Tsilquot’in, “Crown lands” are now theirs to manage and decide upon their use (traditional or modern) for their people and for future generations.  Section 94 asserts that, “This gives them the right to determine, subject to the inherent limits of group title held for future generations, the uses to which the land is put and to enjoy its economic fruits.  As we have seen, this is not merely a right of first refusal with respect to Crown land management or usage plans. Rather, it is the right to proactively use and manage the land” (Tsilquot'in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44).  The Tsilquot’in now stand a fighting chance to better the situation for their people and to show our nations what justice looks like! 

The catch, however, is that provincial laws still remain and that Aboriginal Title and Rights can still be infringed by the Crown if the laws and the infringements can meet certain tests.  Namely, the infringement must be for the greater common good and not counteract constitutionally protected rights and title.  While the decision attempts to bring as much clarity to infringement processes as possible, I forsee this being the next era of legal battles that ensue for nations post-title.  The following passage, I believe, decreases the value of the economic trump card: 

First, the Crown’s fiduciary duty means that the government must act in a way that respects the fact that Aboriginal title is a group interest that inheres in present and future generations. The beneficial interest in the land held by the Aboriginal group vests communally in the title-holding group.  This means that incursions on Aboriginal title cannot be justified if they would substantially deprive future generations of the benefit of the land (Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44).      

If we can move forward, with the agreement that future generations’ ability to benefit from the land is our common vision, then true reconciliation may be possible.  This dream however is reliant upon new relationships being built that recognize our common humanity, our place in nature, and tackles the enormous problems our generation faces in creating human environments that balance and correct the damages done to our planet.  If this cannot be agreed upon, we can count on centuries more to see that rights and title are truly recognized and respected. 

While I believe this has been an outstanding decision made by the Supreme Court of Canada, the next steps will also rely on people and nations taking action and ensuring that respectful relations can ensue.  For nations achieving recognition of title new divisions of power will have to be outlined as well as laws, governance, and management plans for title lands.  Furthermore, restitution for damages to our lands will still be necessary.  To explain this further, if someone steals your car and they are caught and convicted, then the car would be returned.  If the rear end is smashed, however, the thief is liable for the damages.  In this case, the car was stolen and the owner locked in the garage and their children were kidnapped during the joy ride!  Hopefully, this decision leaves room for restitution to move forward by stating,

Once title is established, it may be necessary for the Crown to reassess prior conduct in light of the new reality in order to faithfully discharge its fiduciary duty to the title-holding group going forward (Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44).     

For those of us still trying to get our “car” back we must move swiftly to prepare our own nations.  For the Wet’suwet’en, I would like to thank our lucky stars that we didn’t sign a modern day treaty and that we know we have the three tests of title in the bag.  The long shot, of having 100% of our 22,000 km2 recognized and affirmed is not a pipe dream anymore.  However, our biggest hurdle is to have all of our communities—Hagwilget, Moricetown, Wet’suwet’en First Nation, Burns Lake Band, Skin Tyee, and Nee Tahi Buhn along with our hereditary chiefs of all of our clans to sit at the same table and envision our future together as a united nation.  With the promise of recognition of our title and rights, I think the conversation has changed and that we will see the benefit of working together with the solid boundaries set by our ancestors and the trespass laws that are enshrined in our hereditary governance system.  Imagine the possibilities! 

I will sign off with my deepest gratitude and congratulations to the Tsilquot’in and to all those who have fought for Indigenous peoples’ rights and title.  I hope everyone working in this field, actually, for every person in this country to read this decision to understand why we have never, ever given up fighting.  I will no doubt write more about this in the future, so please leave a comment on areas or questions you would like me to tackle. 

Awet’za!  

***Read the Supreme Court Decision here.   

In 2007, when Northern Gateway was just beginning to rear it’s troublesome head I wrote in The Dominion, that Aboriginal Rights and Title were going to be the strongest defense against pipeline developments in British Columbia.  I knew an uphill battle was coming as I wrote, “blockades are used as a last resort when the laws and policies of the Canadian state fail to take into consideration constitutionally protected Aboriginal rights and title”.  Seven years later, we are now faced with this last resort.  Over the years, we have spent countless energy trying to protect our water, our salmon, our air and our very cultures from fossil fuels being pumped through out yintah.  In that article years ago, I asked, “Where do we go from here?  Sit idly by as pipelines cut new borders and deep wounds in the earth?”  Luckily, we have not been idle, and have actually declared that we will be Idle No More! 

Thanks to Enbridge, peoples from across Turtle Island have become politicized to the ongoing crisis to protect our lands.  As citizens to our various nations we have had to take it upon ourselves to consider the next seven generations and uphold our responsibility to speak for them in the face of relentless greed and consumption of natural resources.  “Resources” that we hold sacred.  Countless people have taken to the streets in peaceful protest in the assertion that--we will not, cannot, entertain the idea of a pipeline spill in our Yintah.  We have suggested alternatives, asked for cumulative assessments, sat through hearings and referendums and the answer from the people, even our children, is a resounding “NO!  We do not want a spill.  We do not want climate change.  End of story.”

Sadly, it is clear that this story is long from over.  The government’s agenda is to get the land locked fossil fuels to the coast as quickly and expediently as possible.  The Joint Review Process which, was not cumulative in scope, was fast-tracked and ignored the evidence that the people and the land do not want Enbridge.  Environmental laws were changed, sketchy deals made behind closed doors, and every attempt was made to silence the people—those crazy radicals who are terrorizing the Canadian government. 

The cost of Enbridge has already been huge.  Relationships in communities have been broken, people have lost their jobs, freedom of expression has been stifled, and our precious time has been wasted.  Seven years have passed which could have been spent finding solutions to global and local problems rather than trying to wake up our own governments.  Indigenous nations across the carbon corridor have spent considerable time and energy preparing for meetings, reviews, and assessments that were ignored.  We’ve protested, rallied, had sit-ins, hosted free workshops, built communities of solidarity, wrote articles and blogs and songs and poems.  In hindsight, it would have been better if all of us realized years ago that our voice did not matter and that the economy is the one and only trump card.  We have a debt to pay and politician’s visa expenses, corporate jets, and poodled purses are more important than our salmon, than our culture, and our relationship to the state.  

Nevertheless, I think this seven year’s war has been necessary to wake up the majority of people and  prepare them for the battle that lies ahead.  The laws and policies have failed to protect not only our Aboriginal rights and title, but our collective human rights.  I believe we have enough people now to take on this next challenge which is going to require a change of tactics including physically halting access to our lands, legal battles, and aggressively pursuing alternatives to fossil fuels. We can’t just fight this one company anymore, we must change the way we live so our future is secure.  The ocean’s will be rising at least one-metre in our generation, the salmon may go extinct, our water may be our most precious resource we have…so when we stand in front of the pipelines in solidarity, know you are standing up for our future.  

This is not just an Indian problem or an environmentalist’s problem anymore, finding a way to stop our fossil fuel dependency is a cause for every human on this planet.  Not even the wealthy can drink dirty water or breath filthy air. Let’s use this momentum that has been created to find real solutions, to assert title to our lands (for Wet’suwet’en…as one united nation) that has never been ceded, and work together to make this world a better place.   Let’s drop the language of consultation and accommodation.   In unceded lands we speak the truth of free, prior, and informed consent.  Push that agenda, protect our lands, and defend our communities.

Strength and love to my people, my friends, over the next roadblock that has been put in our way.  All my relations.  

In the spring, I volunteered to take a group of Wet'suwet'en and Nedut'en high school students on a field trip to look at medicinal and food plants in our local area.  We were accompanied by a couple foresters who were going to be showing the students some culturally modified trees.  As we stepped off the school bus on an old forest service road, I looked around for a place that would be easy to enter the woods.  I pointed to a low bank and suggested we enter there.  One of the foresters glanced up at the stand of pine that had been ravaged by mountain pine beetle a few years earlier.  Grey, listless trees towered above us and he muttered, "But, that's just a dead forest?".   I chose not to answer him as I showed the youth how to walk heal to toe through the forest to try to be as quiet as possible.  Silently, the usually loud and rebellious group followed me into the woods where we walked about 100 yards into the dead pine to a small clearing where we stopped and stood in a small circle.   It was quiet, not a noise could be heard as I whispered to the group to close their eyes and listen.  As the forest grew more comfortable with our presence,  the sounds of the land began to surround us as though a switch had been flicked back on.  After a few minutes, I asked quietly "With your eyes still closed, what do you hear?"   

Birds chirping.
Mosquitoes.
A bee. 
The wind.
A squirrel chattering.
Buzzing.
Leaves rustling.  
Flapping wings.
Trees creaking.  

I asked the group to open their eyes.  As our eyes refocused to the beams of light gleaming through the high canopy of trees I asked, "What do you see?"  The group looked around for a few moments until finally one of the teachers said, "Trees".  I asked, "What else? Can you be more specific".  They looked around some more.  

Pine trees.
Spruce trees.

"What else?"  I encouraged the unusually quiet group with smiles and eye contact.  

Leaves.
A bumble bee.
Moss.
Fallen trees covered in moss.  
Wild roses.
A spider web.
A mushroom.
A squirrel.
An ant hill.
Rotting wood.
A fern. 

The list went on as the group excitedly mentioned everything they could see around them.  Competing with one another for coming up with something new until the group again fell silent.  "So," I said, "Let me ask you this.  Is this a dead forest?"  With a sheepish reply, the forester was the first to answer.  "No."  

I pointed towards the under canopy of pine trees that were growing below the decaying pine and asked him, in his professional opinion, to guess the age of the pine understory.  30 to 40 years was his reply.  For the next hour or so, we investigated our little clearing in the woods.  I showed the class the kinikinik, plantain, alder, blueberry, saskatoon, morel mushrooms, strawberry, wild onion, spruce tips, and all the other plants I could identify and describe their use.  We told stories of creation and how our ancestors were given gifts of knowledge from their dreams or animal brothers and sisters by treating them with respect.  The forester showed us all the different types of moss he knew and gently lifted up a piece of yellow moss to show all the insects below as he stated how it took generations for an ecosystem like this to flourish.  Some of the youth told stories about how their grandparents or parents used birch bark, picked berries, and ate pine noodles.  

While our yintah has been clearcut and mined, ravaged by mountain pine beetle, flooded, and colonized we are still one of the few locations in the world to have old growth forests and a vast wilderness to support our diverse habitats.  It is that closer look, the connection, that I hope to nurture in our children and youth.  If all we see is stumpage rates and lumber supplies, we do not see the value in the life that depends on the forest, even the so-called dead forests that are now used as an excuse to open up the timber supply to get the last monetary drop  out of the timber that remains.  If we do not see real value, if we do not see life, we cannot love our land.  Without love, we will not protect it.  

Listen.  Look closer.  

For my first blog post, I think it is important to pay respect to my grandma, Emily.  I've never met her as she died long before I was born, but she continues to be an important and symbolic matriarch of our family.  I grew up hearing stories about this woman to the point that I feel like I actually did get to know her.  Over the years, I eavesdropped on my mother's conversations with her sisters and brother and maybe as a young child I wouldn't have been so intrigued by them if their stories hadn't always ended in tears and sobs of longing for a mother who they had been stolen from.  

For many people, "stolen"  may sound absolutely absurd, and for me, it didn't really make sense for a long time either.  It has been the unrelenting desire to uncover the truth of what happened to my mother and her siblings that has led me to learn about the history of my people, of colonization, and now of methods of decolonization in an attempt to right the wrongs of the past.  

You see, when my mom was only six years old she was taken not only from her mother, but her father, siblings, extended family, and her culture to be put into a foster home.  None of them ever returned to the care of their parents and none of them knew, until they were adults, what had happened that fateful day. I knew it hurt my mom immensely as her cries were filled with wails wretched directly from her heart.  Loving my mom as I do, I cannot even comprehend being taken away from her as a child.  Now, being a parent, it is even more heart-wrenching to imagine my child being taken from me!  

Nowadays, I often begin my workshops on colonization with this story and that it wasn't until I attended university and took a First Nations Studies course that I began to realize the systemic, racist, colonial history that tore our family apart.  But before I go there, let me tell you a bit about Grandma.  

Emily was born to Patrick (Paddy) and Julie Isaac (nee Tom) who at that time were living around the area of Broman Lake.  She had many brothers and sisters as was the trend in those days.  I've always heard that my grandma was a strong lady, with a friendly and precise presence.  In her pictures, she looks a lot like me, my cousins, and aunties with our high and full cheeks, cute noses, and a perma-scowl that's etched into our foreheads from days of squinting in the sun--not from being angry--although I'm sure the wrinkles have also become deep trenches from all of the sorrow and pain.  She married young to a man named Freddy Augusta and they had a daughter named Agnes and two babies who passed early on.  As I understand it, Freddy, and Emily split up and she later met my grandfather, the love of her life, Jimmy Johnny Skin.  They had 12 more children, 7 of whom have since passed on.  All, have a story that would make your heart shudder, but I like to think that they were survivors and warriors--smiling, crying, emotion-filled people on the front-lines of the war of extermination.  

My grandma, with her husband raised all of their children around the Burns Lake area.  They had a house on the Burns Lake reserve which was burned down with speculation of arson and they rebuilt a home for themselves on the mountain side near Eagle Creek.  Sadly, in the 1960s  for "unknown" reasons all of the children were apprehended by the Ministry of Children and Family Services and were put into separate foster homes, the older ones were sent off to residential school. Mom says she remembers being bathed in a tub behind an old wood cook stove when the "big cars came".  Without knowing or being told what was going on, my six year old mom was later drug down the courtroom steps crying and screaming towards her new life.  The siblings didn't see each other again until they were in their teens or adulthood despite living in close proximity to one another.  The younger ones even went to the same school, but didn't know one another and didn't taunt each other playfully like I did with my younger brothers during recess.  The ones who survived struggle to rebuild the bonds, connections, and culture that were taken from them. 

In studying our history, the apprehension of an entire generation of the Skin/Augusta family became not just our story, but that of Indigenous children and families across Turtle Island (North America).  As the residential schools began to be shut down, the governmental policy mandated to "Take the Indian out of the child", shifted towards the theft of children from their homes and communities to put them into non-Native foster homes.  Children were taken en masse into homes in an attempt to assimilate them, to take the savage out of them, to teach them to be good little white kids.  A quote by Homi Bhaba that has stuck out in my mind over the years, was that colonial assimilation forced us to be "white, but not quite" (1994).  Our skin colour and our damned persistence to want our families, communities, and cultures intact, kept us from fitting neatly into Western society.  

With dates, facts, acts, quotes, and above all stories that included our history came to unfold I came to realize what our grandparents must have went through in their struggle to survive.  What a strategy though, what ingenuity, to take children from their parents, parents from their children.  Being a mother, I know, as you probably do too, that you might as well take the will to stand up, to breath, to eat, to live.  At this point in my journey, I could not fully comprehend "why?".  Why on earth would the government want to take away the children?  It doesn't make rational sense.  They wanted to civilize them they say, well, why is that so damned important?  Live and let live seems like a fairly reasonable adage.  If we wanted to eat moose and beaver and berries for dinner so freaking what?  The reason, I have come to understand is bigger, more obtuse, and for my friends in the struggle  you know where I'm going with this, but for those who this topic is new, the problem at hand can be summed up in one simple word.  Land.  The land filled with resources and space for settlement, places to wrap new borders around, and landscapes to rename.  Sure there were other things involved like religion that people and nations often fight about, but come on now, this was a war for the land and it was waged upon our children, upon love, upon family, community and culture.  What is most frightening, is the war is not over.  Our children are still stolen from our homes, our families punished for the traumas that were engrained in their existences, and all of those things that were stolen have not been returned. 

For my mom, grandma, grandpa, aunties and uncles, for my cousins and our children, for all of our relations who are struggling to rebuild the relationships and the connections that were lost to one another, to our families, communities, and lands I dedicate this blog and welcome you into my thoughts that are begging to be told.  Stay strong my family, my brothers and sisters around the globe, especially to those who are still estranged....WE ARE STILL HERE!  

Awet'za! (That's all for now)

References:

Bhaba, Homi (1994) The Location of Culture. Routledge, New York.