British Columbia

Resourcesa legacy
to next generation.
say Native leaders

By MAUREEN SAGER

Aboriginal title to us means that we own
this land lock, stock and barrel; that means
everything in it ... This land where we live
today is still our land and it’s always going to
be our land.”

— the late James Gosnell. Nisga’a Tribal
Council

“A lot of people misunderstand what we
mean by ‘we own the land,’ ” says Lorene
Plant from the Nisga’a Tribal Council in the
Nass River area. “We own the land but we
also know that we must share it with our
neighbours.” The Nisga’a have been fight-
ing for their land for 150 years and have
been involved in the courts for the last 100
of those years.

“We must begin to change what they call
the ‘justice system’ where there is no
justice — it’s only a legal system,” said
Lavina White from the Haida Nation.

Both women were among the First
Nations speakers at the historic Tin-Wis
(“calm beach”) conference Feb. 3-5 called
by the year-old coalition of Native, labour
and environmental groups. The topic was
“an aboriginal vision for B.C.”

“The Kootenay people — we own the
land where the Creator put us. What we
have to talk about now is how we are going
to share it,” Sophie Pierre from the Koote-
nay Tribal Council told the conference. Her
people have lived in the Rocky Mountain
Trench for at least 10,000 years.

“We know these are our traditional lands
because those are the lands where we have
names,” she explained. “That is how Indian
people in British Columbia determine
where their lands are.”

Simon Lucas, co-chair of the Nuu~chah-

nulth Tribal Council, which hosted the con-
ference, said the history of his people goes
back “‘three floods.” He added that he could
show and give names to the mountains
where his people landed during those three
floods.

“We want to share our land,” he said,
“with non-Native people who have deep
feelings and respect for the sea, fresh water
and the land — people who want to makea
future for their children.”

Gitksan-Wet’suwet’en Tribal Council
co-ordinator Don Ryan asserted that the
Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en people “‘own the
land — the Crown does not have owner-
ship or jurisdiction.” The tribal has
launched a Jandmark land claim case for
57,000 square kilometres of territory in the
upper Skeenta, Bulkley and Fraser River
watersheds.

The suit, which began May 11, 1987 and
is still before the courts, is an enormously
expensive undertaking, with costs estimated
to reach $5-6 million for the Gitksan and
Wet’suwet’en, $10-12 million for the federal
government and $15-28 million for the pro-
vince. The money, most of which comes
from taxpayers’ pockets, is being spent
because the B.C. government has refused to
negotiate aboriginal title. It claims that what-
ever rights the original inhabitants of the
province had to ownership of the land they
occupied were ended by various pieces of
legislation put into force by the colonial
government Or by the terms of union when
British Columbia entered confederation.

The Gitksan-Wet’suwet’en maintain that
their title to the land could only be extin-
guished with their consent — and that con-
sent was never given. Evidence given by

PHOTO — ELAINE BRIERE

7 ~ a

Flanked by panel chair Wedlidi Speck (I), and Don Ryan, president of the Gitksan-
Wet'suwet’en Tribal Council, Lavin White from the Haida Nation addresses Tin-Wis

conference.

council elders who have testified in court
describes an impressive system of owner
ship in which the house is the primary land-
owning unit, and house members, through
their house chief, fulfill their responsibilities
to protect and care for precisely-defined
land and fishing territories.

The hereditary chiefs representing these
76 houses are challenging the province to
answer the question: “By what authority do
you claim your ownership and jurisdiction
over this territory?”

Land title suits of other bands and coun-
cils within B.C. are on hold until a decision
has been reached in the Gitksan-Wet’-
suwet’en claim — a decision that could
take another two years.

While the lengthy court procedures are
continuing, the land must be protected from
interference and improper use, Native
groups contend. Lorene Plant told the con-
ference: “We have a council of elders we
take direction from and they say we must
protect all that we own, our rivers, our
streams — they call it our food basket. For

Defence policy ‘made in Washington’

Continued from page 1

The agreement, made by a federal
cabinet committee, follows the renewal last
year of the original 1983 five-year Pact to
test U.S. weaponry in Canada. The new
cruise is longer-range than its predecessor
and is designed to surpass the current mis-
sile in avoiding detection by radar.

Like the current air-, sea- and ground-
launched cruise, it is less a missile than a
pilot-less aircraft. It is designed to fly at
terrain-hugging altitudes on a Zig-zag
course and carry a nuclear payload capable
of shattering military targets such as har-
dened missile silos.

Arms race apologists cite the missile’s

relatively slow speed as their reason the
cruise can not be considered an attack wea-
pon.
But Perry said that was like saying that
being stuck with a needle contaminated
with the AIDS virus is harmless because It
does not do any damage until years later. “It
doesn’t really matter how fast it’s going. If
it’s undetected until it hits its target, it’s a
very, very fast weapon.”

The government has said it is useless to
strike an agreement on banning cruise mis-
siles, because the small weapons are so diffi-
cult to detect. Sobrino said the peace
movement warned about that six years ago
when the current cruise was initiated, “and
the government ignored us, and now we're
in this situation.”

Sobrino said the easiest way to agree on
ending cruise tests is to get rid of the facili-
ties that produce them.

“This is about the worst time in history
that the Canadian government could be
doing this,” Perry said.

Dr. Luis Sobrino (I), Dr. George Spiegelman and Dr. Tom Perry urge Canadians to

step up disarmament efforts.

He noted that the recent INF treaty ban-
ning missiles in Europe, along with Soviet
unilateral initiatives such as banning chemi-
cal weapons production and withdrawing
from Afghapistan, means there is potential
for a new era of disarmament.

Science fof Peace national vice-president
George Spiegelman said Canada can playa
very “essential” role in world disarmarnent
because it is NOt subject to the same internal
pressures as js the United States. ;

But right now, the UBC microbiology
professor said, Canada’s defence policy is

“made in Washington.”
Accusing the federal Tories of subverting

democracy Py ignoring Parliament when
ratifying the cruise testing agreement,
Sobrino said is “essential that people be

willing to force the government to change.”

“People are saying that what our
government is doing is just hypocrisy,”
Vancouver alderman Libby Davies said in
reference to the cruise tests and Ottawa’s
plans to buy nuclear-powered attack sub-
marines.

“From the ordinary person’s point of
view, we understand that billions of dollars
are being wasted on these weapons.”

Perry said Canadians are probably not so
much complacent but are becoming dis-
couraged because repeated protests have
failed to end cruise missile testing.

But slavery was not abolished overnight,
and Canadians should take the long-term
view in demanding an end to the tests, he
said.

this reason, the Nisga’a Nation does not
agree with pesticide spraying and “do not
allow and would not allow that to happen
within our territory.

“Our vision in the fishery,” she con-
tinued, “‘is that our Nisga’a people must be
involved in decision-making, management
and harvesting, with co-management with
the Department of Fisheries where there are
overlap areas.” To achieve this, the Nisga’a
Tribal Council is currently negotiating a
fisheries agreement with the federal govern-
ment. In a recent announcement, which
Plant termed “good news,” the United
Fishermen and Allied Worker Union. con-
vention agreed to consult with the Nisga’a
on the negotiations.

Ryan spoke at length of the steps the
Gitksan-Wet’suwet’en are taking to protect
their land and described various court
injunction actions which, when combined
with blockades, have led to some success.
He strongly emphasized the necessity of
stopping Alcan’s Kemano II hydroelectric
project.

“The best land claims agreement around
is Alcan’s agreement,” he said, referring to
the water rights given to Alcan by the
W.A.C. Bennett government. “I'd like to
have one like theirs.”

Lavina White noted the recent decision
of the Haida Nation to opt out of land claim
negotiations and govern their territory as an
independent country. “In order to protect
our lands, there are certain steps we have to
take. We’ve tried to, get into negotiations
with governments and they want to delay
those negotiations for a time that will
deplete all of the resources from our
islands,” she said.

Haida Gwaii — the Haida name for the
Queen Charlottes — must be protected,
she said, “from a system that keeps the rich
people well-off, makes the rich richer and
the poor poorer and gives power to people
who already have enough.

“That system didn’t work in Europe,
didn’t work in Great Britain and so your
ancestors came here to a new land and
imposed that same system,” she said.

She told conference delegates: “It gives
me a lot of heart to see non-aboriginal peo-
ple who are beginning to understand that
we have to all work together in order to save
the lands and resources from exploitation
by corporations who have been given a lot
of money that common everyday people
have paid in taxes.

“They use us as serfs,” she said, “and they
pass the money around to each other at the
top. We have to begin to take over respon-
sibility for they don’t know what that
means — they only know power and pres-
tige.”

White told the conference that the abo-
riginal struggle to protect the land and the
sea would never stop “because our spiritual
relationship with the land is one that will

. never change.”

Pacific Tribune, February 20, 1989 « 3