Starting to unpack the complexity of Indigenous relations in Canada

In short, it has been a crazy week.

It was supposed to be a week to ease back into work after a nice break. But, that was not to be the case.

Instead, all of the attention has been focussed on Northern British Columbia. Enforcing an injunction ordered by a BC Court back in mid-December, the RCMP descended upon the Unist’ot’en protest camp. They are clearing the way for a gas pipeline by Coastal GasLink. One big problem. The hereditary Chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en oppose the project. (View my initial response here.)

There is nothing simple about this issue. It goes back as far as the very beginning of this country. Any attempt to simplify it is a disservice our past, present and future. We have to face this difficulty with resolve.

Over the past few days I have been doing the media rounds. They culminated with interviews on CBC radio for All Points West and On the Coast (Listen here: Interview starts at 1:52:00 – transcript below).

My goal here is to try to respond to this as completely as possible. The following is the transcript from my interview with Gloria Macarenko for On The Coast.

GM: Well, what do you think of what’s unfolding in the north? The protests, the tensions between the protesters and the RCMP around this blockade.

AO: Well, frankly this is been building over the last number of years in this area. The Unist’ot’en camp has been in place now for nearly a decade. I think it’s really starting to ramp up with the last couple of years, in anticipation of this gas pipeline project. And, the Hereditary Chiefs in that territory have been pretty consistent over a very long period of time.

So, the fact that we get to where we are at now, arrests, 14 people arrested a day or two ago by the RCMP, is quite frustrating, definitely angering, to many British Columbians. And, for me, someone to grew up, I’m a member of Tsartlip First Nation, and grew up with this is part of my narrative, and my story, is very saddening, that this is where we’re at.

Which lens are you looking at this through?

GM: Well, this is where we’re at, but supposedly with the consent of the elected Chiefs along the pipeline route.

AO: Yeah, I think you know it’s interesting the consent issue depends on what lens that you decide to place over it. From the context of the Indian Act, the federal legislation that’s now over a hundred years old the elected Chiefs and Councils of Indian Reserves, which is entirely a construct of the federal government, perhaps the consent has been achieved.

In British Columbia we have a very complex arrangement, a very complex array of Indigenous groups and Indigenous people that have, that still have their own governance in place. And, in this situation with the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, they still carry a large amount of authority in their communities and we have to respect that. So if you put it through that lens, then I think that the governments, the federal and provincial government, have a long way to go.

If you put it through the lens of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), which both the federal and provincial government, indeed Premier Horgan has mandated every single one of his Cabinet Ministers to begin the implementation of UNDRIP, if you put it through that lens, and in fact a number of the Articles are very clear that Indigenous people have the right to define their own governance structures and their own authority and power structures within their self-defined groups.

So, I guess depending on which lens do decide to look through, you could say everything’s all good. Clearly, when you see the RCMP in military fatigues, in military style, moving in on Indigenous people in their homelands and arresting them, the way that we saw the last couple of days, it certainly begs the question as to whether or not we’ve done the work.

Is the consultation adequate?

GM: Well, let’s go back to the government lens of when the Premier announced this LNG partnership back in October he said adequate consultation took place to recognize Indigenous rights for this project, what did you think then, and what more do you think should this government have done?

AO: Well, I mean like look, just in the last hour we’ve received notification that the RCMP have sat down with those Hereditary Chiefs, and that they been able to come to an agreement with the RCMP. I haven’t had a chance to take a look at that, I just heard it in your newscast frankly. But, we see that there is a willingness sit down and have those conversations.

Why are we at the situation we’re at in the last couple of days, where we have RCMP rolling up on Indigenous people, who are peacefully protesting and arresting them, like we saw in the video? And, clearly the work, this falls on the provincial and the federal government, if what we see is the ability to have these negotiations, and these agreements come into being after a few hours, a day or so, clearly the work was not done.

So, it’s fine for the Premier, it’s fine for the Prime Minister to smile and make the announcement, and say everything is done, and the duty to consult has been has been dispensed. And frankly, I think they handed it over to the corporation to do, and we saw the injunction that came down, that was the choice that the corporation decided to, the way they decided to approach this, and so we get to a situation in which we have tension, we have anger, we have frustration, we have arrests, and at a peaceful protest.

So, I think the Premier, and elected officials, can say what they feel is the case but what we actually see playing out on the ground being something different, causes us to ask the questions as to whether or not in fact we have done the work that needs to be done.

Conflating two separate issues

GM: Well the Premier did speak out about the complicated nature of seeking First Nations approval earlier today, and you yourself talk about depending on which lens you’re looking through at which time, I just like you to take it a listen to what John Horgan had to say about that.

Premier John Horgan: I use the Broughton Archipelago, and the salmon aquaculture issue as an example, we were dealing at that time Nation-to-Nation, with hereditary leadership, with elected leadership, and not everyone in the region agreed, but those who did, did so enthusiastically, and now we have a way forward.

So, Chief Bob Chamberlain, whose no shrinking violet, said categorically and unreservedly, that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People does not mean a veto, it means we need to sit down and find a way forward on consent. And, if this were simple, it would have been done a long, long time ago.

GM: That’s our Premier John Horgan. So Adam Olsen, what do you make of what the Premier just said?

AO: I’m troubled that were conflating, what we’re trying to say that, I am assuming that the point of that comment was, was to conflate that the work that the government did, and I congratulated them on the work that they did in the Broughton Archipelago, is good enough for the Wet’suwet’en.

And that again is simplifying the situation in this province that I think does not need to be simplified. In fact, when we simplify it, it makes the problems even worse. We need to recognize the complexity of the situation. The multiple lenses, the multiple interests, the multiple First Nations.

Doing good work in one place, does not equal good work in another place

Doing good work in the Broughton Archipelago, is not equivalent to doing good work in Northern British Columbia. That good work needs to be done in Northern British Columbia. And so I congratulated the government on their work to move the issue forward in the Broughton Archipelago.

But, I but I’m not in the position to be able to say that because they did good work there, that I can’t be critical nor, or saddened by the situation where we have clearly a situation where the corporation was to finish off the Crown’s duty, to dispense the Crown’s duty to consult. They didn’t do that, they went and sought an injunction because the province and the federal government had given them the right to move ahead without the consent, without the work being done.

The Unist’ot’en camp was not a surprise to anybody. The fact that it had been there for about a decade, everybody knew that this was going to be a flashpoint. The fact that it came to the aggression, and to the flashpoint that did this past week is a failure. It’s a failure of the politicians at the provincial and the federal government level do dispense their duty to consult. It’s not the job of a corporation to dispense that duty of the Crown. It’s the Crown’s duty.

What about the investment climate in B.C.?

GM: Adam, before we let let you go I want to put a question to you that we put to several guests this week on this issue. How concerned are you about the message it sends to industry about the risks associated with investing in projects in our province.

AO: You know as a guy who grew up on an Indian Reserve, a member of Tsartlip, I am well aware of this kind of line of questioning. Frankly Gloria, it’s one in which pits the Indigenous people as a scapegoat to holding back investment.

I think that what we need to do, is we need to put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the government. If this is causing an investment challenge in our province, then it’s the responsibility of the government, not just this one, last government, and previous governments before that, to do the job, to dispense their duty to consult and to gain consent of Indigenous people.

If we are having an investment problem, and to say that because we have that is a problem that’s brought on by our governments, and the people of British Columbia should demand better.

I will not allow for Indigenous people to be the scapegoat in this, and to say that because we have struggles with Indigenous relations in this province, therefore this is a bad place to invest. This needs to be fixed by the government, and it is our responsibility.

GM: Thank you for sharing your stance today, I’m sure we will have other opportunities in the future to pick up the discussion. Thanks for your time.