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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, BC Land Claims Breakthrough ... Continuing Challenges - Article﻿</title>﻿

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﻿<b﻿>﻿BC Land Claims Breakthrough ... Continuing Challenges 

﻿<br﻿>﻿</b>﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿


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by Deb Simmons﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, September 1996﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

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﻿<font﻿ ﻿size="1"﻿>﻿Earlier this year, the government of British Columbia signed its first-ever land claims agreement with a group of aboriginal people, the Nisga'a. In the first in a series of articles exploring aboriginal struggles for self-determination across Canada, DEB SIMMONS looks at this agreement in the context of the history of native struggles in B.C.﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿


Since last summer, when a wave of blockades culminated in a major confrontation at Gustafsen Lake, British Columbia has been at the centre of national controversy over aboriginal land rights. At the time, the NDP government was applauded in the media for its tough stand against the "renegade" protesters at Gustafsen Lake. Less than a year later, the same government provoked a major backlash from the three official opposition parties and a storm of debate in the media through the signing of the Nisga'a land claim agreement, the first such agreement signed in the province this century. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

The deal was by no means radical or generous. The Nisga'a will receive only eight percent of the 10,000 square kilometres comprising their traditional territory, and give up their tax-exempt status under the Indian Act, in return for less than $200 million and some rights to harvest natural resources. The cash return to the 5,500 Nisga'a population amounts to only $33,000 per person -- a drop in the bucket. Moreover, the Nisga'a government will be "permitted" to tax its citizens, thus setting the stage for the federal government to withdraw from its special funding obligations under the Indian Act. Reserve lands outside treaty boundaries will be reduced to fee simple property which can be sold by the Nisga'a government to non-aboriginal private interests. Needless to say, the agreement is deeply demoralizing for traditional Nisga'a communities which fall outside treaty territory. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Nevertheless, the Nisga'a agreement is undoubtedly a major breakthrough in the aboriginal struggle for land in British Columbia, since it required the provincial government to acknowledge inherent aboriginal title to the land for the first time since Confederation. Overlapping claims in the province amount to 110 percent of the total land mass. Yet the non-aboriginal majority clearly did not agree with the opposition parties that the treaty process is a major threat. An Angus Reid poll immediately prior to the election found that 72 percent of British Columbians continued to support treaty negotiations. And the failure of the anti-aboriginal strategy to garner significant political leverage was manifested in the election results themselves. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<b﻿>﻿Hot Spot﻿</b>﻿

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

It is no accident that British Columbia is a hot spot in the struggle over aboriginal rights. Tenaciously holding to its colonial heritage, British Columbia has until recently refused to recognize aboriginal land title until forced to by a combination of aboriginal protests and the courts. Unlike the territories to the east of the Rockies, the colony of British Columbia did not find it necessary to subject itself to land treaties with its aboriginal peoples. Not that colonial policy to the east was more benevolent. The treaties signed elsewhere were always linked to the expansion of wheat farming, and expressed the military weakness of the settlers with respect to their aboriginal neighbours. British Columbia, in contrast, didn't develop a significant agricultural economy prior to confederation, so it didn't need to dispossess aboriginal peoples of large portions of their land. There, the fur trade dominated the economy until the massive gold rush which was unleashed in 1858. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

A series of violent attacks on colonists made it evident that the new resource industry and the attendant population influx did cause considerable disruption in aboriginal communities. But still, the pattern of settlement was much different from that in mainly agricultural areas. The settlers were not competing with aboriginal communities for access to land much beyond the limits of the mines and the concentrated mining towns. The question of ownership or title was simply irrelevant with respect to most of the land area. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Most students of Canadian history assume that the relative decline of the fur trade automatically rendered aboriginal peoples economically "irrelevant," and thus led to their marginalization. But nowhere was this less true than in British Columbia. As Rolf Knight points out in his book Indians at Work: An Informal History of Native Indian Labour in British Columbia, 1858-1930, rapid immigration did not solve the acute shortage of labour in the burgeoning resource industries which were established in the wake of the gold rush. In fact, considerable effort was devoted to molding aboriginal peoples into a disciplined workforce in the second half of the 19th century. This was partly done by corralling communities onto reserves too tiny for subsistence. But the outlawing of the traditional potlatch and winter dances in 1884 was also a crucial disciplinary strategy. In the rhetoric of politicians and missionaries, these practices marked the dividing line between civilization and savagery. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Alfred J. Hall came right to the point in a letter to the Victoria Daily Colonist: "There are ... assembled today in two villages, 800 Indians potlatching. There they have been nearly three months and may remain five. Have they (say 200 able men among them) earned or produced $2 per day, i.e. 1 cent per man during his stay? I believe not .... It is in the interests of this province that we keep our Indians alive; they are worth preserving. What they generally produce is in addition to what our settlers produce. They occupy land the white man does not require. They love the white man, and their ultimate future must be absorption and assimilation to the whites." 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

The persistence of the potlatch in the face of such an offensive is the measure of aboriginal resistance during that dark period. However, the rise of the labour market coincided with the decline of wildlife populations due to overharvesting. Although aboriginal peoples may have maintained their traditional practices of non-commercial hunting and fishing, they had no choice but to supplement these through wage labour. By the 1870s aboriginal people had been absorbed into the labour force as sawmill workers, longshoremen, seamen, and placer miners. Aboriginal workers played a major role in the wave of railway construction which began in the province in the 1880s. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<b﻿>﻿Labour Movement﻿</b>﻿

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Just as aboriginal people were integral to the formation of the working class in British Columbia, they were also central to the forging of the labour movement in the province. In 1893, the Fraser River Fishermen's Benevolent and Protective Association called a strike. At a Vancouver public meeting held to raise support for the strike, three leaders of the striking Indian fishermen regaled the audience with their views of the Indian agents, saying that they should be looking after the interests of the Indians, not the interests of the canners. By 1906, Squamish dock workers ﻿had established the only union organization on the Burrard docks under the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). Meetings were held in a hall on the Squamish reserve. In 1937, the United Indians of the Lillooet-Fountain area mobilized a march against poverty inspired partly by the On-to-Ottawa trek the previous year. Some of the march organizers joined the Canadian Labour Defense League for a period. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Unfortunately, bosses were often successful in using the race card to break union solidarity, leading in the case of the fishermen's unions to the establishment of racially segregated unions, including the Pacific Coast Native Fishermen's Association. By the time of the second resource boom of the 1950s and 1960s, mechanization and "rationalization" had combined to create a surplus labour force for the first time after an employers' offensive which lasted two decades. Employers were successful in demanding more permanent, disciplined labour. Aboriginal workers who had been able to retain their traditional subsistence activities on the land under the more flexible regime of the early resource industries lost their ability to compete in the newly restructured workforce, particularly since hiring practices had become increasingly racist as employers gained the upper hand. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

The unemployed had the option of attempting to survive in the city where they had to face the daily experience of racism, or returning to the reserve. They were acutely aware that the issues of land rights and sovereignty had not gone away after decades of lobbying and court battles. (The Nisga'a had been some of the first to make organized claims for land under the auspices of the Nisga'a Land Committee, founded in 1907. They and organizations like theirs in the province presented enough of a threat that they provoked the federal government to pass legislation prohibiting land claims activity in 1927). 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

In fact, these issues had become more acute as the resource industries entered a new phase of expansion, and as then Prime Minister Trudeau prepared a White Paper aimed at the termination of all special aboriginal rights in Canada. Thus aboriginal people in the cities and on the reserves of British Columbia had good reason to be on the cutting edge of the militant Red Power movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Fish-ins were staged to defend traditional fishing rights. Blockades were organized to prevent development on traditional lands. Volunteer aboriginal patrols were set up in Vancouver to help aboriginal people on the streets and defend them from police violence. Young aboriginal people read Mao's Red Book and debated the politics of race and class. There was a rebellion against the elitist politics of government-funded aboriginal organizations in the province. Given this political ferment, it's not surprising that aboriginal people from British Columbia made up the bulk of the Native Caravan which made the trip from Vancouver to Ottawa in 1974, at the peak of the Red Power movement. (Lee Maracle's autobiographical book Bobbi Lee, Indian Rebel provides insight into the experience of this period for young aboriginal militants in British Columbia.) 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Now, as the resource industries of British Columbia enter a new period of expansion, aboriginal peoples confront the possibility that these lands may be environmentally devastated before their claims are negotiated in a process that can take decades. At the same time, they face severe attacks in funding for social services, health and education from the federal government, which is betraying its financial responsibilities under the Indian Act. In this hostile climate, the struggle for aboriginal self-determination in the province is bound to reach a new turning point. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<b﻿>﻿Sidebar Story: Pale Pretext﻿</b>﻿

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

The RCMP came in for much praise during the 33-day standoff at Gustafsen Lake for avoiding the "mistakes" of Waco, Texas and Ipperwash, Ontario -- by a national media which was kept 15 miles away from the conflict, and thus rendered dependent on information feeds from RCMP media handlers. Now, as the trial of protesters gets underway, evidence of unscrupulous RCMP tactics and vigilantism by local ranchers has emerged to shed a different light on events. In its largest ever paramilitary operation, involving more than 400 officers and costing more than $5.5 million, the RCMP rushed to defend property which had never been legally surveyed. 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

The pretext was reported gunfire which shattered the side mirror of a police vehicle on September 4 -- as it turns out, the damage was caused by an accidental collision with a tree branch. In coming so quickly to the rescue, the RCMP saved the supposed landowner $30,000 in legal fees for a civil eviction. Yet it is possible that the land in question is "Crown land" -- that is, unceded aboriginal land which has escaped claim as private property. While the provincial NDP government and the RCMP condemned the "violence" and "extremism" of the protesters, they ignored the thuggery of armed ranchers who appeared at the camp as early as June to serve an eviction notice, threatening to "hang some red niggers." 

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

According to defense lawyers, during the standoff police watched while ranchers intimidated protesters, and cowboys threatened them with bullwhips. The rapid and excessive escalation of the conflict reveals its highly political nature. In a province where frustration over land claims was coming to a head, a small group of protesters was deliberately, under the behest of the provincial NDP, made into cannon-fodder for the anti-aboriginal agenda of the racist right. 

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