Two former Sechelt (shíshálh) First Nation councillors say there is “mass confusion” among band members about the direction Chief Calvin Craigan and the current council are taking.
Wesley Jeffries and Robert Joe — who both served as councillors from 1993-96 and 2008-11 — told Coast Reporter last Friday that band members have never been consulted on the decision to negotiate a reconciliation agreement with the province.
In fact, they said, band members voted almost a decade ago to stop trying to reach a negotiated land claim settlement and to instead seek justice through the courts.
“We had a referendum to go to litigation and to this day, that referendum still holds, is binding,” Jeffries said. “So our leadership is not abiding by the referendum. They’re going on their own.”
“We’re confused,” Joe said. “We dropped out of the treaty process in 2000 to gather information to go to court, and I strongly believe in that direction, as many band members do. But it seems from what we’ve been reading and hearing is that we’re in reconciliation. What is reconciliation?”
Reconciliation agreements, according to the province, “are forward-looking agreements that can combine decision-making, revenue sharing, economic development and community-based social development tools, creating the opportunity for comprehensive and lasting reconciliation.”
Jeffries said the concept of reconciliation seems vague and “just another word for treaty,” which would leave the band with only a small portion of its traditional territory. He pointed to last June’s Supreme Court of Canada decision recognizing the Tsilhqot’in (Chilcotin) Nation’s Aboriginal title to 17,500 sq. kilometres of Crown land, representing about 40 per cent of the band’s claim, although only a fraction of its traditional territory.
“It’s a new form of land — not fee simple, not under the Indian Act, not federal, not provincial. It’s Chilcotin,” Jeffries said. “In the courts, we have evidence, unequivocal we believe, to win the same declaration of title to our land, so what are we doing talking to the province?”
“My own feeling,” Joe said, “is the government is fearful of us going to court and winning. And that’s why they want us to give up 99.99 per cent of our land.”
The idea of joint decision-making with the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) also doesn’t sit well, Jeffries said.
“We’ve spent a lot of time and we spent a lot of funds with the lawyers. We fought for ourselves and all of a sudden we want the SCRD to tag along with us? That’s never come to the people,” he said, adding the same applies to resource sharing.
“Our chief says we will share the resources with the local communities. But we need the resources. In order to be self-governing, self-sustaining, we need to have access to those resources.”
Joe said attempts to get answers from the leadership have been met with the criticism that they are casting blame.
“We’re not blaming,” he said. “We’re just asking questions, we’re not personally attacking them. It’s our right to question the leadership, because we didn’t know we were in reconciliation until we read it in the paper and saw it on [Craigan’s] TV program.”
The issue, Jeffries said, “boils down to the word consultation.”
Joe agreed: “They’re not asking or consulting our people, should we go this way?”
Contacted Tuesday, Chief Craigan said the issues raised by Jeffries and Joe will be addressed at a community meeting for all band members, to be held “probably within a month.”
Craigan described the two men as “a couple of dissidents” and Joe admitted they have been called radicals and militants.
“People phone us because we’re not afraid to speak up,” he said. “They use us to voice their opinions. I have no problem with that.”
Jeffries said it was their opposition to the proposed treaty in 1999 that led to the band rejecting it.
“When they signed the agreement-in-principle in our longhouse, we stood outside and we protested it. And people were saying, ‘What are you doing here?’ And mainly the youth came and stood with us. And then that led to a referendum to litigate rather than negotiate.”
In a second longhouse ceremony, band members threw the booklets outlining the agreement-in-principle into the fire, he said. “So that means we had done away with negotiating with both governments. Now they’re back to the table. But this made a sacred statement. Burn it in a sacred fire, it means something.”
The 1999 deal would have given the band $42 million in cash, $1.5 million for economic development and about 1,000 hectares of land, in exchange for the band gradually giving up its tax exemption rights under the Indian Act, according to a Coast Reporter article from 2004.
Last month, Craigan said the province was “very, very committed to dealing with Sechelt ASAP,” predicting the two sides would soon reach an agreement-in-principle “on all the ingredients that will involve reconciliation, co-management, decision-making, sharing.”
