Chief Calvin Craigan was clearly back in the saddle Monday when he sat down with local media to answer questions about last month’s lockout of the Sechelt Indian Band’s administrative offices by a group of highly motivated dissidents. The week-long shutdown, which ended after councillors agreed to order a forensic audit, set the band back about six weeks in terms of service disruptions and stalled council business, Craigan said. But now the audit is almost complete, no evidence of financial irregularities has been reported, and it’s time, the chief seemed to be saying, to move on.
Craigan talked about his political opponents with a strong measure of compassion, suggesting their anger “comes from being oppressed for generation after generation for some families.” Resistance to change is another factor, he said, leading to his bombshell announcement that shíshálh – and two other B.C. First Nations – are poised to sign reconciliation agreements with the province within a month. The province confirmed that it expects an agreement with shíshálh to happen “in the coming weeks.”
Readers will recall similar claims made in early 2015, prior to the release of the ill-fated draft Pender Harbour Dock Management Plan. That plan, the province said last year, was the only part of the reconciliation agreement that warranted public consultation, as it potentially affects third-party land-use interests.
“The reconciliation agreement itself is a government-to-government agreement and public consultation is not undertaken under these types of agreements,” the province said at the time.
So what is reconciliation? Some of the dissidents have said it’s simply another word for treaty. When asked Monday how it would be different from a treaty, such as the one recently signed by the Tla’amin Nation north of Powell River, Craigan pointed out that shíshálh “refused to be a treaty band in the ’90s because they didn’t offer enough and the people’s mandate was to go to court to reclaim all of our territory, and we’re getting very close to that.”
Compared to treaty, Craigan suggested, reconciliation would be more open-ended, for one thing.
“The reconciliation agreement is going to involve some of our lands being given back – huge tracts of land, huge resources are being given back – and those are just the beginning,” he said. “It’s going to be a mandate that opens up that door – and that door is going to be open, wide open.”
The Pender dock plan, meanwhile, remains in limbo pending scientific studies that will either support or invalidate some of the more controversial aspects of the plan. That concession to residents came after former B.C. attorney general Barry Penner identified some serious flaws in the draft plan, following a consultation process that was as divisive and explosive as anything we’ve seen on the Coast in recent years.
A larger agreement without the benefit of consultation could be a tough sell for “dissidents” both inside and outside the shíshálh community, but it sounds like the province and the band’s leadership are both prepared to travel that route.
They are elected, after all, and if people don’t like what they’re doing, new elections are just around the corner.
As 87 petitioners who called for Craigan’s resignation last month have found out, that’s how the system works.
