POINT/COUNTERPOINT IN THE PAGES OF THE SUN

The Prince Rupert Container Port is proving to be a rather newsworthy story and not just on the Northwest coast. As we reported earlier today, the Container port project and subsequent First Nations land issue, has become one of the largest news items to come out of Prince Rupert since the Skeena Cellulose/Northwest Pulp and Timber saga unfolded a few years ago.

Today the Daily News had a front page story on a response from the First Nations of the area to an editorial printed in the January 26th edition of the Vancouver Sun. The Daily selected key points, but did not completely reflect the tone of the Sun editorial, which tended to take a much harder line on the issue than we have heard locally of late.

While the Daily explored the First Nations reply a bit more expansively, the reporting on the rebuttal from the Band Councils still had gaps. It provided the main points of their reply. And while true to the bulk of their argument, it being in excerpt form doesn’t quite carry the same gravitas as the original version that ran in The Sun.

So in the spirit of full and complete information, we reprint in their entirety, the two communiqués that have created a bit of a buzz in Podunk over the last few days!

We begin our journey with the article that started the latest exchange of information, the Vancouver Sun editorial followed by the reply from Lax Kw’alaams and Metlakatla.



FIRST NATIONS’ WELL-BEING IS ALSO AT STAKE IN PRINCE RUPERT PROTEST

Vancouver Sun Editorial
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Page A20

The Lax Kw’alaams and Metlakatla first nations bands are playing high stakes poker by threatening to block development of a $170 million container facility in Prince Rupert, a key component in Canada’s Asia Pacific Gateway initiative.

The bands have filed a notice of application in Federal Court against the federal transport minister and the attorney general, alleging that Ottawa has failed to consult and accommodate them in the first phase of the project, which promises to create hundreds of jobs and economic opportunities for communities across the country – including their own.

The Prince Rupert Port Authority says the project, which is vital to the economic revitalization of the region, cannot be delayed because commercial arrangements have been in place since November and escalating costs in British Columbia’s overheated construction sector could make it unaffordable.

Nevertheless, the bands are demanding an interlocutory injunction to bar the government from giving the green light to the port expansion until their application has been heard and resolved.

“The federal government is refusing to recognize our aboriginal rights and title to the area,” Lax Kw’alaams’ chief councilor Garry Reece said. “They have a duty to consult and accommodate first nations in their traditional territory.”

The reason the federal government has not recognized their aboriginal rights and title is that they’re in dispute. Ottawa maintains that the Metlakatla surrendered their claim to much of this territory in 1906 while the Lax Kw’alaams claim was settled in 2003. The bands seem to want to revive a fight with Britain’s Royal Proclamation of 1763, sacrificing future prosperity.

The allegation that the federal government has failed to consult with the Lax Kw’alaams and Metlakatla seems disingenuous. There were exchanges of letters between former transport minister Jean Lapierre and his department officials, who responded to the bands within a reasonable time frame and invited them to meet.

Even Reece admits they met with federal and port authority officials; it’s just that the bands didn’t get what they wanted. What they want is a share of revenues from the container port, in which they have no financial interest. It is fully funded by the federal and provincial governments, CN and Maher Terminals. They also demand guarantees of training and employment for local band members.

So this confrontation isn’t about consultation, or fairness or respect. It’s a negotiation over money.

The bands have taken the position that if they don’t get what they want, nobody will get anything.

They have complained that the port will have negative impacts on their traditional uses of the harbour, including picking berries and collecting oysters, cockles and seaweed. Should they succeed in killing this important port expansion, those might be the only economic activities left to them.

The court should refuse to hear this case and move the matter quickly into arbitration to obtain a reasonable settlement without delaying a project that promises to improve the economic prospects of everyone in the region, including first nations.

(END)


The following is the response from the Lax Kw’alaams and Metlakatla Bands.


FIRST NATIONS STILL SHUT OUT IN RUPERT

By Harold Leighton and Gary Reece
Article appeared in the Editorial page section of the
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, February 1, 2006

Two hundred years ago (and for thousands of years before that) the Prince Rupert harbour area was an area of bustling population, commerce and culture.

It was home to the 10 villages of the tribes of the Coast Tsimshian peoples, who now compose the Lax Kw’alaams and Metlakatla Bands We had a highly developed commercial base and a legal system that recognized property ownership throughout the area.

When the Europeans came, we were pushed aside, and our property was converted to various economic uses, without compensation or recognition of our rights.

Our reserves were pushed to outlying areas, and we have largely been left out of the various booms in the regional economy, although we constitute almost 40 per cent of the population.

Now the newest hope to revitalize the regional economy is a proposed container port. The Vancouver Sun’s editorial on January 26 suggested that we should stand idly by, while our rights and title are ignored yet again, in the larger interest of regional development for everyone else.

We believe that “reconciliation” of aboriginal title with provincial and federal government economic objectives requires us to work together. We are willing to do so. We have tried to negotiate. But Ottawa has delayed, avoided, and finally denied our rights.

It’s hard to negotiate with people who deny that there is anything of substance to negotiate, but claim the right to proceed anyways. We are disempowered in this process.

The Supreme Court of Canada confirmed the existence of aboriginal title (Delgamuukw 1997) – aboriginal peoples hold title to the lands that were possessed under their laws at the time of colonization – and in 2004 the court (in Haida), directed that where treaties don’t yet exist, accommodation should be negotiated before the Crown may proceed with new developments.

The Crown “acting honourably, cannot cavalierly run roughshod over aboriginal interests.” Our property rights are no longer only moral issues, they are legal ones.

Despite this change in the laws, the federal government has been slow to react. The process of denial continues. It is the Crown who is playing brinkmanship –“high stakes poker” as the editorial put it – by denying our rights, offering us little, and then leaving us with no other option but to turn to the courts.

If first nations benefited equally from economic development in our region, The Sun editors might have a point. But we don’t – 150 years of history in this province have shown that.

Property values have risen 25 per cent in Prince Rupert since the Port project, but few of our members own property (and our members in Prince Rupert must now pay higher rents.)

We won’t get a fair share of jobs – the International Longshore and Warehouse Union insists that all jobs are tied with “seniority” – and, unlike other governments, we don’t have the right to collect property tax on this new wealth, nor income tax on new jobs and businesses, nor resource royalties and sales tax.

What we seek, and what other first nations seek on similar projects, is a fair share of the economic opportunity. We need land to build businesses, a share of new revenues created, or some economic benefit to offset more losses in our traditional lands and our traditional way of life.

This does not seem unreasonable to us. This port’s own study estimates benefits to Canada and BC of $2.7 billion and 1.4 billion respectively. We will see almost none of that, unless changes are made for us.

We are not opposed to economic development, nor to seeing our neighbours prosper. Indeed, the Metlakatla have supported local business ventures, and the Lax Kw’alaams are working hard to revitalize the forest economy through their recent purchase of TFL #1 and through their current efforts to reopen the Skeena pulp mill in Prince Rupert.

But we cannot simply accept a denial of our legal title. It is not enough to claim such rights are “in dispute” and then proceed as if they did not exist. But this is what The Sun seems to suggest should happen. When property rights are at stake in Canadian law, there are mechanisms to protect them and the Supreme Court of Canada has extended such mechanisms to first nations. We want nothing more than to be treated fairly and lawfully.

The new federal government has a chance to get this project moving, and to establish respect for first nations’ existing legal rights. We look forward to a better relationship.

Harold Leighton and Garry Reece are chief councilors of Lax Kw’alaams and Metlakatla respectively.