For the first time in our history, Canada’s head of state began a Speech from the Throne with a land acknowledgement. King Charles III made his remarks in Ottawa last week in a more measured and careful way than the B.C. government has seen in recent years.
“I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people,” the King’s speech began. “This land acknowledgment is a recognition of shared history as a nation, while continuing to deepen my own understanding. It is my great hope that in each of your communities and collectively as a country, a path is found toward truth and reconciliation, in both word and deed.”
The call for unity is welcome and overdue, and the King’s use of “unceded” is accurate in this case. The Algonquins of Ontario are not subject to a historic treaty, and have been in official negotiations with Ontario and Canada since 1992 towards a modern one. The claim area is nine million acres.
In B.C., where most, but not all, land is also unceded, the term is sometimes used casually and in apparent ignorance of its meaning.
Case in point was a series of COVID-19 briefings from provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry. She took to saying “unceded” for Vancouver briefings, where land is subject to overlapping territorial claims and only Tsawwassen is subject to a treaty. Then she started claiming Victoria was unceded, speaking mere steps away from the Royal B.C. Museum where the original Douglas Treaties reside.
Like all treaties, their main purpose is to define and cede territory. B.C.’s Peace region is subject to Treaty 8, which states: “…the said Indians do hereby cede, release, surrender and yield up to the Government of the Dominion of Canada … all their rights, titles and privileges whatsoever, to the lands.”
Treaty 8 is one of the historic numbered treaties, signed with the Crown in 1899. The province is currently scrambling to compensate the affected First Nations for a costly series of treaty violations identified by the courts, after Blueberry River, one of the eight nations covered by the treaty, proved that almost every acre of its hunting and fishing land has been disrupted by oil, gas and forestry development.
Treaties matter.
A post-election surge in support for independence has led to more distortions. Immediately following the election of another federal Liberal minority government, some repeated claims that Alberta can’t separate from Canada because its land is unceded too.
Not true. Treaty 8 and many other numbered treaties cover all of Alberta.
Over-wrought land acknowledgements performative, say critics
Meanwhile at the B.C. government, land acknowledgements have gone from empty ritual to borderline farce. Province-wide conference calls for urgent ministry business can begin with up to half an hour of pained, often inaccurate apologies for the presence of white people.
Burnaby East NDP MLA Rohini Arora caused a stir in the legislature in mid-May, scolding a Conservative MLA for objecting to the terms “settler, uninvited guest … white folks who self-describe as colonizers.”
Arora went on, lecturing in the style of a college sophomore: “Some may be uncomfortable with these terms, but they are not meant to divide us.”
Actually, that is the only thing they do.
Independent MLA Dallas Brodie has emerged as a blunt critic. “This racist drivel has gone too far,” Brodie wrote on X. “We are not uninvited guests. Canada belongs to every citizen.”
Brodie was kicked out of the B.C. Conservative caucus in March after a podcast appearance in which leader John Rustad said she mocked testimony of former residential school students. This occurred on the heels of Brodie’s repeated run-ins with Rustad and MLA colleagues for refuting claims of unmarked children’s graves on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops.
Since then, Brodie and the two MLA dissidents who left the Conservatives in solidarity with her after she was jettisoned – Jordan Kealy from Peace River North, and Tara Armstrong in the Okanagan – have gained an online following. Some of their supporters have accused Rustad of not being conservative enough and say he is borrowing ideas from Brodie’s work in the legislature.
But months before Brodie presented a petition to repeal the UN-inspired Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) Rustad had revealed publicly he wanted to replace it with less divisive legislation that advances his vision of “economic reconciliation.”
“Reconciliation must be based on empowerment and self-determination, not narrow beliefs that are performative rather than practical,” Rustad wrote last month in a Vancouver Sun OpEd, dismissing as “racial hierarchy,” Arora’s sermon on how non-Indigenous people should self-identify.
“There are no settlers or uninvited guests; there are just British Columbians.”
The NDP caucus on the other hand, embraces both Arora’s messaging and the DRIPA endorsement of “free, prior and informed consent” for industrial development, even as the party incorrectly insists this does not equal a veto. Otherwise, why would Premier David Eby need to force through legislation that centralizes power to himself and his cabinet, allowing them to bypass consultations and environmental assessments to get big projects approved?
Restricting access to public parks divisive
Brodie’s push-back against another divisive move – the closures of provincial parks to non-indigenous people – drew out a similar stance from Rustad, who has previously spoken against visitor restrictions at public parks.
Joffre Lakes park, where the trend to restrict access to parks started in 2018, has already been closed once this year. This year’s restriction against non-Indigenous visitors was to allow two First Nations “the time and space” to “reconnect with the land and carry out cultural and spiritual practices,” according to the BC parks website.
One of the most popular Crown land parks in B.C., the Lilwat and N’Quatqua Nations just announced two more “recognition periods,” in Joffre for late June, including the longest yet, from Aug. 22 to Oct. 23.
Dr. Caroline Elliott, a specialist in the compatability of Indigenous self-governance with Canadian democracy, was an early and ongoing critic. She pointed to the closure of Joffre Lakes and then Tofino’s Long Beach for a private ceremony with a dead grey whale.
“The presence of a whale carcass apparently gives licence for a First Nation to shut down yet another public space, in a national park, to non-indigenous visitors ‘until further notice,’” Elliott wrote last year. “If you ‘trespass’ on your own public land, Parks Canada will issue up to a $25,000 fine.”
All of which reveals a vacuum of genuine truth and reconciliation, and an urgent need for unity, just like the King said.