WET’SUWET’EN WAY

RACIST CONFESSION CROWN CONCERNS

The crisis created by the blockades supporting the Wet’suwet’en has finally put government at all levels under every stripe where Indigenous people have been. The purpose of the Indian Act and government created bands and council has perpetrated the conflict in many First Nation communities. The imaginary boundaries created by the forefathers of Canada has finally come to roost on the step of government.

What Canadians are witnessing and many being impacted is what Canada’s First Peoples have had to endure for centuries. Unlike the two-week shortage some Canadians are experiencing, the indigenous people have endured shortages of essential services and items in their communities for over 200 years.

The Conservatives are working hard to make the blockades about a small group of radicals and people who have no business partaking in these protests. There is not a First Nation community in Canada who hasn’t had to bend to industry and government for jobs to lessen the impacts of severe poverty on reservations. This is part of the history of people whose land was taken over and resources extracted for the greater good of a country. Andrew Sheer and his followers are just coming within a hair of repeating history of John A. MacDonald.

For those who lack the knowledge of this part of Canada’s history – the first prime minister is quoted as saying the Government needed to “get rid of the Indian problem.” This was the beginning of reservations, the RCMP, residential schools, the Indian Act, Child Protection Services and the 60s scoop, denying status to hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples and lack of land for native people to live within their communities.

The provincial governments created modern day treaties to intentionally disregard traditional hereditary governance in place of the government mandated chief and councils. The new partners of government are industry who have no legal ground to trespass on unceded territories but the B.C. government gave them the green light so CGL could basically call in the legal system, using the RCMP to once again repeat history.

The issues are complex and require heads of leadership to enter into trusted dialogue. Unfortunately what we are seeing is tried and failed solutions from the past. A refusal by the federal government to deal with CGL illegally occupying native land. The Crown has been sent a letter to honor sovereignty with the Indigenous people but we don’t hear this covered in the press or in the House at Question Period. Why? Maybe what we are witnessing is a reckoning that is 200 hundred years overdue?

I have voted no twice to B.C.’s modernday treaty because government chose to ignore Indigenous people collectively with shared territories governed by multiple chiefs and councils and hereditary governance. Our people saw, if we give up the land – what do we have? Shortterm jobs for some? A bag full of money to fix 200 years of neglect by government with no sustainable economies? How far will $10 million over 10 years go fix the water; sewer; housing; education and health on reserves? Where does this leave our people who had to leave reserves because of lack of housing?

We are selling 280,000 square miles of land rich in resources for more trinkets, then what? What government does at this point will be viewed by many as too little, too late. The creation of the problem is our dependency on fossil fuels not the Indigenous people. Climate change is real and future generations will inherit our problems, so Mr. Sheer denouncing protesters is not only ignorant but irrelevant.

Hello, my name is Terry. I’m a Canadian and I’m a racist.

During my working years, I was a manager with the electric utility and I’ve spent more time than many in cultural awareness sessions, in meetings with various First Nations bands, and in developing and promoting programs to improve the lot of First Nations people. Many of these experiences were educational and thought-provoking for me; some not so much. Often I’ve been raked over the coals for perceived provocations or violations of some protocol or other. For PC reasons, I’ve at times had to make business decisions that were not in the best interests of the ratepayers. Nevertheless, I truly tried to be teachable and to understand the culture.

Recent events have pretty much undone all that. I’ve listened with frustration as anyone’s ancestors who weren’t born on this continent a few thousand years ago were disparaged as colonials and characterized as criminals or worse. And only those born with the prerequisite DNA – birthright being everything, merit being nothing – can lay claim to this piece of earth. I’ve watched as politicians trip over themselves in an effort to gain favour by renaming lands, bodies of water, parks, and buildings. And today I listen to the rhetoric around the silver bullet of reconciliation, never being quite clear what it means, but pretty sure it involves getting out the cheque book.

In many of those meetings I attended in the past, the only one in the room who had actually set foot in a residential school was me. No, I’m not First Nations - I grew up in Port Alberni in the late 1950s/early 60s. A number of my childhood peers boarded at the residential school and they attended our public schools. We exchanged venues for ball games, I visited friends there, and the big sister of one of my friends (non-FN) worked there as a housekeeper and we would visit and help out on the weekends.

Many of these FN kids, just like me, wanted to be fireman/doctors/policeman/jet pilots, and needed the education to do it. They were unlikely to get it in their remote coastal community homes, and not all were enamoured with living in locations like that. Don’t get me wrong – I acknowledge and in no way condone the terrible things that happened in these schools and don’t pretend to compare my experience with those who were victims. While the concept may have been well intended, the methodology was obviously wrong. But I make these comments to add perspective, and ponder whether these institutions of evil that are blamed for so much were as totally Buchenwaldian as portrayed in the current dialogue.

And now I watch as an angry few do their best to destroy the fabric of our society, and to literally disable the hands that feed them, all while denigrating my ancestors for authoring everything that’s wrong in the world and in North Korean fashion, persecuting all who came after as being equally responsible for the actions of their forefathers.

I can’t get past this, and do you know what? I no longer want to. So, sadly and without pride in the fact, I admit I’ve become a racist.

“Lack of Federal Crown draws judge’s rebuke” (Feb. 20, Citizen).

Yes, there is a lack of federal Crown everywhere. You’ve touched softly on the trouble that is boiling beneath.

Canada is in an opioid crisis and those responsible for prosecuting have no care for the north, nor for that matter, any regions outside of Vancouver/Burnaby.

As taxpayers, we have been paying for pensioned prosecutors to fly from North Vancouver to service everything north of P.G., and we’ll continue to do so. This past summer, Kelowna lost its longstanding agent firm, only to be absorbed by another agent firm located in Richmond. The general theme when an agent firm is ousted is the billings, yet the PPSC mandate is to minimize costs with local firms. What is the cost when we lose local connections to our communities?

Currently, 46 judicial regions are up for tender in B.C. It would be a miracle if those bids were awarded to any firm that has not already been operating in those regions. Training new firms is such a task for the ASU of the PPSC, hence the fair bidding process.

The agent affairs program with the PPSC is a program designed for the federal government to have their cake and eat it too. There is no support, no training, no resources and definitely no discretion allowed by any agent firms so fairly awarded these contracts, they are but poor man’s prosecutors propped up to puppet the PPSC’s protocols.

In P.G. the defunct law firm of Kaun Law operated for a short seven years, but its founder prosecuted for nearly 17. He opened his firm on his 65th birthday year and he died on his 72nd. During those seven years, his organic firm went from holding four regions to 21. Most absorbed and then awarded.

For 20 months, the PPSC knew that KLC would not be bidding on any contracts and just three working days before the end of tender the fine feds informed KLC that we were “not the successful candidate.” News flash - we didn’t bid.

The lack of federal crown is due to a lack of organization and care from the ASU of the PPSC. It is also due to the contracts being awarded to a firm in North Vancouver that has not yet been vetted, announced, organized, and has the best puppet they could find.

Fair and transparent? I think not.