RECONCILIATION IS NO EASY THING, EVEN IF IT HAS A NICE RING TO IT
The province says great things about First Nations, but actions speak louder
Talking the talk of reconciliation with First Nations is easy. Walking the walk requires meaningful actions take precedence over politically advantageous theatre.
The venerable Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs — it’s now been holding government to account over First Nations policy issues for almost 50 years — called the province on this profoundly important distinction Monday.
It dropped a protocol bombshell just as Prince William and Premier Christy Clark headed off to Bella Bella and the Great Bear Rainforest where, ironically, the province had earlier snubbed the Central Coast Regional District, one of the few elected non-First Nations governments in Canada boasting 80 per cent of its council elected from First Nations, by refusing it an invitation.
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip announced a majority of chiefs in the UBCIC decided his participation in a formal reconciliation ceremony at the provincial legislature Monday night involving William and Clark would be inappropriate.
Phillip was to hand what was termed a ring of reconciliation to Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, and then invite him, as the Crown’s official representative, to affix it to the Black Rod of the legislature.
The Black Rod, adopted by B.C. in 2012, is a medieval symbol of the authority of Canada’s reigning monarch. Made from the wood of seven indigenous B.C. trees, it’s embossed with silver, jade and a British gold sovereign from 1871, the year B.C. became a province — and began trashing First Nations rights. Three silver rings represent the Crown, Canada and B.C. The fourth ring to be affixed represents the province’s First Nations. Reconciliation is a worthy goal. The Crown’s representative in 1871 characterized First Nations as subhuman — “bestial rather than human,” his words, not mine — and under his oversight lands reserved for First Nations were unilaterally reduced. Concurrent with industrial-scale salmon canneries, First Nations were banned from the commercial fishery. In 1872, their right to vote in provincial elections was rescinded. In 1876, their right to vote in municipal elections was stripped, which makes that central coast snub even more poignant. They were denied the right to hire lawyers to defend their land rights.
Objections over human-rights abuses staining the concept of democracy were ignored.
The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs represents more than half the 203 First Nations in B.C., so its rebuff isn’t simply impolite pique.
It’s a significant statement. It addresses the relationship a provincial government seeking a new mandate wants us to think it has with First Nations governments, as compared with the relationship it actually has with many. When a majority of chiefs reject a ceremony that is supposed to represent reconciliation, there’s a problem.
Doubtless the apparatchiks of protocol in the premier’s office found it easy to recruit a stand-in for the absent grand chief. Alas, spin-doctoring, however proficient, can’t varnish the simple but powerful message.
Our provincial government has been big on the talk of reconciliation with First Nations — the public apologies, the photo ops with the premier, the symbolic gestures, the rituals and so on. Yet when it comes to walking the walk, they’re not so enthusiastic.
The UBCIC listed examples: fast-tracking the Site C dam over First Nations concerns, putting consultation and negotiation behind a desire to ram it beyond the point of no return; stalland-litigate tactics over fishing rights; pipeline rights-of-way and locations for liquefied naturalgas plants that don’t reconcile First Nations objections; and the issues of deepening poverty — 48 per cent of First Nations children are in homes below the poverty line, almost three times the rate for non-aboriginal children, and B.C. still has no coherent povertyreduction plan — and ongoing negligence regarding aboriginal child-welfare policies.
On the government side of the reconciliation equation, its apparent misunderstanding of what consultation in good faith means is now an ill-planned train wreck. I say apparent because it’s equally possible it is less failure to understand than a cynical weighing of political capital and where to spend it.
The B.C. government should look for ways to mediate the sometimes competing interests it’s supposed to represent. Instead, many First Nations clearly think government is wedded first to corporate economic interests, then to its own political agenda, and that they are well down the priority list.
Look, a long-term abusive relationship in which there is a vast asymmetry in power between the abuser and the abused can’t be reconciled simply by making nice in public.
British Columbians want and deserve genuine reconciliation. Political theatre and promises of better times tomorrow don’t cut it. The UBCIC is honest. That’s the unvarnished take-away from this protocol protest.