GOSNELL PART OF HISTORIC TREATY
Settlement between B.C. and Nisga’a set precedent
When he was a youngster growing up in Gitwinksihlkw (Canyon City), Joseph Gosnell sat with his family eating meals at a long wooden table. Gosnell and his siblings weren’t allowed to talk. They were supposed to listen and learn the adaawak, the oral history of the Nisga’a.
One of the stories they heard took place more than a century ago. In 1887, Nisga’a chiefs pushed a 15-metre cedar canoe into the Nass River and paddled down the coast to Victoria. They weren’t making a social visit — they were petitioning the provincial government for an early settlement of the Nisga’a Land Question.
“But when they reached the capital and climbed the steps of the parliament buildings and knocked on the door, they were turned away,” Gosnell wrote in The Vancouver Sun in 1996.
A few days before the article was published, Gosnell had been part of a historic event. An agreement in principle had been reached for a treaty between federal and provincial governments and the Nisga’a Tribal Council of which Gosnell was president and chief negotiator.
B.C.’s first modern comprehensive treaty was attacked from all sides — by Nisga’a in the Nass Valley and by non-native British Columbians who thought it gave away too much. Provincial politicians and columnists criticized the agreement as undemocratic and likely to ghettoize the Nisga’a.
On an eight-day speaking tour of Europe, Gosnell talked about what the treaty meant to him and the Nisga’a. He also recounted his experience as a youngster witnessing sexual abuse by a Salvation Army minister in his village.
The historic day of ratification occurred on Thursday, April 13, 2000. In the Nass Valley, church bells rang. In Ottawa, the governor-general gave royal assent in front of Nisga’a leaders in red and black ceremonial dress representing wolf, killer whale, eagle and raven clans.
Gosnell, fighting back tears, said he and other Nisga’a chiefs were simply finishing what had been started 113 years before.
“A generation of Nisga’a men and women has grown old at the negotiating table,” Gosnell wrote about the treaty.
“Many more who sought a settlement, like the chieftains who voyaged to Victoria, died before they could see their dream realized. But when the adaawak is told to future generations, perhaps a child somewhere will hear that the canoe returned to the Nass Valley, more than a century later, carrying justice for the Nisga’a and honour for us all.”