TO SEE PLACARDS PROCLAIMING ‘RECONCILIATION IS DEAD,’ YOU MIGHT NEVER SUSPECT HOW EXPLICITLY THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION REPORT CONTEMPLATED RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT AS A TOOL FOR … WELL, RECONCILIATION.
To see all the placards and bedsheets across the country proclaiming “reconciliation is dead,” you might never suspect how explicitly the Truth and Reconciliation Report contemplated resource development as a tool for … well, reconciliation. It quotes approvingly a 2013 report to Prime Minister Stephen Harper by Douglas Eyford, the government’s special representative on westcoast energy infrastructure: “Aboriginal communities view natural resource development as linked to a broader reconciliation agenda.” And it specifies how that development should happen in order to ensure Indigenous people support and prosper from it.
The 92nd of the report’s “calls to action” envisions governments “obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples before proceeding with economic development projects,” and ensuring that “Aboriginal peoples have equitable access to jobs, training, and education opportunities in the corporate sector, and that Aboriginal communities gain long-term sustainable benefits from economic development projects.”
Those criteria couldn’t be met with some projects, notably Enbridge’s now-moribund Northern Gateway pipeline. For various reasons including a preference for natural gas over diluted bitumen, those criteria were met to the satisfaction of all 20 First Nations along the Coastal Gaslink pipeline route — including some who opposed Northern Gateway. They have all signed community benefits agreements; residents are eager to get to work and reap the benefits.
Were it not for a handful of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who oppose CGL — or, rather, were it not for some Mohawk Warriors on the other side of the country who support those chiefs — the public face of opposition to CGL would be largely that of non-indigenous urban environmentalists. That would be far less compelling, if not downright awkward.
These protests aren’t about the virtues of hereditary leadership per se. There are Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who support CGL, including three much-maligned women who have effectively been excommunicated for their apostasy. “We don’t want (CGL’S) money,” Chief Na’moks, also known as John Ridsdale, told APTN News in 2018 on the chiefs’ and the community’s behalf. “We’ve stripped the names from three female hereditary chiefs for supporting the pipeline. A name is more important than money.”
The pro-cgl chiefs don’t even get a seat at the table, let alone a rail blockade on their behalf. Furthermore there are hereditary chiefs among the other 19 First Nations from whom we aren’t hearing much or anything, because their communities have managed to reconcile hereditary and elected rule in a way the Wet’suwet’en have not. Some will no doubt support CGL, some not. But it’s not a gamechanger.
In the unlikely event a bunch of hereditary chiefs supported CGL and elected band councils opposed it, people would be marching in the streets in support of the elected councils. Everyone knows this. What we are seeing is just an unlikely collision between Justin Trudeau’s impossible promise — that he could sell a critical mass of Canadians on a Sunny Ways balance between climate change leadership and continued resource extraction — and the uniquely dysfunctional and sadly divided politics of a single First Nation.
With protests proliferating in the wake of the OPP busting up the CN rail blockade in Tyendinaga, Ont., it is understandable that many people on both sides of the issue worry about an ugly backlash.
But with a few false starts, the Canadian media have done well informing Canadians about what’s going on here: This isn’t Indigenous people battling the Rest of Canada. It’s not even the Wet’suwet’en people battling the Rest of Canada. Rather, it’s a few hereditary chiefs who hold a position on a pipeline that’s perfectly aligned with the Canada’s protest-industrial complex.
Racism doesn’t answer to reason, but there is no earthly reason for anyone to channel their frustrations against Indigenous people in general.
Nor is there any reason to throw up one’s hands and declare reconciliation dead. Maybe the opposite. Non-indigenous pipeline supporters — from the legislatures to the boardrooms to the worksites — find themselves in sincere and genuine solidarity here with the majority of the Wet’suwet’en people, and the majority of the people of 19 other First Nations in Alberta and British Columbia, in wanting to get a natural gas pipeline built for all of their mutual benefit. It’s a gong show out there right now, but that, surely, is a positive development.
Is it reconciliation? Who knows. Reconciliation isn’t one thing. It can’t be measured and, one day, declared achieved. If CGL eventually goes ahead, even within the Wet’suwet’en community, there will be people who consider it a victory for reconciliation, others who consider it an affront to reconciliation, and a whole lot of others who have too many bills to pay and mouths to feed to spend all day worrying about giant amorphous concepts. But if it goes to plan, and there’s no reason to think it shouldn’t, the majority of people will end up wealthier, happier, more secure, and more confident in precisely the sort of nation-to-nation relationships we all hope to build.