A fight over race, power, real estate
B.C. FIRST NATION OPPOSES NON-NATIVE RESORT ON ITS RESERVE
With fewer than 400 members and a reserve that covers just 458 hectares, the Soowahlie First Nation (SFN) is small. But it’s beautifully situated south of Chilliwack, B.C., next to a provincial park and Cultus Lake, a popular summer resort area packed with attractions, including a waterpark, a golf course and a children’s theme park called Dinotown.
The band has enjoyed good relations with its neighbours, but there have been rough patches, too. Last summer, some SFN members charged motorists $20 each to drive across their reserve, after a storm closed a public road. That didn’t go over well; while SFN chief and band manager Brenda Wallace says the incident demonstrated “how we want our privacy and don’t like our space invaded,” she also expressed regret that it happened.
Now this: a fight over real estate, power and race.
There are only 70 houses on the SFN reserve. There will soon be hundreds more, should a 74-year-old white band member, a local property developer and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) have their way.
Up to 250 vacation-style homes are planned for an 11-hectare chunk of prime Soowahlie land, on the edge of the reserve, near the coveted lake. But the new homes aren’t meant for band members; they will be marketed to affluent retirees, empty nesters, non-natives.
Lynn Commodore, the 74-year-old, stands to gain $4 million in a prepaid, 99-year lease agreement on reserve land she controls, but doesn’t actually own. Ottawa, via INAC, is still in charge, after all.
The band allotted Commodore and her aboriginal husband Earl a “certificate of possession” on the 11 hectares, back in 1972. Certificates of possession are instruments used by bands across Canada to allocate reserve lands to members for their own use and benefit, subject to INAC approval.
The Commodores built and operated a go-kart concession on the property for seven years. They also worked with a developer to propose a housing scheme, which SFN members eventually turned down.
Another developer, Chilliwack-based Larry Les, subsequently joined forces with the Commodores. Earl Commodore died two years ago, but the housing development proposal proceeded.
Wallace says Commodore has every right to pursue the development; her beef is with INAC.
Department bureaucrats “are telling us this is going to happen, whether we like it or not,” she said. “Some of us aren’t really looking forward to having 250 new neighbours.”
INAC’s “paternalistic activities threaten to create and foster long-term social impacts” on her community. They trump any potential economic benefits a development deal would bring the band.
SFN members would rather keep their reserve to themselves, than share 11 hectares with non-natives, even if it means turning their backs on $400,000 in annual property tax revenues and a one-time cash payment of about $1 million, all terms of the proposed development.
But a community meeting this month failed to convince band members. INAC officials were shouted down and Les was unable to complete his presentation.
“The result of the meeting is the clear message that the community does not support the housing development,” Wallace said this week in a press release.
“If INAC and the developer had their way, construction would already be underway despite the clear objections voiced by the Soowahlie leadership and citizens.”
Some were more forceful. They include Doug Kelly, an outspoken SFN member and grand chief of the Sto:lo Tribal Council, a group that represents local bands.
After the March 11 community meeting, he launched into attack mode.
“Larry Les, he didn’t get a very warm reception,” he told the Chilliwack Times newspaper. “He talked down to us like we’re a bunch of dumb Indians.”
Kelly also went after Commodore. A “non-aboriginal person that acquired (Indigenous) status under racist provisions of the Indian Act should not reap economic benefits intended for Soowahlie members,” he said.
A Commodore relative who asked not to be identified accuses Kelly of bullying and says all four of her children — each of them a full SFN member — are “100 per cent for the development.”
INAC did not answer specific questions about the brouhaha this week.
IF INAC AND THE DEVELOPER HAD THEIR WAY, CONSTRUCTION WOULD ALREADY BE UNDERWAY DESPITE THE CLEAR OBJECTIONS VOICED BY THE SOOWAHLIE LEADERSHIP AND CITIZENS.
— BRENDA WALLACE, SOOWAHLIE FIRST NATION CHIEF