Canada: Wet'suwet'en sign historic deal to negotiate land rights
A group of Indigenous leaders have struck an unprecedented deal with Canada’s government to resolve a dispute over territorial rights near the site of a controversial pipeline project which provoked fierce protests, police raids and a nationwide rail blockade.
At a virtual signing ceremony on Thursday, hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en people agreed to a memorandum of understanding with the federal government and the province of British Columbia – a landmark agreement many hope will grant the Wet’suwet’en title rights to 22,000 sq km of territory.
The planned talks follow a wave of protest across the country in February in support of Indigenous activists in remote camps attempting to block the construction of the 670km Coastal GasLink pipeline.
The three-way agreement also marks a rare decision by the federal and provincial governments to negotiate directly, bypassing a costly and fraught treaty process that typically takes decades moving through various levels of negotiation.
The relationship between Canada’s federal government and First Nations is still governed by legislation drawn up in the colonial era. But ambiguities within the Indian Act leave ample room for confusion over rights to land – and who speaks for the Indigenous people in the country.
Tensions came to a head in recent months, after the company Coastal GasLink won a court injunction to continue construction of its multibilliondollar project, a third of which would cross through Wet’suwet’en traditional territory.
The C$6.6bn (US$5bn) project has the support of 20 elected First Nations councils along the proposed route. Five of the six elected band councils in the Wet’suwet’en nation also support the pipeline – but Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs do not, and say the band leadership doesn’t have the authority to negotiate such agreements.
The federal government typically only negotiates with First Nations band councils and their democratically elected leadership. But Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders have long claimed authority over a large swath of northern British Columbia arguing that they never signed any treaty to cede the land.
Few expect the negotiations will be straightforward: there are few playbooks for the government to draw on when negotiating rights and land titles.
In 2014, Canada’s supreme court ruled the Tsilquot’in nation in British Columbia had retained title to territory they had traditionally occupied. That victory paved the way for the current negotiations – but it came after nearly 30 years of court battles.
Legal expert Signa Daum Shanks says she suspects the federal government realized it could face hefty legal costs if they were to fight the Wet’suwet’en in court and lose.
“I suspect Canada is making some decisions about fiscal costs they might incur if they’re proven wrong over this in the next decade,” Daum Shanks, a professor of Indigenous governance and history at Osgoode Hall Law School.
Negotiations over the deal have also pitted different levels of Indigenous leadership against each other. Elected Wet’suwet’en chiefs in the region say they have been left out of the talks and have called for the agreement to be scrapped.
In a statement released on Monday, the leaders of four elected band councils say Wet’suwet’en hereditary leadership were “treated us improperly and failed to adequately inform us regarding the proceedings and processes that have taken place to date”, following six hours of virtual discussion.
“To ignore their clan members and elected councils, something is terribly amiss,” said the statement.
Further complicating matters are complaints from several Wet’suwet’en women who were once hereditary chiefs – but who were recently stripped
of their titles and replaced by men.
“The government has legitimized the meeting with the five hereditary chiefs and left out the entire community,” one of the women, Theresa Tait-Day of the Wet’suwet’en Matrilineal Coalition, told the Canada Press.
But early disagreements do not mean the talks are doomed, says Daum Shanks. “The conflict we see needs time to percolate further and does not automatically mean that this big deal is botched. The sky is not falling.”