Maps Explore the land and the development Photo Gallery See the landscapes and faces of Tsawwassen Video Gallery Watch clips of the treaty process & the opposition Timelines View historic highlights & the steps of the treaty’s creation Landmark land settlement Introduction • The importance of treaties • Terms of the treaty Feature Story • No Reservations Tsawwassen First Nation • History & Ancestry Business Interests • Current & Future Projects Opposition Q&As • Grand Chief Stewart Phillip • Mayor Lois Jackson • Councillor Harold Steves • M.P. John Cummins Archives • Songs of the Nass Treaty talk “I’m not sure what will happen in the future with other treaties. There are some people who are concerned for the future in terms of the agricultural lands, the fishery and the issue of taxation without representation.” — Lois Jackson, Mayor of Delta view all »    Resources Tsawwassen First Nation Ministry of Aboriginal Relations & Reconciliation INAC Backgrounder BC Treaty Commission Settling Land Claims Agricultural Land Reserve Vancouver Port Authority Rethinking the Reserve 2006 Census Release Contributors Sheri Gagnon Katherine Gordon Carol Hilton Rachel MacNeill Ronan Rushe Michela Rosano Sheryl Rafuse

The Nisga’a drew upon clan songs and stories to trace their claim to the Nass Valley. But other First Nations also sing of the valley. Whose music will the mapmakers hear?

WE CALL THE MONTH November, but in the liquid syllables of the Nisga’a language it is Gwilatkw, the moon in which the first snows arrive in the Nass River valley, a signal that Earth has begun to robe herself in preparation for the long winter sleep.

Smooth and dark as volcanic glass, the 380-kilometre river carves through the declared homeland of the 6,000-strong Nisga’a. Glittering, snow-clad mountains millions of years older than the Himalayas tower over deep fiords. Mist-draped forests of fir and cedar ascend to echoing canyons.

Here in northwestern British Columbia, a historic treaty more than a century in the making attempts what was once thought impossible — to mesh non-native federal and provincial laws with aboriginal concepts of title. When Nisga’a chiefs arrived in Victoria in November 1998 to celebrate the treaty agreement with the B.C. government, the moment was charged with symbolism. In 1887, a Nisga’a delegation to the legislature was turned away. Now the chiefs were welcomed to the floor of the house itself — aboriginal rights had moved to the heart of a political process that once marginalized and ignored them.

This remarkable event also marked a precedent-setting and profoundly important juncture of two protocols for managing real estate as different in world views as November is to Gwilatkw.

On one side — a system descended from William the Conqueror’s feudal Domesday Book, the first official registry of land holdings in England. This detailed description of the land, based on oral testimony and completed in 1086, named present and former holders, and determined the population base. From this, the administration of private property was set, the precepts of which eventually found their way into Canadian law. On the other side of the divide — the Ayuukhl Nisga’a, an oral code of clan law and custom in which sovereignty and communal or clan title are recorded in stories, songs and the ownership of names and crests.

At the 1998 Victoria ceremony, drums throbbed. Black ceremonial robes displayed vivid scarlet crests of the Nisga’a Wolf, Eagle, Killer Whale and Raven clans. White eagle down representing peace and friendship drifted through the air, helping to purify the ground where the hereditary chiefs of the great houses walked. As they moved up the steps to the legislative chamber, the time-obscured names of ancestors who had begun this journey were recited.

Then, less than three weeks after this triumphant day, a challenge to the Nisga’a agreement erupted. The tribe’s northern neighbours, the Gitanyow, headed to court to declare that Canada and B.C. had no right to hand over control of areas that they traditionally claimed as their own. More than 80 percent of Gitanyow traditional territory now sits within the Nisga’a wildlife management area. And, they say, they have historic maps and oral history to prove it.

"This is an act of aggression," says Glen Williams, chief negotiator for the 2,000 Gitanyow, repeating a refrain their leaders have used for more than a decade with little effect. "They’re invading our territory and we will be forced to defend it."

Such words echo back to a dark history in the Nass Valley and its adjacent territories, to stories of bloody campaigns for territorial sovereignty between the Nisga’a, Tsetsaut, Tahltan, Gitksan and their Gitanyow cousins. Such admonitions are also an ominous portent for the 51 First Nations involved in more than 40 other treaty negotiations now underway across B.C. Many involve parcels of land claimed by more than one tribe.

BIOLOGISTS MARVEL at the diversity of this ecosystem in which huge grizzlies and magnificent bald eagles live in an often mysterious symbiosis with the vast runs of sockeye, pink, coho, chinook and chum salmon that teem in the waterways. Sure-footed mountain goats and bighorn sheep scramble along cliff faces, while moose splash through the shallows and wetlands.

The Nass River drains a watershed of 21,567 square kilometres, an area more than three and a half times the size of Prince Edward Island. For those who have lived here the longest, the map of the valley is defined not by latitude and longitude but by names and landmarks. The river is a fundamental part of a collective identity. According to aboriginal cosmology, the river is in constant motion, waxing and waning like the moon with the seasonal increase and decrease in mountain melts. Boundaries, too, are fluid, expanding and contracting in the timeless rhythms of kinship, need and available resources.

The Nisga’a have lived on the river they call Lisims in the valley known as Ts’ak’hl Nisga’a (the common bowl) for at least 8,000 and probably 10,000 years, practising their same law, harvesting the same runs of salmon and oolichan, telling and re-telling the same ancient stories that often spring from the dramatic imperatives of the land itself.

The eruption is part of European history, too. It can be traced to 1775, when Padre Miguel de la Campa’s diary speaks of how the crew of the Spanish ship Sonora suffered from the heat of "the great flames which issued from four or five mouths of a volcano and at night lit up the whole district, rendering everything visible."

This melding of histories both exhilarates and troubles Frank Calder. As founder of the Nisga’a Tribal Council, the 84-year-old is a living legend. Calder’s name is attached to a 1973 Supreme Court case in which the Nisga’a sought a declaration that title to traditional territories had never been extinguished. Although dismissed on a technicality, the case forever changed the face of Canadian jurisprudence on native rights. While split on whether Nisga’a title had been extinguished, six of the seven judges agreed that aboriginal title might still exist in law. It was "enough to move the mountain," says Calder. The federal government responded by negotiating comprehensive land claims where aboriginal title had not been extinguished by treaty. That meant most of B.C.

Calder putters around his Victoria studio, exuding the avuncular ease of the born storyteller. His eyes twinkle and flash, his face is expressive, his narrative punctuated with dramatic pause and gesture. "To us, the boundaries are defined by the water that flows down from all the heights of land to the valleys below. This is Nisga’a territory," Calder says, leaning suddenly into his point, emphasizing it with a thump of his finger. Asked to elaborate on what belongs to the Nisga’a, he recalls his words to the court in the 1970s: "From mountaintop to mountaintop ... everything that flows into the Nass. It’s been passed down from generation to generation from before anyone can remember."

From Calder’s perspective, problems with neighbours began when the Nass Valley began to be viewed in terms of the European concept of private property. Prior to the arrival of European surveyors, he says, tribal relationships were not between nations as understood by Europeans, but between house territories governed by kinship obligations and mutually respected rights. Permission was always required to travel into another’s territory, but sharing resources would never call into question territorial sovereignty. Jurisdictional shifts could flow from marriages between the houses, friendly alliances or, more rarely, battle.

"I’m a Killer Whale," says Calder, naming his clan. "Through the generations, if Killer Whales had a place rich in a certain seasonal resource, then they would welcome other Killer Whales to come and share. When the oolichan start to appear in March, all the other tribes come to us, even the Tlingits from Alaska. They all come to the mouth of the Nass to get oolichan and we welcome that. It doesn’t mean the Nass is their river. We were all connected by our clan relationships and this created a sense of obligation to share.

Creator. when you think of what our forefathers were doing for treaties, they had vision, us as first nation people, have that birthright, vision. now for modern day treaties to even carry weight, one must see how did we go about it. did we use every tool, ceremony, and the spirit world, or do we just use all the confusion that we have attained over the years and find whats best. too many of our people have not even grasped the power and the wisdom of our ancestors or even use what we already have. Treaties, Treaties, Treaties, think about that for awhile. They have not come from creator. we think and beleive we have done good with these treaties,, when you look at it, its meaningless. its a bandaid for now. in time, all this will be back to how it is, in the meantime, we're just playing a silly game, suffering is going on, our people lie and are lied to, killing, gangs, poor housing, poor reserves, stealing from one another, all these are just games. When we have seen all this, now and in the future as it will get worse, maybe our leaders will use there full potential as a human, a nation, as it has been bestowed among our people, our gift of vision, to see what is there, what can be done. But then the government doesn't see it that way, so why then, shall we be forced to see things within this treaty way.Yet its right in front of us to live our life, and see that what this commotion is really is meaningless. sounds crazy, but thats the difference between seeing what is there, and not seeing, which eventually helps us to understand life in the physical or the spiritual realm. It is both sad and useless, to see what our leaders are doing without consulting with creator. what can we do? fight it? why? Do what we can for now I guess, get what we can, riiiiiiiiiigt.

According to my understanding, there is very few fertile land in the world. The population is increasing, but the fertile land is decreasing day by day. Canada occupies 7% of the world's land but we have limited fertile land. Tsawwassen land is one of the most fertile lands in BC. If we use such a fertile land for other purposes than farming, there will be negative impact in ecosystem. Infrastructure like an airport, port, housing, roads, railway etc should be constructed on a non-fertile land. We have to think sustainable development. So Tsawwassen Treaty is concern only for business purposes - it only tried to make money by constructing a port instead of farming.

The treaty was driven by the Gateway - the provincial plan to expand the port and connect it with new and wider highways. This ignores the collapse of the US dollar, the steep decline in cross Pacific container traffic, the availability of new routres such as the North West passage and the widened Panama Canal and the key role played by the railways in moving transcontinental freight. All these issues are dealt at length in my blog - stephenrees.wordpress.com and on the Livable Region web site
livableregion.ca.

This is typical of the short term thinking that bedevils our political system. We need to take a strategic view of how our world is changing - and how to cope with that. Unfortunately, the appeals to justice in the TFN process have been ignored by the grab for the quick buck. A sad day for Canada and the Tsawwassen, who both deserve much better leaders with real vision

The TFN treaty was done without proper consideration of the Semiahmoo First Nation treaty, the protection of our Agricultural Land Reserve, or the Environment. This is not about giving TFN its due... its about expanding DeltaPort at the expense of our farmland, the Fraser River estuary, and our air quality in a area that shouldn't have been considered for a port in the first place. Tsawwassen First Nations accepted individual cash payouts from the government for signing the treaty and now we will all have to live with the blight of container sprawl on some of the best farmland and most important wildlife habitat in the world.

Just a few miles to the North in Richmond we have another parcel of the prime agricultural land that is currently under the review of the Agriculture Land Commission to be probably released from the ALR and be developed into the mixed residential area - our beautiful 136 acres Garden City Lands. The First Nations people needs are used as a reason for the land to be developed again so they can get their money and we can loose another parcel of the land that could feed our children. Their children need to eat as well - all our children will suffer in the future because the land, once developed, will be lost for the agriculture forever. There is not enough appreciation for the value of the undeveloped land now.

Food security issues and rising price of fuel make the value of the land that is close to our home much higher - now it might be not economically viable and next decade it will be for sure, especially when virgin lands are involved - they can be used for the fast start of the organic farming with much higher prices and unlimited demand.

Dear Editor,

As Chair of the Lower Mainland Treaty Advisory Committee (LMTAC), I would like to provide the following comments in response to your recent feature on the Tsawwassen Final Agreement, as well as provide another perspective on local government participation in the BC Treaty Process.

“Treaty Advisory Committees” were established across the province in response to local government demands to have a direct voice in the BC Treaty Process. Through LMTAC, Lower Mainland area local governments actively participated as full members of the provincial negotiating team at the Tsawwassen Treaty table since substantive discussions began in 1995. In addition to providing advice and local government perspective on issues, LMTAC participation included having a local government representative at the treaty table during the negotiations. Given the unique complexity of the urban Lower Mainland, it was essential for LMTAC to be directly involved in the treaty negotiations to ensure that issues important to residents and local governments, both municipal and regional, were raised and understood by the First Nations, Federal and Provincial governments.

Treaty negotiations are a long process however, LMTAC strongly supports the objective of treaties to provide certainty with respect to aboriginal rights and title. As local governments, we favour negotiated settlements that have the potential to build relationships rather than litigation that can be just as time consuming and costly.

Negotiations by their very nature require give and take by all sides, and LMTAC’s analysis of the Tsawwassen Final Agreement revealed that a majority (88%) of issues identified by local government were addressed. The Intergovernmental Relations and Services Chapter is an achievement in which LMTAC is proud to have had an active role in development. Tsawwassen’s participation in regional governance structures will encourage understanding and the opportunity for all Lower Mainland local governments to work together on matters of mutual interest. Despite positive efforts on governance matters, LMTAC does acknowledge that, given the nature of negotiations, there were a few issues in which local government interests were not fully met, such as the ‘Specified Lands’ approach to post-treaty additions to Treaty Settlement Lands (TSL), because it removes the requirement of municipal consent, and the exclusion of some portions of proposed TSL from the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) without due process.

While LMTAC continues to advocate the need for more public information on the BC Treaty Process, it’s important to note that treaty negotiations, like any other form of negotiations, do require adherence to confidentially given the sensitivity of matters under discussion. Through LMTAC, Lower Mainland Councils and Boards were provided with regular treaty table updates, with some matters restricted to closed sessions.

In recognition of the work ahead in implementing the Tsawwassen Final Agreement, LMTAC is very interested to see a smooth transition into the post-treaty environment, and we believe that our experience as local governments will be a valuable resource to assist Tsawwassen First Nation as it takes on new governance responsibilities.

Mayor Ralph Drew, Chair
Lower Mainland Treaty Advisory Committee

Website: www.lmtac.bc.ca
Email: ralph.drew@telus.net
Home: (604) 937-0143
Office: (604) 451-6198
Cell: (778) 868-5378