Moving from fear-mongering to facts on Indigenous rights

Often, when progress is made to achieve a more equitable, just society, it is met with backlash. The backlash follows a well-tread pattern: some people believe this progress toward equality threatens their personal power, and that they must fight to maintain it.

In Canada, and globally, we are increasingly witnessing petrostates and fossil fuel industry actors upholding this pattern where they violently, desperately and destructively attempt to hold onto their dominance in the energy market and suppress progress for climate and equality at the expense of human and planetary health. Persistent and rising violence against land and water defenders illustrates that the suppression of Indigenous rights is very much an integral part of the petrostate and fossil fuel industry agenda. In fact, this tactic generally extends across all extractive industries.

This can be seen in recent misinformation campaigns about the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), British Columbia’s legislation to implement Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which are gaining traction in the province, partially in response to two recent court rulings.

The recent Gitxaala vs. British Columbia ruling found that the mining claim staking process, which can be done online by people who have never set foot on the land they are staking, was unlawful because it did not require proponents to consult with Indigenous Peoples before staking claims. This is not a radical or new conclusion; the “free entry” mining system has long been critiqued across Canada as it assumes that mining is the highest use of land, even though it harms people and ecosystems.

As Nikki Skuce and Tara Scurr argue, “Most British Columbians would agree that requiring permission to conduct mineral exploration activities is a basic and reasonable expectation — whether on Indigenous lands or private property. This court ruling should propel the B.C. government to align the province’s mineral staking regime with UNDRIP, and better balance mining interests with biodiversity protection and other land use priorities.”

In the Cowichan ruling, the title (legal ownership) of land was returned to the Nation in recognition of the fact the land was unlawfully taken from it. Since the ruling, the Cowichan have repeatedly asserted that the ruling “does not challenge the effectiveness or validity of any title held by individual private landowners. The ruling does not erase private property.” But this has not quelled the fear-mongering.

Indigenous people are not interested in taking land as it has been taken from them. They aspire to support land and people to return to being healthy, productive and abundant.

Indigenous people are not interested in taking land as it has been taken from them. They aspire to support land and people to return to being healthy, productive and abundant. This includes all people, where thriving communities re-learn how to work and prosper together, based on what works for them. Divisiveness and scarcity are not part of the Indigenous world view.

In Canada, Indigenous Peoples’ rights are not new. They are embedded in and precede Canada’s Constitution. According to Canada, “Indigenous peoples have a special constitutional relationship with the Crown. … Section 35 contains a full box of rights, and holds the promise that Indigenous nations will become partners in Confederation on the basis of a fair and just reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and the Crown.”

What is relatively new is that Canada has finally acknowledged that the bedrock of the colonization of Indigenous Peoples — the papal doctrines of discovery and terra nullius, which granted Europeans a self-administered justification to claim sovereignty over lands occupied by non-Christians — are not only false, but “racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust.”

The recent rulings advance a long-overdue pivot toward upholding the Canadian Constitution and recognizing Indigenous rights — a course correction from Canada’s historical path along which colonizers and their descendants grew wealthy from land ownership and resource extraction while Indigenous Peoples were forced onto reserves and excluded from land governance decision-making processes.

The Constitution recognizes Indigenous Peoples as partners, which requires a commitment to equity and sharing.

The Constitution recognizes Indigenous Peoples as partners, which requires a commitment to equity and sharing. To date, we have failed to do so, but we now have a collective opportunity to co-create a better future, in which Indigenous jurisdiction is recognized, decision-making processes are changed (a path already set in motion by the cumulative impacts case won by Blueberry River First Nations), sovereignty is upheld and co-governance models are established and embraced.

We must not fall into the racist trap that pits Indigenous Peoples against the general public and, further, question who benefits from this framing. As Adam Olsen of the Tsartlip First Nation writes in response to inflammatory remarks by the Conservative Party of B.C.’s interim leader, the path to a more just Canada “includes negotiated agreements, co-operative governance and legal alignment.” Not so scary after all.

The David Suzuki Foundation looks forward to embarking on this trail.