VIDEO – With less than six weeks before a treaty ratification vote, Tla’amin (Sliammon) First Nation band members held an event last week that signalled new beginnings for the community.
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo headlined a list of guest speakers, including Tsawwassen First Nation Chief Kim Baird, whose members ratified BC’s first urban treaty agreement five years ago. Tla’amin member Dr. Evan Adams, who was recently appointed Deputy Provincial Health Officer, Sophie Pierre, chief commissioner of the BC Treaty Commission, and Councillor John Jack from the Huu-ay-aht First Nation, all talked about what treaty means, new beginnings and leaving the Indian Act behind.
Tla’amin elder Dr. Elsie Paul offered an opening prayer and Devin Pielle, a Tla’amin youth, welcomed everyone to the event in both the Sliammon language and English.
Jerry Lampert, a BC Treaty commissioner, was the emcee and Tla’amin Chief Clint Williams gave the first speech of the afternoon.
Young people were in the spotlight during the afternoon, with their singing, dancing and drumming. As well, many wore white T-shirts with pro-treaty statements written on them, such as “We’re Sliammon youth and we can speak for ourselves.”
First nations are treaty-making people, Atleo said, and are interested in forging relationships that have a sense of harmony and mutual respect. “There’s been a tremendous dark shadow in our recent past, one that we are still living with today,” he said. “Those challenges were unilateral decisions that were made to create residential schools or to put an Indian Act in place that would subjugate our people, that would hold us down. That would be anchored in that old doctrine of discovery that said we were not humans, that we were savages without laws, without morals, without order, without government. You as the Sliammon people are here to say otherwise.”
The Indian Act has always been about the subjugation of indigenous people, Atleo said. “Wherever I travel...I see our people looking to forge a path forward that is not based on subjugation, or somebody else’s idea of what we should do.”
Atleo acknowledged the work is challenging and fraught with risk.
“What I’m asking is, is there a sense between first nations and Canadians, between the citizens of this nation and non-first nation citizens of your region; do we matter enough to each other to share the risk of forging a future that is based on mutual respect and recognition, that sense that if residential schools were a tool of oppression that tried to take language and culture away, should education now not be a tool of freedom for the young people, to recapture the language and connection with the teachings?”
Atleo told Tla’amin community leaders that he and others will stand with them. “There is no easy way forward,” he said. “There is one of two paths forward. There is the hard way and the harder way.”
Jack spoke about burning the Indian Act at midnight on April 1, 2011 when the community gathered to witness the passing of its own laws. The Indian Act was created with the idea that indigenous people needed to be taken care of, he said, “that we weren’t able to take care of ourselves. We became, at some point, wards of the Crown. We weren’t citizens, we weren’t subjects, we were being taken care of by the government.”
The idea of self-government is that people are better equipped to make decisions for themselves with better success in the long term if they are in charge of the decisions regarding their own community resources, the way they do things, their own values, Jack said. “That’s the underlying principle of everything we are trying to do here.”
Baird outlined Tsawwassen’s government structure, including a legislature that has 12 elected members. When Steven Point, BC’s lieutenant governor, visited the assembly, he said, “It is not a new government for the Tsawwassen people, as the Tsawwassen people have always been self-determining. You’re only putting on the robes of your treaty and taking off the shackles of the Indian Act.”
The period of transition has been both stressful and exciting, Baird said. “Our members have been involved in every single major decision we’ve made along the way, from our treaty to our land-use plan to our constitution to the major economic development projects we are now working on. We’re seeing our new institutions and processes becoming entrenched in our members’ minds, but our members have a responsibility to engage and participate.”
The community is transitioning from poverty-management to wealth-management, Baird said. “If I can leave you with one teaching as you work through the next few weeks as a community, it’s to be tough on the issues and easy on the people, not the other way around. These are weighty issues and we often have very strong feelings about them. When you disagree with someone, stay focused on the merits of the argument and not on the merits of the person making the argument.”
Adams talked about transforming Tla’amin into a nation. “Let’s not be naïve,” he said. “The Indian Act was not created for our well-being. The intention of the Indian Act was not to help us, but to strip us of our wealth and to transfer it over to the new country of Canada.”
Adams also said he recognizes that the community is divided on the issue, that some will vote yes and some will vote no. “But I think that we all agree that we want better for our families. I think we all agree that this is all about our young people, that we want our children—50 per cent of us under the age of 25—to have better than we do.”
Adams pointed out that a yes vote isn’t for a particular person. “It’s a vote for ourselves, for each of us for ourselves and each of us for our kids.”
Pierre noted that 2012 is the 20th anniversary of the treaty negotiating process, which has a goal of bringing certainty to the province. While there have only been two treaties ratified under the process, there can be more, she said. “We have been encouraging our three principles that we do have the tools, we just need to make the recommitment to get this job done and it can be done.”
Pierre said she knows there are intense discussions going on in advance of the treaty vote. “That’s fine, that’s healthy, but just make sure that you are listening to each other, dealing with the issues and, at the end of the day, continuing to embrace each other as Sliammon people who love each other and who love this land that the Creator has put you on and are going to work together to ensure that it is always here for your future generations.”
Click here to view more photos from the event.
