Well, my personal perspective is that I come from an area where we are non-treaty. There is no treaty signed in British Columbia and in particular where we come from in the south Okanagan.
But I think treaties are also in the context of international agreements between two nations, which in this particular instance were the first nations and the European powers that came in. Underneath that, it was looked upon as existence in parallel, that there would be a partnership, and there was agreement because no matter where you go in North America, Europeans, when they first entered into our lands, were welcomed.
In some, they were welcomed with conditions. Today those conditions are not being fully respected or fully implemented in their original context, and I think that is something that needs to be looked at. When you look at the original agreement saying that we work in parallel, parallel also means “in cooperation”, because we were supposed to be going in the same direction, as two peoples.
With the implementation of treaties, the respect of treaties, and the understanding of that, there are a lot of things that can be achieved, including conservation, economic prosperity, and all these other things. But the way it is now, it's basically the conflict between those two that now is limiting both, conservation and economic prosperity. There needs to be a general understanding that those were international agreements that are no different from the ones Canada signs today with France, the EU, or anywhere else.