Thank you. I want to offer you a gift of tobacco for hearing our presentation.
[Witness speaks in his native language]
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I thank you for the time you've given us here. My English nickname is Morris Swan Shannacappo. My Indian name is Good Sounding One, so I'm going to try to make things sound good for you this afternoon.
I want to thank you for hearing our people, for letting us come here to present. You heard some of the past that was involved here, Bill C-6, that we also opposed. Today I went through a short ceremony by offering you ceremonial tobacco for having us here to present. We do things by custom and tradition, much as Canada's laws were perceived and done, all by custom and tradition.
First of all, I want to say I represent 36 first nations in Manitoba, Treaties 1 to 5. I do not purport to represent their treaties' positions from Treaty 1 to Treaty 5, but I am also a spokesperson for Treaty 4 in the province of Manitoba. There are seven Treaty 4 in Manitoba, and the remainder of the 34 first nations in Treaty 4 are in Saskatchewan
In 1880 Alexander Morris, then the lieutenant-governor of the province of Manitoba, authored The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories. The book, well known by all students of history, contains copies of the treaties concluded between 1850 in Ontario and 1877 in Alberta, and also includes firsthand accounts by the treaty commissioners as well as the reports to government about the treaties.
Lieutenant-Governor Morris was passionate about the importance of fulfilling those treaties and the reason to fulfill them. The closing words of his book deserve repeating, and I quote them verbatim:
...let us have a wise and paternal Government faithfully carrying out the provisions of our treaties, and doing its utmost to help and elevate the Indian population, who have been cast upon our care, and we will have peace, progress, and concord among them in the North-West; and instead of the Indian melting away, as one of them in older Canada tersely put it, “as snow before the sun,” we will see our Indian population, loyal subjects of the Crown, happy, prosperous and self-sustaining, and Canada will be enabled to feel, that in a truly patriotic spirit, our country has done its duty by the red men of the North-West, and thereby to herself. So may it be.
Some 127 years later, on September 12, 2007, the Honourable Jim Prentice, in a press release entitled “Specific Claims: Justice at Last”, explained that in a general sense, first nations specific claims arise from the failure of the federal government to live up to its legal obligations originating with historic treaties. The Indian Act or other formal agreements between first nations and the crown—Lieutenant-Governor Morris had it right in 1880. The purpose of these treaties is to ensure aboriginal and first nation Canadians are happy, prosperous, and self-sustaining.
The reconciliation thus called for by the courts and by many of the enlightened in our society is in honouring these treaty commitments in their totality, not to the limited degree the present Canadian government feels it is prepared to afford. The sad truth is that you parliamentarians are being wilfully blind if you believe anything short of a complete and honourable fulfillment of every aspect of the treaties will result in the reconciliation you seek, which we first nations and Canadians deserve.
The treaties include promises related to land, including a large number of outstanding land entitlements and to other important and tangible promises, such as education, health, and the preservation of our culture, all of which must be honoured if we are to achieve Morris's vision of a happy, prosperous, self-sustaining people.
Still today, right across Canada, the ownership of land controlled by Indian people is 0.04%. That's not even half of one percent. When we look at the province of Manitoba, we control 0.04%.
While I do not pretend there are not some very important financial promises with the historic treaties, as you could call them, to us they are treaties. They just need to be shined up a bit. Maybe they were assigned historically, but they're still alive and well and present today.
It is clear to any first nation person, and it should be also clear to you, that the most important features of the treaties are the promises relating to land, the preservation of our way of life, and the right to use the bounty of those lands to maintain, sustain, and nourish our people and our political institutions as well as our languages and our culture.
In Manitoba there are literally tens of thousands of acres of land that are due, under Treaties 1 through 5 and under the 1997 treaty land entitlement agreement that Canada is a party to. A vast amount of this land has been identified by the entitlement first nations but has not been converted to reserve for a variety of what we say are invalid excuses. We should be able to access the specific claims process to secure declaratory or injunctive relief compelling Canada to do what it is obligated to do under the treaties and the 1997 treaty land entitlement agreement.
As presently drafted, even if we could get in the door to have the claim heard, all we can secure under the present specific claims wording is a money judgment, in exchange for which our rights to the very land in question would be extinguished by legislative fiat under subclause 21(1). To make matters worse, the extinguishment comes without the normal protections currently in the Indian Act that require a referendum process before interests in land can be surrendered.
The bill has been drafted completely within the paradigm of the colonizer, and it is another example of how the colonizer continues to invite us to further perpetuate our colonization. When you knowingly shoot your own foot off, does it hurt any less? Won't your foot still be gone?
Restricting the specific claims process to monetary awards, paragraph 20(1)(a), when so much of our treaty claims involve lands and resources, is unfair. To restrict those monetary awards to pecuniary losses only, item 20(1)(d)(ii), as opposed to losses for such things as education, culture, and language, the very things the treaties were designed to protect, is unfair. To cap those awards to $150 million, paragraph 20(1)(b), is unfair. To further reduce the value of those awards by forcing first nations with similar claims arising from the same fact situations to share that limited pie, subclause 20(5), is unfair. Any restriction by legislative fiat at all on what the treaty right would otherwise entitle the claimant to is contrary to the honour of the crown.
As a group, our people are poor. We suffer from unemployment, poor education, and poor health. We are owed much, but we have not been allowed to partake in the bounty of this country, as originally intended by our treaties. We agreed to share; we did not agree to impoverish ourselves.
In a word, we are hungry. We are starving from the lack of justice. We suffer from a poverty of options, and our children are committing suicide or partaking in other activities that are not normal within our culture and our people.
My fear, as a leader, for my people is that we'll sell our right to the proper share of the bounty due to us in exchange for some food to limit starvation—any food today, in fact.
The future right to eat as a king in the finest restaurant is meaningless when you are starving right now. It doesn't take much imagination to know what the hungry person is literally forced to do to survive. He sells his rights for a slice of bread and some water. Is that justice? Is that the honourable fulfillment of an obligation? No one here would suggest it is.
Why, then, are many celebrating the specific claims legislation? I can only think of those of my brothers who support it, so desperately hungry for something that they will take a slice of bread; they will take anything and with a smile.
I stand before you determined, undeterred. I know who I am as Anishinabe. I am Anishinabe from top to bottom and business all in between. I stand before you, telling you here there'll be no true reconciliation until the treaties are honoured in their entirety and we learn to do business as equals.
There will be no peace, no solution to what I've heard called the Indian problem. The truth is that I heard it's never been an Indian problem. In reality it's a Canadian problem, one that Canada must own up to and properly redress.
The current legislation offers false hope in that regard, in that it is disguised opportunity for us to colonize ourselves. The oppressed are invited to become their own oppressor.
Other speakers have expressed their concern that the tribunal will not be sufficiently independent, such that justice will not be done, but will only be seen to be done. For example, in terms of the appointment process, under the current bill it is effectively the federal cabinet alone that has the right to decide who should be appointed to sit as adjudicators on this tribunal. I remind you that we made treaty with the Queen on a nation-to-nation basis, and that the Queen's representatives continue to perpetuate the myth that they alone can govern our traditional lands and natural resources.
