[Witness speaks in Ojibway]
I want to thank the committee for its time this morning.
I'm Chief Terrance Nelson, and I was elected by the chiefs of Treaty One to present our position. Due to time constraints, I will forego the formalities and go straight to the issues. Treaty One was signed with the British crown on August 3, 1871, at the Stone Fort. Our ancestors signed the treaty with clear intentions: to preserve our way of life, to ensure our sovereignty within our reserve territories, to ensure shared benefits from all 16,700 square miles of our territory, and to have a peaceful, respectful coexistence with Her Majesty's white and other subjects.
Today 900,000 people inhabit our 10-million-acre traditional territory. Our position as to Treaty One is simple, straightforward, and clear. Before the immigrants got to our lands, we owned all the land. Our rights were inherent and not granted by any other race or people. The crown did not give us any land in treaty. The crown had no land to give us. The crown could not give us what was already ours. We never ceded or surrendered our traditional territory. We agreed to share the benefits of our lands. To gain the consent of indigenous people to allow crown access to the 16,700-square-mile Treaty One territory, the crown promised and undertook definite and binding obligations as documented in the treaty text.
One of the main crown obligations is to recognize our exclusive territory--lands reserved for the sole and exclusive use of indigenous people:
Her Majesty the Queen hereby agrees and undertakes to lay aside and reserve for the sole and exclusive use of the Indians the following tracts of land, that is to say...as will furnish one hundred and sixty acres for each family of five, or in that proportion for larger or smaller families....
In the last 138 years since the signing of Treaty One, the crown has not completed the most basic condition of treaty: the promise to recognize and reserve 160 acres' grant for each family of five. Five first nations in Treaty One--Broken Head, Long Plain, Peguis, Roseau River, and Swan Lake--have unfulfilled TLE agreements with the crown. The other two first nations in Treaty One, Sandy Bay and Sagkeeng, are in the process of negotiating TLE agreements. TLE is just one of numerous breaches of the conditions of treaty that must be completed by the crown.
Since 1871 the benefits for the crown to use, license, and tax immigrant activity within Treaty One have been immense. It is the position of Treaty One that the only legal access the crown has to our 16,700-square-mile territory is the treaty. We, the indigenous people, have title to all our lands and resources within Treaty One territory, and the crown has only conditional access based on the rights granted to the crown in treaty.
On August 3, 1871, the crown gained conditional access to the territory but only for settlement and immigration. The crown promised in the 1871 treaty negotiations to meet with the indigenous people in the future to clarify the benefits of treaty. That promise is written in treaty as:
...and that they may know and be assured of what allowance they are to count upon and receive year by year from her Majesty's bounty and benevolence.
Despite numerous Supreme Court of Canada decisions on the crown's duty to consult and accommodate, and despite our new numerous attempts to engage the crown in fulfilling its legal obligation, the crown continues to ignore the treaty and its own courts.
In licensing and permitting two new pipelines to be constructed in our territory without any agreed benefit for the first nations, the crown jeopardizes the benefit it's gained in treaty. The question is where we go to ensure that the honour of the crown is enforced when the RCMP and the Canadian army will not enforce Supreme Court of Canada decisions.
Based on the last 138 years of lack of enforcement of treaty obligations, it is the decision of the chiefs of Treaty One and the people of Treaty One that the continued failure of the crown to abide by the treaty condition to share benefits of our lands forces the first nations to collect for ourselves those benefits due to the indigenous party of the treaty.
We, as the indigenous party to Treaty One, granted the crown a pledge of peaceful coexistence, which the crown wrote in the treaty text as:
And the undersigned Chiefs do hereby bind and pledge themselves and their people strictly to observe this treaty and to maintain perpetual peace between themselves and Her Majesty's white subjects, and not to interfere with the property or in any way molest the persons of Her Majesty's white or other subjects.
Existing pipelines in our territory already transport $40 billion a year in oil through our lands. With new pipelines in our territory, that number will reach over $100 billion in oil per year through our territory, without any tariff or fee paid to the indigenous people.
All people in Treaty One territory, including private landowners who purchased land from the crown, are in the same position as a person who purchases stolen property or property with liens on it. We, as the indigenous landowners, still hold a lien and underlying title to all 16,700 square miles of Treaty One territory, because the crown did not discharge its lawful obligation under treaty.
As Justice Binnie wrote in a Supreme Court of Canada decision in Mikisew, “Treaty-making is an important stage in a long process of reconciliation, but it is only a stage.” As well, he said that the “negotiations were the first step in a long journey that is unlikely to end any time soon”.
When a fundamental breach of treaty is not resolved, we, as the indigenous party to the treaty, must always reserve our right to take direct action if we cannot get the other party to the treaty to complete their legal obligation.
When a government fails to abide by Supreme Court of Canada decisions and refuses to acknowledge international standards by voting against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, what options are there for us to ensure that peaceful coexistence is not just another pretense for indigenous people to continue to live at the 63rd level of the United Nations' living index, while the immigrants to our lands live extremely well from the sales of the wealth of our lands and resources?
Not to interfere with the property of Her Majesty's white subjects is a treaty right granted by indigenous people to the people who immigrated to our lands. It is a treaty right that is contingent upon Her Majesty fulfilling the conditions of treaty. We, as Treaty One chiefs, have no desire to break the treaty or to interfere with the property or in any way molest the persons of Her Majesty's white or other subjects, but it is important that the crown be held responsible for its word of honour.
We, as the chiefs of Treaty One, are prepared to answer any questions in regard to this action. We state very clearly that the crown's failure to abide by the land quantum of 160 acres per family of five has not been resolved in 138 years. They have given us a tremendous legal hammer, because we are saying that all 10.7 million acres of our land, our traditional territory, is still ours because the crown did not fulfill the TLE.