Thank you, Chief.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am legal counsel for Yale First Nation. I'm also legal counsel at several closing tables across the country on comprehensive claims.
The issues you see before you today aren't specific to Yale. In B.C., about 150% of the province is overlapped with competing claims by first nations. This is not something isolated to this treaty. What's unique about this treaty is the lobbying that was done by the Stó:lo.
I want to make it very clear that this treaty has been an exercise in compromise. We have, with respect to our neighbours, contracted our ambitions with respect to land to avoid overlaps. We have retracted our statement of claim over traditional area with respect to the Harrison so that we would not overlap with Chehalis or the In-SHUCK-ch people. We will only receive 1,966 hectares of an area that was claimed as 104,000 hectares. Of those 1,966 hectares, 266 are existing reserves. We have intentionally avoided selecting lands that abut the reserves of our direct neighbours—Union Bar, Spuzzum, etc.—to avoid that overlap.
We have intentionally put in a clause, which is not found in any other treaty in Canada, that provides for reasonable access to any aboriginal group, because there are others that we overlap. That reasonable access turns on coming to do your traditional harvesting, leaving the land as it was, and respecting whatever occupants are there keeping law and order. This isn't the case right now under the Indian Act system. There's a lot of lands being abused. There's a lot of garbage. I'm told there are illegal activities. That can't go on for the health not only of the Yale, but also for the non-natives living in the valley.
This treaty is a mechanism of law to address that. It provides a small amount of land. It provides access to the general public. There are huge chunks of land up in the mountain that are open entirely to the public for recreational purposes. The only lands we would like title to are those lands that are the reserve lands. They were set up historically as reserves for us over 100 years ago through an Indian commission, exclusively for Yale. There are about 16 reserves. You really have to ask yourself why an Indian reserve commission would set up a reserve for a group of Indians. Clearly, they were the only Indians there.
There's been a lot of disruption in the Yale area. Yale was the colonial capital. The terms of union were signed there. There was a drastic influx of non-native people, and a lot of the native people who were indigenous there died as a result of exposure to smallpox, influenza, etc. The bottom line, though, is that the one main staying factor is that the Yale people are there. They're on those reserves. They weren't granted to any other Indians. Their direct neighbours, Union Bar, miles away from them, aren't claiming any of those lands. The people who are claiming them are in some cases 100 kilometres away.
You would have to ask yourself why people who are geographically that removed would be claiming lands up the Fraser River when they weren't there; otherwise, they would have been granted reserves. Their neighbours aren't claiming it. It boils down to that there aren't any reserve lands or further lands outside of the reserve system in Chilliwack or Mission. Hope is where there is a very sparse population. It's the only free lands, other than going up into the Harrison. There's great fishing there. Historically, when Simon Fraser came through in 1803, he saw two huge Indian villages, strongly guarded, which governed the fishing and salmon trade.
We, in this treaty, at the insistence of the DOJ and the AG of B.C., have put in a clause for reasonable access. We put it in the treaty; no other treaty has it. We tried to engage the Stó:lo for two years with a mediator. All they told us is that we are Stó:lo, which is not the case historically. Yale is not a Stó:lo. They are Nlaka’pamux; they're Thompson Indian people. They're not part of the Stó:lo, which are lower down the river system. You have a different language group, different culture. That land, prior to European occupation, was exclusively possessed by the Yale. The AG of B.C. and the DOJ have done risk analysis on their supposed claim. It is weak.
Notwithstanding that, we provided the provision for reasonable access if there are any interests and rights at all. That is not good enough for them. It has to be unlimited access, it has to be uncontrolled access, and that quite frankly undermines the whole rationale for doing the treaty.