[Witness speaks in Mohawk]
Greetings and peace to everybody here.
I'm Phillipp White-Cree. Within the last few weeks I've been assigned to become the acting manager for the Aboriginal Rights and Research Office. It's a task I don't take lightly, because there's already been three generations' worth of work within this office, and now I'm number four at bat. It's my commitment to work with the elders and mentors of our past as I continue to move our office forward.
The ultimate goal of our office was always to reassert that the lands were unjustly and unilaterally removed from Akwesasne's jurisdiction, and the ultimate goal of the community is to have the piece that is missing from our territories returned and made whole. The moneys benefit us, but it's really the land that has always been the primary and ultimate goal. These goals really go with Akwesasne's history, in which we had vast amounts of land that we were able to lease out in different areas, but because of the mismanagement of these leases...which the government and also the settlers have taken on and are saying that we no longer have jurisdiction over those lands.
As Abram has mentioned, we're really looking for the funding resources to be increased prior to the 2009 steady decrease of those funding resources. That has been an ongoing issue with my office. We have constraints of office space. We have constraints of office materials. Our archive room needs to be relocated because of the way our claims are having to grow, yet the financial resources are not available for us to be able to do that due diligence with our research.
We are asking for the joint processes and policy implementation and development to be done. The specific land claims process, from submission to evaluation to negotiations, to even settlement, needs to be re-evaluated jointly between Canada and first nations, because there are issues, bare minimums, criteria of judgment we do not understand, and we get frustrated when we simply get told, “We're only accepting x, y, and z. Here's the amount, take it or leave it.” These processes and these mandates are infuriating to our office, as well as infuriating to our community members when we try to explain that these are Canada's rules and they are not changing them. This is where we would like to stress that, as first nations, we would love to have a joint dialogue and joint discussion about the processes involved with this criteria of bare minimums.
On independent services and equal access to resolution services, the tribunal is considered an independent legal body, but for many it's considered a last resort because of the funding cap. There's no remediation of lands, there's no options for those remedies. The tribunal's rulings are under jurisdictional review. Again, it's Canada trying to say, “Oh well, that's not the final say”, even though first nations were always told that the tribunal's would be the final say on certain claims.
What we're asking is that there be alternative approaches, such as understanding the injury of culture, the loss of resources, the loss of connection that the community had with these lands. The lands never went anywhere, it's just that another body is claiming to have sole jurisdiction. For our community members this has been an ongoing battle in which we had court cases, including our fishing rights, tied to it because they said, “Oh, you don't have jurisdiction over those lands”. We've proven at the Supreme Court that our fishing rights, as long as we continue to use them, are there.
It's really to reframe the approach to the resolution of land claims, with the returning of land seen as the ultimate goal, and working with our neighbours and current occupiers of these lands and waterways.
The additions to reserve process again continues to be cumbersome. There are third party interests, stalled processes, and delays in the entire process.
Cultural restoration. Injury to culture should be taken into account.
From our perspective, Canada's mindset is the fear of liability, avoiding acknowledging mistakes. It almost seems as if they're wanting to eliminate or disrupt the land claims by limiting resources to first nations, avoiding moving files in the hope first nations grow tired of it and leaving it for the next political government to take up, avoiding paying damages and settlements as final negotiations end up becoming “take it or leave it”, and leaving first nations with no other option than to have that actual dialogue and those discussions in good faith.
So in reality, we're asking for these joint mandates and implementations, and we're seeking a human solution to this human-created inequality when it comes to the land claims process.
[Witness speaks in Mohawk]