Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Adam Munnings. I'm Anishinabe from Curve Lake First Nation and legal counsel for Semiahmoo First Nation.
I sent around two maps, one of their traditional territory and one of the reserve where Canada placed them. The Semiahmoo First Nation is on the furthest west coast of the mainland, on the border. They were displaced with the border, with the signing of the Oregon Treaty. They were displaced from their other village sites. If you're not familiar with the border in that area, Point Roberts is on the U.S. side. They had a village site there. They had fishing sites in the United States' waters. Now they can't access those. They can't access their village site.
They had village sites near Tsawwassen, where there's now the Tsawwassen treaty. They weren't fully consulted on that treaty, so some of their rights are being infringed by that treaty. They also lost village sites to the south, near the city of Blaine. Semiahmoo Resort is on one of their village sites down in the States. They lost that through the Oregon Treaty. They also have a couple of village sites at Crescent Beach, as well as their current reserve.
They've lost a lot of those lands that are important to them, similar to the other nations.
In addition to land and the importance of land, which the other two speakers spoke about, is the ocean. For Semiahmoo, there's a huge foreshore there that they're no longer able to access for cultural purposes such as getting cultural foods, shellfish, and other fisheries in that area. It's been closed by DFO arbitrarily, and DFO hasn't been doing any studies to look at how that is.
They look at the ocean, their fishing on the ocean, and their shellfish fisheries on the foreshore as land, too. It has significance and importance to them. Right now, there's no real resolution in how they can get that land back, when we're looking at the foreshore and when we're looking at the ocean.
The Semiahmoo is working through addition to reserve and specific claims to get land back. If you look at the map of their reserve land, you can see that it's almost wholly encompassed by takings by the federal government, takings for railways, for highways, for Canadian border services, for a park, and for sawmills and stuff, historically. The Semiahmoo has never received revenue sharing from this, never received any economic compensation for that, other than minimal payments, so they're working through specific claims on those to get some of those back or get compensation for those lands.
When you look at the map of the larger territory, you can barely notice where the Semiahmoo reserve is. It's small, in a little corner at the edge of the thing. Their territory is quite huge. They don't really have a footprint there. The main areas where they live are the Surrey and Langley areas. In those areas, the nation is trying to do some addition to reserve to get some economic development happening, because their reserve is quite limited. It was originally 390 acres, and I think now the usable space is around 150-180 acres that they can use for development and for their members living there. They need something else. They need lands to come back. They need to look at that.
Some of the problems we have with the addition to reserve and specific claims are around staffing. There's not adequate staffing at Indigenous Services Canada and there's not adequate staffing at the Department of Justice to address these issues and do things in a timely manner. The nation has frequently lost opportunities because of delays in processes at Indigenous Services Canada and the Department of Justice on some of these things. Over the last six years, the nation has been coming to Ottawa to lobby the government to try to help change these things for themselves and other first nations, and they have had some good results on that.
Again, for them, economic development is needed in order to build housing on reserve to bring members back, to protect the oceans, protect the rivers and their traditional territory, and bring back something. Right now, they don't have any of their traditional food sources. They're not able to fish, and they're not able to harvest shellfish in their territory. They're looking at ways to have economic reconciliation, to have land back so they can help protect and bring back those resources.
Thank you for your time.