October 1998

IN DEFENSE OF THE NISGA’A TREATY

By HUBERT BEYER

VICTORIA – "This treaty establishes apartheid throughout British Columbia forever. It also sets up 50 to 60 communistic territories within British Columbia forever." – Newspaper publisher David Black on the Nisga’a Treaty.

Let me make a couple of points clear before I go on. One: I believe the publisher has the right to call the shots on his or her newspaper’s editorial policy.

Way back, when I worked for the Winnipeg Free Press, the paper’s editorial policy was to support the Liberals, no matter what. If the person charged with writing pro-Liberal editorials had a problem with that, he would be replaced in short order with someone who didn’t.

If Black wants his papers’ to oppose the treaty editorially, that’s his right, as long as he also allows dissenting opinions, which he has said he does. I intend to make use of that right.

The other point is that I have heard and read a lot of nonsense about Black in recent weeks. He’s been accused of everything, including naivete, bigotry and racism. I have known Black for 15 years and I can tell you that he’s neither naïve, nor racist, nor bigoted.

His concerns about the Nisga’a Treaty are genuine. It’s just that I don’t share them. And since the exchange of opinions in the public forum is at the heart of a free society, I will try to make my points.

Black and many other critics aren’t opposed to the treaty per se, but they fear that the 2,000 square kilometres of land that will accrue to the Nisga’a as a result of the proposed treaty, as well as the self-administered reserves will, over time, become giant reserves, akin to the hated home lands of South Africa’s former apartheid regime.

They also fear that the Nisga’a will not benefit individually, since all money accruing to the Nisga’a will be administered communally.

Black would rather parcel out the land and the money individually, giving each member a portion of the entire pot.

Sounds like a god proposal. The problem is that it would take just a few years, and both the land and the money would be in the hands and pockets of non-natives

If every Nisga’a man, woman and child had, say $100,000 cash, the carpet baggers would be all over them like locusts, selling them everything from cemetery plots, new cars and boats to world cruises and time shares.

In no time at all, the money would be gone, the land sold, and the individuals as wretchedly poor as before. The problems caused by 150 years of oppression wouldn’t be solved. They would be magnified.

This view isn’t paternalistic, it’s shared by Nisga’a leaders. They know that both land and money held communally will give them an economic base from which to lift their people out of their poverty and despair.

As for creating future homelands from existing reserves, nothing could be further from the truth. Self-government doesn’t mean the creation of sovereign states within British Columbia. Vancouver has a City Charter that gives it certain rights no other municipality has. That doesn’t make it an apartheid creation.

Natives would have autonomy over certain areas such as education, health care, and adoption. They would not, however, override the Criminal Code or the Charter of Rights. I fail to see the threat in that.

In return, the Nisga’a give up all future claims and will lose their tax-exempt status over an eight-to12-year adjustment period. Canada will also save the money now spent on them by the federal department of Indian Affairs.

Above all, implementing this treaty is the right thing to do. A recent study has shown that Canada’s aboriginal people’s standard of living is equal to that of a third-world country. That’s an ugly blot on the image of a nation voted three times in a row as the best country in which to live.

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