Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Concepts of Nationhood


This issue of The Old Man’s Post really began with an article I read in The Vancouver Sun November 20, 2009. It reported that Chuck Strahl, the federal Minister of Indian Affairs had agreed to meet a Gitxsan Treaty Team delegation to hear their proposal for an Alternative Governance Model, which involves abandonment of Indian status by some 13000 Gitxsan native people in northwest British Columbia.

As I have always had difficulty with the concepts of special status for our country’s minorities, of the idea of nations within nations, of multiculturalism and of multiple and hyphenated citizenships, I gave the piece more than my usual passing scan. I recognize, of course, that in our liberal Canadian democracy, my policy disagreements with such concepts have long been overwhelmed and a multicultural and multi-national federation has become politically as sacrosanct and untouchable as medicare and likely an unchangeable aspect of the Canadian mystique. Though I did not entirely agree with the court rulings and negotiated treaties that resulted some time ago in the Gitxsan Native Nation settlement I had breathed a sigh of relief thinking naively that for this particular group of tribes and reserves, Canada’s current population had finally done penance for the injustices they suffered at the hands of our first European immigrants.

That was not to be. A native claims industry has been put in place and has become a well paid legal specialty in practice and even in the law schools, and never ending negotiations, “reconciliations”, law suits and extra-legal behaviours are perpetuated, and the cost to all taxpayers go on and on and up and up. Our native Indians may have been the first immigrants to this North American land but as land masses and climates change, as populations vary, as resources are exhausted, migrations are inevitable. Must all subsequent incomers and their increasing descendants continue to pay rent to the first in perpetuity?

The “modest proposal” outlined in the Alternative Governance Model found on the Gitxsan website, seems eminently reasonable at first blush. If everyone agreed to every detail still to be worked out, the model could put an end to the perpetual costs I have complained about. Still, I scribbled a number of questions that came to mind upon reading the newspaper report. With the benefit of reading the Gitxsan proposal, a few of them are:

  • Who authorized the design of the model and what authority do they have to represent the Gitxsan nation? There is obviously no consensus within their membership. The proposal to revert to previous direct democracy consensus governing methods and hereditary chiefs to replace existing elected chiefs and band councils prescribed by the federal Indian Act, could result in endless lawsuits even without other considerations;
  • What are the constitutional problems raised by the proposal? Questions have already been raised that the Supreme Court of Canada would rule such a treaty variation unconstitutional.
  • What will be the true cost to Canada and British Columbia of the proposal to extend Gitxsan jurisdiction over some 33,000 square kilometres claimed as their traditional territory? The model says the Gitxsan are not interested in the concept of “treaty settlement lands”, that they have a “collective inherited interest” in the whole territory. They do offer to make revenue sharing agreements with senior governments. This proposal also raises questions about possible overlapping and conflicting land claims by other native “nations” or existing private owners.

For me the extended ownership and jurisdiction claim could be the most troublesome of the model proposals. The consensual direct democracy governance idea for the limited village population that would now be affected does not trouble me a great deal and I would applaud the abrogation of the Indian Act if the Gitxsan could reach their own consensus to deal with the vested interests of the elected chiefs and band councils.

However, senior government approval of that idea could ceate a precedent and have serious unintended consequences in Canada’s pluralistic society. Already in Canada and the States there could be countless minority groups claiming “nation” status. Stephen Harper’s government has accepted the Quebecois “people” as a nation. The “Metis Nation” can claim perhaps both indigenous and immigrant privileges. Some time ago I even got a tongue-in-cheek email joke, suggesting that Canadian Mennonites, mostly immigrants from post-revolution Russia, some of whom claim a distinct ethnicity, could claim certain independence as a “Mennonite Nation” and establish the sort of village theocracy type of governance developed with Tsarist consent in 18th and 19th century Russia. Of course there is the “Nation of Islam” group, and in Canada Muslims are already claiming a right to apply the so called Sharia Law to their religionists. We could even have claims from such abhorrent racist minorities as the “Aryan Nation”.

Existing and potential problems seem endless and yet we are likely living in the least troublesome part of the world today. So far we more often than not continue to talk, to look for compromise and avoid more deadly confrontations. And we are still living in “the best place on earth”.

- 30 –

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I'm getting on in years, which is why this blog is called The Old Man's Post.