Warum wurden wir nicht früher über die Auswirkungen des Titels der Aborigines informiert? Die Antwort sollte jeden betreffen
https://vancouversun.com/news/vaughn-palmer-aboriginal-title-richmond-cowichan-decision
Warum wurden wir nicht früher über die Auswirkungen des Titels der Aborigines informiert? Die Antwort sollte jeden betreffen
https://vancouversun.com/news/vaughn-palmer-aboriginal-title-richmond-cowichan-decision
2 Kommentare
The term „unceded“ should have been a REALLY BIG clue. The second clue was land acknowledgements. Put the land acknowledgements with the term „unceded territory of <insert Nation here>“ should have been THE BIGGEST clue that something like this was bound to happen.
The fact of the matter is, if it’s UNCEDED land, i.e. there’s no prior agreement then yeah…there’s A LOT to figure out.
Think of it like this, you write a song, and have recorded it, etc… and it has copyright protections. Unbeknownst to you, for YEARS another group has been sampling YOUR song and made MILLIONS of dollars from it then YOU are entitled to compensation. You didn’t give those rights away, someone else used them WITHOUT your permission.
This is the same position we’re in now. MANY FN groups DID NOT give permission to A LOT of people to do A LOT of economic activities we’re participating in. Thus, FN people are entitled to some kind of remedy. What that looks like is going to vary from Nation to Nation, and from entity to entity.
At the end of the day, colonisation is another term for land theft. That’s it. Plain and simple. The worst part is, in the attempt to colonise Canada, Europeans also did some pretty awful things. Again, there’s a remedy required here. The courts have adjudicated as such.
The „easy“ thing to do is say, „STFU. We won, you lost, get over it“. However, that isn’t going to sit well with many groups and only antagonises FN people and is a GREAT way to incite some really nasty things that will severely disrupt economic activities such as forestry and other resource extraction operations. It doesn’t take much to cost a mining company MILLIONS of dollars in down time through violence, so it is in the mining company’s interest to negotiate in good faith.
As for homeowners, it’s a pickly of a dickle because MOST homeowners aren’t in the financial position to go, „yeah, here, have it back.“ MOST homeowners owe money to a lending institution, and the lending institutions are going to resist having to „refund“ those homeowners. Thus finding a „middle ground“ is going to be extremely difficult. It’s not practical to „kick“ MILLIONS of people out of their family homes, nor can most people afford to pay an ADDITIONAL tax towards FN people.
Not to mention that FN people weren’t necessarily allowed to purchase a lot of the PRIME real estate in BC.
This is the consequence of genocidal colonisation. Should we continue to ignore FN land rights, etc…because the solutions are „too difficult“? I think that’s a very weak mindset.
There’s a lot to unpack, and this is what reconciliation is all about – finding practical remedies to harmful historical practices.
Because many of those implications have been fabricated by the media.
How it works in Duncan is that the homesteaders on Cowichan land pay taxes to the Cowichan Nation instead of to the Municipality of Duncan. None of their rights as private property owners are violated, any more than the rights of a property owner in Surrey are violated by not being considered part of Delta. While the court notes that it’s hypothetically possible that one day the Cowichan Nation could attempt to violate their rights, you could say the same thing about the local Tim Hortons. Until they actually do something that impacts property owners, those property owners haven’t suffered a loss and don’t have standing to sue.
Right now, the Municipality of Richmond are the only ones losing out, in that the tax income they’d have collected from these properties is now going to the Cowichan Nation instead. By Canadian law, residents on aboriginal land can still access services from neighboring municipalities, so they can still use the same schools, parks, and hospitals, and use all of the same city services. Richmond just doesn’t collect their property taxes. They’re not actually impacted in any way, beyond that.
The Province wants to use the idea that the Cowichan Nation could *hypothetically* *someday* try to do something that would violate these homeowners‘ rights as a way to argue agains the loss of tax income, and more broadly to avoid a cash settlement that the Cowichan Nation has offered instead. As the court points out, in that hypothetical imaginary situation where homeowners rights are violated instead of just the City of Richmond losing out on tax money, homeowners *would* be informed, and then *could* sue. But that hasn’t and won’t happen. It’s just a money dispute between the government and the Cowichan Nation.