„Wir sind nicht die, die wir sind, wegen der Schecks aus Ottawa und Victoria“: Ehemaliger Präsident der Haida Nation spricht in Tofino über Naturschutz

„Richardson said when it comes to nations working outside the treaty process, what is at issue is very simple:

“It’s title. Title is the issue. You’re not asking them if you can be sovereign. That is a ridiculous question. You are either sovereign or you ain’t. You either have it in your heart to be Nuu-chah-nulth or you don’t,” he said.“

We all really need to start understanding and thinking critically about what „Indigenous sovereignty“ means.

It literally means carving BC into over 200 little pieces. How can you give sovereignty to one group like the Haida, and then deny all others that same right? And if you do give all others that same right, what happens is the jurisdiction of BC as a province ceases to exist. Sovereignty is not a right you can share, it is an exclusive right by nature.

The historical treaty process that occured in the rest of Canada absolutely did *not* grant nations sovereignty.

But what is happening in BC now through „foundation agreements“ like the Haida agreement and the incoming Tahltan agreement essentially do. So what happens when the Crown gives sovereignty to the bands in BC, and the rest of the bands in Canada go hey, we want that too?

You simply cannot start carving out jurisdictions the size of Lebanon and handing it over to a tiny fraction of an ethnic group and saying here you are sovereign now, you are the government and expect that is going to go over well. And yet this is what the Haida agreement literally does.

Eby has called it the model for BC moving forward, and the feds signed off on it.

If that’s the model, BC will not exist by the time it is carried through to completion, and the land claims issue in BC could easily spread like wildfire to the rest of Canada as a result.