A blockade summer looms in la-la land

Page 6

It's common enough to hear talk about how strange the political air is on the western side of the Rockies. British Columbia is significantly, er, different from the rest of Canada. As are British Columbians.

There are also big differences in the Aboriginal community, and they aren't, for the most part, inter-tribal differences. In the rest of Canada, Indians are signatories to treaties, but few of the couple of hundred bands in B.C. have ever signed anything. This accounts for the huge attention given to land claims on the coast.

It also accounts for the conflicts brewing between First Nations and provincial and federal governments. What's happening, though, is that these conflicts are going to infringe on the day-to-day lives of everyone in the westernmost province as they seldom have anywhere else in the county.

There are two ways to resolve conflicts in the political arena. They are admirable illustrated in Bosnia. The first is negotiation. It is always first, and in Bosnia, it failed. The second is confrontation, and that almost always means armed confrontation. Confrontation seldom benefits one of the parties, and never benefits both, but frustrated leaders turn to it when talks go nowhere.

In B.C., talk is going nowhere, where there's any talk at all. The recipe is there for many of the disagreements to degenerate into confrontation.

The Adams Lake Band has set up a road block to demand negotiation, and that's typical of things out west. The problem isn't that negotiations aren't going anywhere, but that the provincial and federal governments haven't bothered getting around to them at all. The Tsimshian Band is considering setting up a road block (with a toll booth) on the Yellowhead Highway where it crosses the First Nation, cutting off road access to Prince Rupert, if promises to make dock improvements vital to the Tsimshian are not lived up to by the provincial government.

Both of these are fairly typical of the process. Either the government doesn't bother to open negotiations, or to work at them in good faith, because it is obviously of greater benefit to the band to get things sorted out than it is in Victoria, or Ottawa. Or the government makes a deal, and then either breaks it or puts implementation off for who knows how long.

The problem is that the government don't treat First Nations as nations at all. They treat them as if they are anybody else in the country, over whom they have legal authority in almost every way.

But that's not the case, is it? Native people negotiate with Canada on a relatively even footing, large country to small nation, but as, in many ways, equals. That's why deals between Indian governments and Canada's government (or the colonial governors before that) are called treaties, instead of contracts.

And so we're looking at a summer where Jack and Jill Canuck, and all the little Canucks, driving through the wilderness to the west are going to inconvenienced by a road block or two (depending on where they go).

When they do, we hope that somebody explains to them that west-coast bands have been waiting for treaties for more than 100 years. That the federal government has refused to sit down with bands (such as the one at Adams Lake) and that a road block is about the only effective way of getting their attention.

And that it's the responsibility of both governments involved to get serious and to get on with it. Live up to promises, or sit down at a table and settle the west coast issues, once and for all.