OTTAWA REPORT

Page 2

Canada has a new land claims policy - finally- but Native people don't have much to celebrate.

Thirteen years ago, the Government of Canada decided to negotiate with Native groups to settle major land claims. Only two have been settled since then - one in James Bay and one in the western Arctic. The problem was obvious. So In July, 1985, David Crombie appointed a task force to review the federal land claims policy. Murray Coolican, a Halifax consultant, was named to head the task force.

After listening to dozens of Native groups to the better part of a year, the task force said the policy should be overhauled from top to bottom. For the past nine months the government has been reviewing the recommendations in the Coolican report. Now a year and one-half after the process began, Ottawa has finally changed the rules - and anyone who liked the Coolican report is in for a big disappointment.

Bill McKnight has greatly improved on the old policy by adopting some of the Coolican recommendations. But he didn't accept all of them and he is obviously gambling that he has picked just enough of them to lure the Native groups back to the bargaining table.

The big problem with the old policy was the requirement that Native people extinguish all their Aboriginal rights in return for a settlement. The Coolican task force said, however that Native people should be allowed to negotiate a land claims agreement without having to give up their Aboriginal rights. Since Aboriginal rights were recognized in the Constitution of Canada in 1982, the task force said Native people should not be required to extinguish them just to get a land claims settlement.

The task force also said the extinguishment issue could be avoided entirely. The Coolican report used the recent agreement between the government of Canada and Nova Scotia as an example. Both governments say they own the offshore oil deposits. But they agreed to develop the resource and share the revenues and settle the question of ownership later.

The task force said the same approach could be used with major Native land claims. Bill McKnight didn't buy that argument, however.

Instead, he's offered a compromise. Under the new policy, Native people will be able to keep some of their Aboriginal rights to some of their territory. But that means they will probably have to extinguish most of their rights to most of their territory. They will have to give up their rights over hunting, fishing, trapping and ownership to most of their land. (They may get a limited form of hunting, fishing and trapping rights in return, though.) But they don't have to surrender their rights to language, culture or self-government.

The compromise on extinguishment no doubt appeals to the Native groups stuck in the land claims logjam. Some of the other aspects of the new policy are probably just as appealing. For instance, Native groups get a better deal on self-government, off-shore rights and land management rights.

But there are some aspects of the new policy that are clearly meant to shut other Native groups out of the process entirely. Indians in southern British Columbia and eastern Canada and Metis and non-status Indians everywhere get nothing from the new policy, even though the Coolican report recommended that they be included.

A crucial feature in the new policy involves money. In the past, the government refused to let Native groups share the income from oil or hydro-electric development on their lands. Now that it's broke, the government doesn't plan to spend a lot of cash to settle land claims. So it's saying, for the first time, that Native people can get a share of resource royalties.

Native groups say it is a half-step forward because the government clearly intends to limit the amount of money that Native people will get as part of a settlement. The assembly of First Nations calls the new policy an insult. The Assembly says the limit on resources sharing "is like telling a landlord thathe is allowed to rent his house for a few years but once he's made a certain amount of money, he can't make any more."

The old policy was rightly criticized for treating land claims as little more than real estate deals. But it's hard to see the new policy as anything more than a shinier version of the old since the new policy limits the amount of money and still required Native people to extinguish some of their Aboriginal rights.

Which brings us to the ultimate question: Should Native groups negotiate land claims based on the new policy? It's hard for me to escape the conclusion that the new land claims policy forces Native people to give up too much for too little.