Treaty 8 bands to negotiate treaty entitlement agreements

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Six Treaty Eight First Nations have ratified a protocol for negotiating treaty entitlement agreements with the federal government.

Five of the First Nations are in the southern N.W.T., and one, Smith's Landing, is just across the border in Alberta.

Smith's Landing negotiator Francois Paulette joked that the protocol tells the government, "For the last 95 years, you've been in our territory and you haven't paid rent. Cough it up."

The protocol allows the Treaty Eight First Nations to begin the process of treaty land selection. That, in turn, opens the door to a tax remission order on the lands selected, and interim land protection. First Nations members living and working on the designated lands would not have to pay GST, income tax or other federal and territorial taxes.

A tax remission order would be backdated to the day negotiations began.

"We're trying to get it as fast as we can," said Yellowknife negotiator Roy Erasmus. "But the federal government likes to be certain the land you choose will end up as a reserve."

It took two years to put the protocol together. But N.W.T. Treaty Eight negotiator Jerry Paulette said the pace now will speed up.

The negotiations involve the First Nations and the federal government, joined by the Alberta and N.W.T. governments where they are the parties responsible for fulfilling a treaty obligation or there are third-party interests on treaty entitlement land.

In an unusual move, the negotiations are being mediated by the Indian Claims Commission, represented by Mohawk lawyer Mark Dockstader, and Justice Robert

Reid. The commission, a federally funded body, normally investigates and makes recommendations on treaty violations and other specific Aboriginal claims.

Smith's Landing negotiator Paulette said Treaty Eight seemed to the federal bureaucrats, especially after the Dene-Metis comprehensive claim fell apart, to be "the bad people, the people who were not going to play ball."

From the Treaty Eight perspective, however, the federal government was trying to "derail and assimilate Indians.

"The Treaty Eight First Nations stress that, in negotiating treaty entitlements, unlike land claims, they will not be forced to extinguish their Aboriginal or treaty land rights. This was the issue that caused the demise of the Dene-Metis comprehensive claim.

"We've been patient and persistent," said Deninu K'ue chief Don Balsillie. "The government's finally seen the light."