… to everything on the ground, above it, and below it:
A battle is brewing between the Saskatchewan government and First Nations over the province’s potash riches.
Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd says the government’s position is clear — it is happy to work with First Nations, but potash and other natural resources are under the exclusive control of the provincial government.
A group of First Nations preparing to launch legal action on the matter says the issue is not so black and white. Led by former Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) chief Perry Bellegarde, they say First Nations never surrendered any resources below the “depth of a plough” in the treaties.
Unreal…it is time to for government to stand up and say enough already…and mean it.
How many times do I have to read “I think the sensible thing to do is sit down and negotiate” from people with their hand out before I smell the presence of entitlement in the air.
Off Topic, but the CBC has a poll going “Do you think the UN is still relevant?”
49% Yes
46% No
http://www.cbc.ca/news/pointofview/2010/10/united-nations-is-it-still-a-relevant-organization.html
I recall several decades back, that the reserve just outside of Fort Nelson B.C. found out that West Coast Transmission had been sucking out gas from under them for years, and after some rather (righteous) indignation they came to (at the time) a fair settlement.
For the next few months after the cheques arrived, you could find brand new (mostly) Ford pick-ups in the ditch every few miles between Fort Nelson and Fort St. John.
I think it may be time to recognize the European occupation of Canada as a conquest that occurred before the adoption of the UN charter and assert Canada’s territorial sovereignty over all the the land including all minerals within its territorial boundaries; interpret the treaties in accordance with the words on the documents, not one party’s decendents memory of their antecedents understanding of the documents application to a situation that could not have been in anyone’s mind at the time of the treaty and do away with the multiple “nations” within the Canadian nation and make all Canadians equal under the law.
This is not a multi culti view of the country’s history, but it has the benefit of being a realists view of the world.
My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was McWilliams, one of the clans severely discriminated against during the “Highland Clearances” by the English aristocracy and the winning side of the Scottish aristocracies.
I implore the “First Nations” to support my claim for the return of all ancestral lands in Scotland.
My claim is prior to the the present effort by the Canadian First nations to take away my Canadian rights earned by my English maternal grandparents emigration to Canada in 1902.
If one travels back in European history they will be struck by, as I was, by the irony of the “Horse Based Societies” of the Asian ancestors of the present First Nations peoples of Canada initiating the western migration by force into Europe.
The continual conquest of people west of this original onset led to the Norman conquest of Anglo Saxon Britain establishing the aristocracies which initiated and completed the “Highland Cleanings”.
Canada’s First Nations cannot have it both ways. Either they support my claim to have Scotland return the ancestral lands of my paternal Grandmother or they support the rights of my English maternal Grandparents who entered Canada as part of the conquering forces who sequentially moved west in response to the original conquering hordes who were ancestors of the Canadian First Nation people. Cheers;
The status quo in FN treaty relations is a mercurial set of rights and entitlements continually evolving thanks to the legal profession. The following are some alternatives:
A. The Saskatchewan Government agree that all Crown assets are on the table and to be handed over collectively to FNs subject to appraisal at present value minus the present value of cumulative historical costs of all cash and in kind distributions and administrative delivery costs to all FNs. Any positive residual value to FNs could be distributed in the form of resources at market value, while a negative balance would result in Indian Reserves being sold back to the Province at market value. The resulting settlements would extinguish all future claims, differential rights, and entitlements.
B. In the event that FN’s call into question private land, then the sovereignty of the Provincial Government is illegitimate as it deeded the land originally. The resulting negotiations from this alternative fall under the premise that the native and non native populations exist in a state of anarchy where no laws apply. Essentially whoever has the most guns and uses them most effectively wins unless a treaty can be drawn up by parties in the interim and when you think about it, how can you have a treaty without first having a war?
C. That, as Chief Justice Allan Mceachern ruled (but intentionally lost on appeal by the BC NDP), essentially FN’s were conquered and all rights and entitlements extinguished and the provincial government was free to negotiate but not compelled to do so.
It would make more sense to break up the reserves into private individual or family ownership (they are currently property of the Federal Crown held in “trust” for the FNs) and dis-incentivize the corruption and communism inherent in the Indian Reserve system. It would add to Canada’s stature to end apartheid rather than build on it.
Two words: now way.
That is all.
I think they are successfully destroying their culture and lives pretty well without another pot of mad money.
Like larben I saw what happened when the residential abuse cheques came in. Old guys were being dragged around to buy the kids new cars.
They’re also entitled to a portion of resources on the moon equivalent to their ancestral rights in Canada.
all your cheese is mine.
yeah, I think I need some restitution from Denmark when they made the Danelaw. tossers.
of course ,we could all use a piece of Oldevai gorge.
Woh about we give all the land to the Indians. Then we pass laws that require the land holders to give us good paying jobs weather we show up for work or not. Supply good quality medical and dental at no cost. Supply schooling for as long as we want it, paying us a good stipend to incourage us to better educate ourselves. Oh and build us a new house and when it falls down due to lack of maintanence build us another.
I think thats although just cracking the surface for one day
They should be absorbed into the society and made to pay taxes like the rest of us serfs. Personally sick and tired of their ‘entitlement’ claims and hostage requirements. Enough already.
Never mind the ‘sponsorship scandal’ . Indian Affiars is about 150 times worse.
Well, the First Nations did have all those operating potash mines when the first Europeans arrived and stole the mines. Oh, wait a minute …
Now you see what being a pushover gets you.
Pushed over.
Another day, another pile of cash in the Industry’s pocket.
One thing the captains of the Indian Industry will never tell you is that the notorious Indian Act was given Royal Assent and made applicable to vast tracks of the prairies about six months BEFORE Treaty Six was signed and a full year and some before Treaty 7 was signed. The Crown had no qualms about asserting its sovereignty over tribal lands before these treaties were negotiated.
Also, the greatly over exalted Royal Proclamation of 1763 referred to the lands occupied by the Indians in these areas as “our lands”, the “our” being the Royal “We”. It’s true that the Proclamation does refer to “tribes and nations”, but it also referred to their rights as being the right to use the Crown’s lands. The text of the Treaties reflect this, but we never hear from the Industry that they were referred to as “tribes”, only as “nations”.
Another inconvenient fact is that the parties to the Treaties were not on equal footing, as in the tired old “Nation to Nation” meme. But the facts are that most of the Plains Indians were destitute and starving since the buffalo had all but been completely annihilated from the plains. They were hardly in a position to tell the “Whiteman” to take it or leave it.
Treaty Six was the most generous in its terms, promising assistance in the time of famine, reflecting the dire circumstances the Indians were in when it was negotiated. The head civil servant in Ottawa was outraged that this provision had been included, but thought it was best to settle and be done with it. Ironically, one of the main negotiators for the Indians, Poundmaker, strongly assured the Crown’s negotiators that they would not become dependent. Hah!! That one is also carefully omitted in the Industry’s prescribed narrative.
And another thing. This exemption from taxation on reserves, the reason for that is the Crown considered Indians to be wards of the state, like orphans or people with severe disabilities. The only Treaty where that supposedly was an issue raised by the Indians is Treaty 8, but it applied to all Indians, no matter where they lived, whether or not they had a treaty, by virtue of the Indian Act.
I have a hard time believing that minerals were ever a part of any treaty. How were they going to get to the potash that is 5000 Ft deep?
Smith:
Why, the same way Arabs were going to drill for the oil that they sat on for thousands of years.
They wouldn’t, until we showed them how.
(Vile thoughts, unexpressed)
I’ll go MikeSr one better. Our clan also suffered during the Highland Clearance but our family’s oral history is that once the hated English realized the error of their ways they promised every member of the clan a tax – free pension for life equivalent to 5 times the average salary in the British Isles. This stipend applies to all clan members until the sun refuses to shine and the rivers run dry.
That’s our story & we’re sticking to it. I’m owed around 7 million pounds (plus interest) but sadly, I don’t see any way of dragging the British government in front of Canada’s loopy left Supreme Court.
Much like territorial claims in Europe have de facto expiry dates…..and the absurd notion of reparations for slavery…..do these folks really believe that these “treaty rights” will be recognized in a millenium….a half millenium—two centuries hence???
Much like the blond who blurted out..”what kind of woman do you think I am? That has already been established—we are now negotiating the price.”
It seems the matter is basically settled and we are now merely discussing the terms.
HOORAH!!
i uh…like i uh…well….well i drank beer with chief dan george see…and i fooled around with his girlfriend…no problem….struth…so let me see if i member his deathless prose from ‘little big man’…(as a mof he’s planted just down the road a piece)
‘as long as the wind blows and the grass grows we’ll keep skinning you white men’
MikeS and Scott – we highlanders got a public apology in 1998 from the British for that robbery. Why don’t the people of Sask. just say ‘we are sorry’ to the Indians? That is all, History marches on and lands change ownership all the time. Lombardy has belonged to many different ‘owners’. Compared to the Spaniards and the Soviet Union, Canada has been pretty nice to it’s conquered people (1st nations and the French). Now it is time for us all to be Canadian; or not. People born in Canada are native Canadians, just like people born in Lombardy are native Italians (not Austrians or Frenchmen); we should all follow the same laws and ask for no special group privileges based on faith or race.
All the people of Saskatchewan share in the resource revenue already. How do the roads, schools, health care, university, and so forth, that all Saskatchewan people enjoy, get paid for? Resource revenue, both royalties and taxation of profits.
Saskatchewan’s First Nations live here, and already massively benefit, like all of us, from the fruit of that resource revenue.
I am in favour of one provincial government. Giving more money to another political entity within Saskatchewan is going to make any future problem more difficult, as that revenue will grant various factions within that entity more power. They will then, inevitably, as they have done in the past, go grasping for more power and money.
How about we keep one government which, however imperfectly, is accountable to all the people of Saskatchewan, rather than grow a new smaller unaccountable government to compete with? Let’s have one snake whose neck we have to keep a foot on, rather than two.
A quote from an article in todays Leader Post pretty well tells you all you need to know about satisfying native treaty claims. Ovide Mercredi says “the Canadian government will have to acknowledge that unless they want to respect our treaties, as we understand them, then they are building on stolen ground.” Rather a continual moving target I would say and the time to stop this is now.