Category: We Are All Treaty People

Nothing To See Here, Move Along

Blacklock’s- Feds Seal 215 Graves Records

The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations is sealing all reports filed by a Kamloops, B.C. First Nation that was paid to exhume the purported graves of 215 children at an Indian Residential School. “Confidential information,” the department wrote in denying an Access To Information request for the records.

The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation received $12.1 million in funding for “exhumation of remains” and forensic DNA testing after announcing in 2021 it had discovered the graves in an orchard using ground-penetrating radar. No remains have been recovered to date.

National Disunity

While some aboriginal communities welcome the prospect of roads and mines in the so-called Ring of Fire zone in Ontario, some clearly don’t. They prefer to live in a “pristine” wilderness that for some reason is not pristine enough to provide clean drinking water for thirty years.

The province has released a Ring of Fire ad that uses Ford’s slogan from the 2025 election: “Protect Ontario” and makes a sales pitch on development. “What about protect Neskantaga?” Marcus Moonias says. “I’m so mad about it.”

“I almost threw my television at the wall,” he says about the commercial.

Bigger dreams are starting to enter Mamakwa’s mind. He thinks one day a First Nation political party could hold the balance of power in Ottawa, like a Bloc Québécois of the north.

We Are All Treaty People

Reconcile this.

A B.C. property company says a lender has pulled out of financing a new building because of the recent Cowichan Tribes ruling that granted Aboriginal title to more than three square kilometres in Richmond.

Montrose Property Holdings, which develops industrial warehouses on land it owns, some of it in the Aboriginal claims area, said it had been in “advanced discussions” with the lender which it had successfully dealt with several times before, and a prospective tenant.

But talks ended because of “uncertainties and risk allocation issues” raised by the B.C. Supreme Court ruling in August, the company says in an application to reopen the court case that will be filed soon.

Montrose said it spent about $7.5 million advancing the project and expected to borrow another $35 million to complete construction.

The company said discussions have also ceased for the same reason with companies such as Fortis and Enbridge to develop a facility to capture landfill gas, rather than flare it. Those discussions had been underway for six years.

The 31-page application to reopen the case and a 1,200-page supporting affidavit, which have been sent to the parties involved in the case, were shared with Postmedia.
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The business effects Montrose says it is experiencing from the Cowichan decision are among the first specific examples to be aired publicly.

If you make major investments in a province that votes NDP, what follows is really your own damned fault.

Protection Racket

Well, that response  took all of about ten minutes to develop. Maybe fifty percent unemployment across the country would change their attitude, but I’m not too confident about that.

Assembly of First Nations chiefs voted unanimously on Tuesday to demand the withdrawal of a new pipeline deal between Canada and Alberta, while expressing full support for First Nations on the British Columbia coast that strongly oppose the initiative.

The resolution also urges Canada, Alberta and B.C. to recognize the climate emergency and uphold the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

 

Protection Racket

Hardly a week has passed since the memorandum of understanding with Alberta, and already the Libs are laying the groundwork for endless “unavoidable” delays. At this rate, I don’t know why Guilbeault found it necessary to quit caucus at all.

On his way into a cabinet meeting Tuesday morning, the former minister of Crown-Indigenous relations told reporters he sees a difficult road ahead for any pipeline project.

“If everyone thought Thursday was difficult, that was probably the easiest day in the life of that pipeline,” Miller said.

Sovereign Money Pit

What’s not to love about a sovereign wealth fund where others are forced to pony up the seed capital? It also helps to imagine that such a fund could not possibly make anything but the wisest investments.

Chief Joe Miskokomon said the fund would be a “critical step” forward in bolstering the economic capacity of First Nations.

“We’re not saying to take out the banks,” Miskokomon said in an interview.

“What we’re saying is the banks don’t need to have as much as a say as they do.”

This Land is Our Land

Read the whole thing.

National Post- Canada wasn’t ‘stolen’ from Indigenous people

In short, the Americas were settled in waves from Asia. Everyone alive today is descended from settlers. The latest “Indigenous” settlers arrived barely ahead of the first European settlers, the Vikings, who settled in Greenland and Newfoundland, and of Christopher Columbus, who started Spanish settlement in the Caribbean.

That Should Simplify Things

Globe and Mail- Alaska tribal nations demand a say on Canadian resource projects

The Alaska legal challenge is part of an escalating effort by U.S. tribal groups to assert rights in Canada in the wake of the 2021 Desautel decision, in which Canada’s Supreme Court found that the Lakes Tribe in eastern Washington state should be considered Aboriginal peoples of Canada, given their historical use of land that is now B.C. In the years since, several U.S. groups have used the decision to assert themselves in Canadian affairs

Protection Money

If you pony up enough money to the paleolithic set, maybe your project can go ahead.

Jonathan Wilkinson, a B.C. Liberal MP and a former federal environment minister, said today that “a number of things” would need to happen before the tanker ban could change, including discussions with the B.C. government and coastal First Nations.

Scroll down to see the Financial Post point out the errors in Eby’s arguments.

As the saying goes, you’re entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts. Premier Eby’s objections to another Alberta pipeline are rooted in fallacies, not fact. The Carney government should recognize that and decide soon whether or not another pipeline to B.C. tidewater is “in the national interest” — which apparently is how you get a permit to build major projects in Canada these days.

Wizardry, Not Wisdom

When a cultural movement allegedly based on science starts to bring in mystical “wisdom keepers” in an attempt to remain relevant, this merely confirms that it was never based on science in the first place.

The COP so far “was a testament that unfortunately, for Indigenous peoples to be heard, they actually need to be disruptive,” said Aya Khourshid, an Egyptian-Palestinian member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, a group of Indigenous people from around the world.

Indigenous people are putting a lot of energy “to be in this space but to not necessarily be given a platform or voice at the decision table with the ministers and those who are in power,” said Whaia, a Ngāti Kahungunu Wisdom Keeper.

The Excuse Factory

It’s hard to imagine that anyone with a shred of moral conscience could face themselves day after day after delivering a judgement which brazenly excuses such psychopathic behavior.

Mr. Garlow is the personification of intergenerational trauma. I cannot imagine more sympathetic circumstances or mitigating factors that cry out for some compassion. Punishing him with a further period of incarceration for the sake of the common good would be unjust,” wrote Justice Brenda Green, who recently handed Garlow a suspended sentence and three years of probation.

The judge saw a “clear, causal nexus between his father’s brutalization in residential schools and the trail of damage and devastation that slammed like a wrecking ball through the next generation. I cannot imagine a case with a more shocking example of the detrimental impact of colonialism, intergenerational trauma and the attempted cultural genocide by seizing children from their communities only to be placed in horribly abusive environments.”

Seems Legit

Sun- $871,000 in expenses for just seven indigenous leaders, Indigenous whistleblowers demand to see the books

Jerleen Anderson Sullivan’s Facebook post about Norway House Cree Nation caught attention because it was fearless. She revealed that one councillor claimed $236,111 in expenses, another $141,062, and that together, the council’s expenses reached $871,731 for only seven members. Salaries were roughly $102,000 per councillor, the Chief just under $120,000. Expenses exceeded pay. Her question was simple but piercing: where did all that money go?

Follow The Science

Back to the Dark Ages.

In March 2025, the Australian government quietly buried its last collection of Pleistocene human fossils in an unmarked grave. These remains were of Homo sapiens who had shared the Earth with Neanderthals. But they went into the ground with little media coverage or protest from the global scientific community, who knew better than anyone that these delicate, carefully reconstructed fossils would not last long in hostile conditions.

The significance of this loss is hard to overstate. Australia is a unique piece in the puzzle of human origins. It was colonized by modern humans before Europe, but it remained almost entirely isolated, preserving many aspects of human culture and genetics that vanished elsewhere. As Charles Darwin observed, “the Australian aborigines rank amongst the most distinct of all the races of man.”

Following the British settlement of Australia, museums and universities accumulated collections of both historical and ancient remains. Most material came from southeast Australia and Tasmania, where the once-numerous tribes had suffered enormous losses and even extinction. Today, these thousands of bones, mummies, and fossils have almost all been buried or cremated; genetic “biographies” that were burned before they were ever read.

We Are All Treaty People

National Post;

Canada has paid billions upon billions to rectify past wrongs — figures that supersede what we spend on the military, and yet are still not enough.

Here’s a partial list: $23 billion to settle the lawsuit for the government not adequately covering the costs of Indigenous children in care; $1.72 billion to cover the cost of farming equipment that was promised to Saskatchewan First Nations 150 years ago but wasn’t provided; $14.9 billion to resolve special claims since 1973; $1.1 billion to settle a lawsuit by patients of federal Indigenous hospitals; $1 billion to an Alberta First Nation to adjust 19th-century treaty payments to modern dollars and $10 billion to another in Ontario, opening the doors to other nations doing the same.

And there are many more on the way. Some Manitoba First Nations are suing Manitoba Hydro for a share of the energy company’s profits, some Ontario First Nations are seeking $95 billion and the power to halt all development in Treaty 9 land without Indigenous consent. It all adds up to complete economic stagnation.

The Liberal government’s attitude of pulling punches and paying claims out the nose — and appointing judges who are open to the idea of more and more compensation — has swelled this into a problem of scales hard to comprehend. Oh, and when anyone points out the sheer cost of all this, they can expect to be accused of perpetuating the “colonial mindset.”

Be careful there, buddy.

Great Success!

A good summary here.

Fraser Institute- Eby bringing B.C. to its knees with Aboriginal land deals

Recently, British Columbia Attorney General Niki Sharma said that fee simple title in private property is superior to Aboriginal title. She’s a day late and a dollar short. In fact, her NDP government, led by Premier David Eby, has been doing everything in its power to have Aboriginal title triumph across B.C.

h/t Cameron

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