In an article in The Sun Feb. 14, (“The Skeetchestn
say enough already”), Rich Deneault, the Skeetchestn Band chief served
notice that the way business and governments ride roughshod over native
rights in British Columbia has to come to an end, or face the
consequences, which may not be pretty.

He says, very bluntly, “In
the days ahead, those companies and agencies that have not acted
honourably will be receiving letters from us, advising them to tell
their customers to expect possible service interruptions regarding their
operations in our traditional lands. We’re writing to the six Liberal
leadership candidates to advise them as well … [to ask if] … a first
nations community should be shredded for the betterment of forest
companies, or railway companies, or energy companies, or tax revenues.”

One
might have thought that such a threatened disruption of B.C.’s economy
might have stirred some debate among the Liberal leadership candidates,
but none was noticeable. And that is too bad because I expect that Chief
Deneault’s impatience might signal broader direct action in the native
community over the next few years.

Why, most B.C. people might
ask, has it come to this? Is there not a Treaty Commission charged with
getting modern treaties arranged with B.C.’s natives? Is not a lot of
money being spent on this by the B.C. and federal governments? Are there
not a lot of negotiators working to resolve matters?

The answer
is, of course the machinery is in place, but it is all jammed up for
lack of political mandates to actually operate, to see progress come out
of the end of the spaghetti machine. One does not have to sit around a
negotiating table for long to realize the elaborate charade taking
place. Able government negotiators stall, fiddle, obfuscate, redirect
discussion, and come up with more questions requiring answers than you
could believe existed all in the name of delay, delay, delay.

The
game is, a day of delay is another day the governments do not have to
pay for anything more than airfare and hotel rooms for negotiators,
another day of the native groups going further into debt to stay in the
game, another day of hopelessness for most on-reserve Indians and
another day B.C. and Canada avoid actually choosing to make difficult
choices. Frankly, what is taking place these days falls far short of
meeting any test of sincerity by either government, protestations to the
contrary.

The negotiators have honed their skills in being
helpfully not helpful for, now, a generation since B.C. consented to
being brought into the modern treaty-making process after 150 years of
shameful behaviour toward its native population.

Can you imagine
how frustrating and angry one becomes, sitting around a “negotiating
table,” literally for 20 and more years and achieving, well, nothing?
All the while, you see members of your community, whom the Supreme Court
of Canada have ruled have aboriginal title to the lands and resources,
suffer Third World levels of unemployment and health outcomes, the
country’s highest suicide, crime, and substance abuse rates? You see
those who take forest and mineral wealth from lands in which you hold
rights being exploited with scant regard for your welfare; sometimes a
penny or two is dropped to claim “accommodation,” but there is no plan
and no commitment to actually address and improve native conditions by
either government.

This is not to deny that
some progress has been made by the Campbell government, because it has
shown a change of attitude and a willingness to at least begin. But for
lack of clear, strong direction from the top to the whole government
that this was a priority, and a regular rotation of ministers, little
real progress was made.

The province’s native communities are very
likely not going to be able to restrain those who would be much more
militant in the near future and it will be up to the new premier to face
this reality.

Through the regulatory processes we have seen
native obstruction doom the . Kemess For all large format and
applications Prosperity mining proj-(newspaper boxes, tents, etc.) ects
over the past six years. We see the . Enbridge Crop off tag line
pipeline if it is too small facing to the same sort be read, or too
small to print of opposition. Any number of governproperly. ment and
private-sector projects over the past few years much less newsworthy
have been ground to a halt as well.

As Chief Deneault has said,
it’s going to get worse, much worse, because r Height”between 20 the
years logo and of other almost graphic elements. no prog-ensure ress
it’s on placement most is land appropriate claims to its relative is
becoming importance. an issue around which to rally for a more militant
next generation that will look to recent events in Cairo and Benghazi
for examples of how to make change.

For premier-designate Christy
Clark, this should indeed be a top of the “in-basket” issue. It simply
has to be. That it was not addressed by any leadership candidate is a
shame. But maybe Clark will recognize this and make addressing it a lead
item in a first Throne Speech, and very clear new marching orders will
be given to officials in the aboriginal affairs, education,
attorney-general and finance ministries. Or maybe the expectations of
the coming political change that now abound in the native community will
be dashed. And if Clark is smart, she will re-assign George Abbott to
the portfolio because he has shown evidence of understanding the issues
and wanting them resolved. Sorry, George. And Premier Clark will have to
tell Ottawa that it, too, had better get serious.

But if real progress on the native file is not a Clark priority, the result could well be what Chief Deneault predicts.

And
what Deneault foresees is more than a few days of inconvenience. It
could well be provincewide. It could be a signal to all sorts of
putative investment in B.C. that maybe somewhere else is better. This is
particularly true of the mining industry, which has not been as engaged
in the issues as it should have been. If B.C. and Canada do not take
seriously the warnings of Chief Deneault and others, the damage done to
our recovering economy could be serious, and our reputation as a fair
and progressive society very much harmed.

The ball is now in the
hands of soonto-be-premier Clark. Every person in B.C. that would like
to see generations of wrongs done to B.C.’s first nations will be
watching. It will be a real test of “change.”

Tex Enemark is a
public policy consultant, a former president of the Mining Association
of BC and an adviser to the Gitxsan Treaty Society.