CULTURE

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1999 Articles

BIOGRAPHY: Dolly Watts: Woman Warrior
Entrepeneur and warrior, Dolly Watts talks about her life, her triumphs and the birth of her restaurant, Liliget. -R. Stewart

Frida Ens: Against the odds
The executive director for the Vancouver Police and Native Liaison Society has come to be a powerful voice for the disenfranchised. -R. Stewart

BUSINESS: Native Designer Makes Art out of Fashion
Dorothy Grant's original and beautiful clothing designs have been recognized both locally and internationally.

CULTURE: Bill Peacock, a Eulogy
The First Nations Drum loses a friend.

Drumbeats of the Heart
A short story by Bill Peacock.

EDUCATION: 1999 Aboriginal Achievement Awards
The sixth annual national Aboriginal Achievement Awards honour 14 distinguished recipients.

HISTORY

MODERN TREATIES: Black's Attack
A newspaper publisher uses his 53 editors to oppose the Nisga'a treaty. -Maurice Switzer

POLITICS

A look back at the stories that made headlines.

The Nisga’a Deal

History was made in 1998 by Nisga’a president Joe Gosnell with the initialing of Canada’s first modern-day treaty on August 4, at a signing ceremony at New Aiyansh, in their traditional territory in northwestern British Columbia, with the federal and provincial governments.

The first of its kind in Canada, the treaty includes approximately 2000 square kilometres in land, $190 million in cash and self-government powers in the areas of health, social services, education, policing and a Nisga’a court system. The Nisga’a will also be entitled to one-quarter of the Nass River salmon catch and will receive another $11.5 million to buy back commercial licenses and boats with the ability to sell their catch or barter with other tribes. The Nisga’a will own all forests on their traditional territories and companies with harvesting tenures will be phased out over the next five years.

The treaty was immediately challenged by the neighboring Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs in court who claimed a lack of good faith by the province in giving, they claim, 84% of their natural resources in an overlap of Nisga’a territory and Gitanyow territory.

The treaty received ratification by the Nisga’a in mid-November and the treaty has yet to be ratified by the provincial and federal legislatures which is expected to occur in the spring of 1999.

The treaty will be protected by the Canadian constitution, which has become the rallying jury for the Campbell-led provincial Liberals for a provincial referendum on the treaty claiming it will amend the constitution. Campbell has vowed to challenge the Nisga’a treaty in court to seek a clarification on that point which is expected to be heard in February 1999.

Salmon Season ‘98

Despite reports citing global warming, rising water temperatures and destruction of critical habitat, this past year’s salmon season was characterized by confrontations between commercial, recreational and aboriginal fisherman who vigorously protested limitations on available openings in light of DFO’s attempt to save dwindling coho stocks.

In particular, the B.C. Survival Coalition, a loosely affiliated group of non-aboriginal fisherman opposed to the Aboriginal Fishery Strategy (AFS) and its policy of commercial fisheries for aboriginal people were bolstered in their militant activities by a January 8, 1998, ruling of provincial court judge Howard Thomas who found there was no legal basis for aboriginal commercial fisheries in the federal Fisheries Act. For that finding, Judge Thomas went back to the Magna Carta of 1215, which ended the Crown’s right to declare exclusive fisheries at its pleasure.

The case at trial was an illegal fishing charge against Reform MP John Cummins. First Nations leaders pointed out that the lawfulness of Cummins’ fishing was the only issue which Thomas had the need or jurisdiction to decide. They contend that Thomas made his ruling without the benefit of aboriginal fishing rights evidence because no First Nation was directly involved and it was only at the urging of Cummins’ lawyer that the judge ventured to give his legal opinion on the legality of aboriginal commercial fisheries.

Then on August 8, 1998, Judge Thomas stayed some 60 charges against 24 Survival Coalition members, including spokesperson Phil Eidsvik, for fishing in protest during aboriginal commercial fisheries in the 1997 and 1996 seasons, citing his own January '98 ruling as proof.

The Survival Coalition interpreted this as the end of the AFS, rendering his members immune from prosecution. Further bolstered by the stayed charges, at least 300 Fraser River gill-netters participated in a protest fishery on August 19, 1998, during an aboriginal commercial fishing opening. The gill-netters engaged in the illegal action despite an announcement on the previous day that additional openings would be announced for gill-netters, anglers, and trollers.

DFO officials confirmed that the August 8, 1998 decision of Judge Thomas will be appealed and DFO expects to charge at least 140 gill-netters for their participation in the illegal fishery.

Canada’s First Civil Suit on Residential School Abuse

The past year was also dominated by Canada’s first civil lawsuit on residential school abuse in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. On January 31, 1996, some two dozen former students at the Port Alberni Indian residential school filed a civil suit against Arthur Plint, a former dormitory supervisor who was convicted of the multiple accounts of sexual abuse he committed during the 1950s and 1950s. The case will decide whether the federal government and the United Church are to be held vicariously liable (financially accountable) for the abuses committed by school staff.

In the first seven days of trial, which began on February 2, 1998, the students recounted their heart-wrenching experiences of beatings, hunger, murder and rape suffered at the hands of the school staff during their forced stay at the school.

Setbacks in the trial are thought to be the cause of an apparent suicide one of the complaints in late October in Nanaimo, when Darryl Watts either stumbled or jumped off a pier into Nanaimo Harbour. This may have promoted the United Church to issue an apology the following week for the denomination’s complicity in the "pain and suffering" caused by the church-run residential schools.

Since then, a flood of lawsuits over residential school abuse in B.C., Alberta and Ontario numbering up to 2000, threaten to bankrupt denominations and clog the court system.