Historic Canadian Indian treaty to be initialed
Story-Date: 07:49 a.m. PST Tuesday  , August 4, 1998

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Historic Canadian Indian treaty to be initialed


By Allan Dowd

NEW AIYANSH, British Columbia, (Reuters) - Two centuries after a European
explorer first recorded contact with the Nisga'a Indians, leaders gathered
here Tuesday to initial a treaty the tribe hopes will protect its future.

The agreement has been hailed as a "template" to ease the damage Indian
land claims have inflicted on British Columbia's economy, but has also been
condemned for eroding the rights of the Canadian province's non-Native
residents.

"The agreement to me starts our people to a better future," Roderick
Robinson, a tribal negotiator said as he prepared for the colorful ceremony
in this small village set amid the rugged coastal mountains.

Robinson personifies how the Nisga'a have changed and resisted change since
the Europeans arrived. He will attend the ceremony both as an Anglican
deacon and in the head-dress of leader of the tribe's Eagle Clan.

The agreement would cede the Nisga'a 1,930 square kilometers (745 square
miles) of land near the Alaska panhandle, extensive self-government rights,
and pay the tribe about C$490 million in assorted compensation.

The treaty's initialing by tribal, federal and provincial officials begins
the ratification process. It must then be approved by the nearly 5,500
Nisga'a, Canada's Parliament and British Columbia's provincial legislature.

The ratification process has been under attack since negotiators gave the
treaty "handshake" approval in mid-July, with critics demanding a
province-wide referendum on the deal.

Critics also complain that giving the Nisga'a law-making powers in their
territory will give them special rights over non-Indians -- especially the
estimated 120 non-Indians who live in the area ceded the tribe.

"This government has no right to change the way we live together without
public consent," Raef Mair, a popular conservative Vancouver radio talk
show host complained in a recent commentary.

Indians make up only 3.8 percent of British Columbia's 3.7 million people,
and treaty supporters say it would be unfair to have such a vote on an
issue of minority rights.

The tribe's path to this treaty has been as rough as the road to New
Aiyansh -- a long largely dirt road that near the village crosses the
surreal landscape of a lava flow that killed an estimated 2,000 Nisga'a in
the 1770s.

Although Sir Francis Drake first claimed their region for England in 1579,
the first recorded European contact with the Nisga'a came in 1793 when
British sea captain George Vancouver encountered the tribe's canoes while
mapping the coast.

The Nisga'a and other British Columbia tribes were soon complaining about
the loss of traditional fishing and hunting grounds, but Canadian and
provincial officials responded by outlawing their right to pursue land
claims.

"We had all the land. It was arbitrarily taken from us," Robinson said.

Although the rules against land claims were repealed in the 1950s, the
negotiations that produced this treaty did not begin until 1976 and British
Columbia declined to join federal and tribal negotiators until 1990.

If ratified it would be the first comprehensive land claims settlement in
British Columbia this century, and premier Glen Clark has called it a
"template" for talks now underway with nearly 50 other tribes.

The uncertainty caused by the treaty negotiations was repeatedly cited as
one reason the province's resource-based economy had lagged in recent
years.

Nisga'a leaders downplay their treaty's impact on other talks, but do see
it as way to improve the plight of the tribal members -- more than half of
whom were unemployed and on welfare.

The Nisga'a have said they want more tribal members employed in harvesting
the trees cut from their lands.

Not all the treaty's critics are non-Indian. The Gitanyow tribe filed a
lawsuit last month claiming they will lose 84 percent of their historic
territory to the Nisga'a -- who have denied the charge.

Robinson said the dispute should be settled "Chiefs to Chiefs" and not
through the non-Indian court system. "(The courts) don't have the mandate,
the knowledge," he told a reporter.

($1-$1.51 Canadian) 



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