Chief Joseph Gosnell
European & UK Tour
November, 1998
The Nisga'a Treaty is making history in what Europeans once called the New World. This past August we initialed the Nisga'a Treaty - the first in modern British Columbia history. And, just this past week the Nisga'a people endorsed the Agreement and urged our governments to make it into law.
The Nisga'a Treaty is historic for many reasons. Its accomplishment has been noted by the New York Times, the Asahi Shinbum in Japan, the BBC World Service, and many other news organizations. Treaty negotiations have been monitored by a variety of human rights watchdogs worldwide. It is noteworthy that it comes so closely on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I am also pleased to say that it rightly bolsters Canada's international reputation as a nation that respects human rights.
It was a proud day for Canada. It is worthy of international attention, because although Canada is a nation known for its peacekeeping activities, and for its role as a champion of human rights, it has rarely been able to come to the world with clean hands regarding aboriginal rights. I believe that has now changed. I believe the Nisga'a Treaty is a triumph for Canada.
This Treaty also represents a major breakthrough in the shameful and brutal relationship between aboriginal peoples and the descendants of Europeans in North America. To understand why this is so, one has to understand something of the history of Canada and its relationship with those many nations which called Canada home for thousands of years before white people came among us.
First, one has to understand that the Nisga'a Treaty is the first and only treaty concluded west of the Rocky Mountains, in what came to be the Province of British Columbia, since Canada was born in 1867. British Columbia is larger than many European countries, and it is the last jurisdiction in North America to attend to the solemn undertaking of treaty-making, so this is no small matter.
The treaty process now unfolding in British Columbia is unique in history in another respect: It is the first time in North American history that treaty-making has occurred long after settlement by newcomers. The Nisga'a Treaty is, I am confident, the first of many treaties that will establish lasting peace and friendship between the aboriginal nations west of the Rocky Mountains, and the people of British Columbia and Canada.
I want to tell you something of the history of my people, the Nisga'a.
We are an old nation, as old as any nation of Europe. From time immemorial, our oral literature, passed down from generation to generation, records the story of the way the Nisga'a people were placed on earth by K'amligihahlhaal, the Chief of Heaven, who lives at Magoonhl Lisims, on the roof of the world. It was by the will of the Chief of Heaven that the four tribes of the Nisga'a - the Killer Whale people, the Wolf people, the Eagle people and the Raven people - were solemnly entrusted with the care and protection of our country. Our country is now known as British Columbia's Nass River Valley, which lies on the north coast, just south of Alaska, about 750 kilometres north of Vancouver.
Through the ages, the Nisga'a people lived a settled life in several villages. We lived in large, cedar-planked houses, fronted with totem poles depicting the great heraldry and the family crests of our nobility. We thrived from the bounty of the sea, the river, the forest and the mountains. We governed ourselves according to the Ayuukhl Nisga'a, which is the body of our own strict and ancient laws of property ownership, succession, and civil order.
Within the ayuukhl is a law that warns against disrespect for animals. There were boys playing with salmon and the boys set tiny pitch lamps in the backs of the fish to watch the lights swim away upriver.
For this crime, the animals took their vengeance upon the valley, causing the eruption of a dormant volcano known as Wilksi Baxhl Mihl. More than 2,000 of our people were entombed in the lava that flowed from the volcano, and the lava beds remain the dominant feature of much of the Nass Valley to this day.
It was only due to the intervention of a supernatural bird, which blocked the flow of lava near Gitwinksilkw, which means Place of the Lizards, that our downriver villages were saved from certain destruction.
But this event was also a sign of far greater tribulation, because it was precisely at that moment in history when Europeans first came within sight of our homeland.
It was in August, 1775, that the Spanish ship, the Sonora, was passing down the seacoast in the distant west. In the diary of the priest aboard that ship, there remains a record of this incident. The priest noted that the crewmen aboard the Sonora "suffered from the heat," which emanated from the great flames from the volcano Wilksi Baxhl Mihl, which lit up the night sky.
Our first encounters with Europeans were friendly. We welcomed these strange visitors, and we found many uses for the new trade goods the Europeans brought. The Europeans also valued their encounters with us, and we were regarded as fair but tenacious entrepreneurs and businessmen. In 1832, traders from the Hudson Bay Company found us living, in their words, in "two story wooden houses the equal of any in Europe." For a time, after the tragedy of Wilksi Baxhl Mihl, we prospered. But there were dark days to come.
Between the late 1700s and the mid-1800s, the Nisga'a people, like so many other coastal nations of the time, were devastated by a series of European diseases, such as smallpox, measles and fevers. Our population was decimated. When this century began, only about 800 Nisga'a people were left - perhaps one-tenth of our population before the Europeans came.
Still, we remained an unconquered people. We were loyal to the British Crown, confident that despite the disloyalty of the King's white subjects, he would keep his promises.
We took heart in the promises King George III made to Canada's native peoples, set out in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, that our lands would not be taken without our permission, and that treaty-making was the way the Nisga'a would become part of this new nation that was being built from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. We became respected and successful commercial fishermen.
We published our own newspaper, Hagaga, in 1891. And we publish it to this day. We continued to follow our ayuukh. We vowed to obey the white man's laws, too, and we expected the white man to obey his own law - and to respect ours.
But the white man would not obey his own law, and continued to trespass on our lands. The King's governments continued to take our lands from us, until we were told that all of our lands had come to belong to the Crown, and even the tiny bits of land that enclosed our villages were not ours, but also belonged to the government. Still, we remained confident in the faith that the rule of law would prevail one day, that justice would be done, and one day, the "Land Question" would be settled fairly, honestly, and openly.
To resolve the Land Question, in 1887, a delegation of Nisga'a chiefs paddled into Victoria's harbour - where on the steps of the British Columbia Legislature, we were turned away by the provincial leader of the time, Premier William Smithe.
Still we kept our faith, and the Nisga'a Land Committee was formed in 1890. It was with this faith that the Nisga'a first came to London, in 1913.
A delegation of Nisga'a chiefs came to London. We retained the law firm of Fox and Preece to present our petition before the British Privy Council, which was, at that time, Canada's highest court. It was on the 21st day of May, 1913, that we filed our petition, seeking a declaration that our aboriginal title to our lands remained unextinguished. We were hopeful, but the Privy Council decided that we must seek leave from the Canadian government to ask for redress, and the Nisga'a chiefs were turned away empty.
In the following years, with the help of many Canadian friends, we continued to seek justice. But in 1927, Canada passed a law preventing us from pursuing our land claims. It was made illegal for lawyers to take our case. Then, the central institution of tribal government, the potlatch system (Nisga'a term), was outlawed by an Act of Parliament. It was against the law for us to give presents to one another during our ceremonies, which our laws instruct us to do. It was even made illegal for us to dance, without a letter of permission from the Indian superintendent.
Then, our children were taken away from us and sent to Christian residential schools, where they were terribly abused, and beaten for speaking their own language. The brutality and degradation of our children did not become common knowledge outside the families for many years. Finally, some of the victims spoke out and shocking headlines told of the residential school officials being jailed for callously assaulting the helpless children.
I should also point out that the Nisga'a delegation to London in 1913 was not the last time my people ventured to Europe. Nisga'a men fought in the First World War, which was a war for "the right of small nations" to exist. Nisga'a men fought in World War II, as well, but when Indian men returned from the battlefields of France, the Netherlands and Germany, they returned to a country in which they were still denied the right to vote.
Aboriginal people could not vote in Canada until the federal election of 1961. Still, we persisted, and we kept the faith that one day, the rule of law would be honoured.
Our faith was redeemed. And it is no coincidence that it was in the years following the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that Canada's racist and discriminatory legislation began to slowly wither away. It is no coincidence that it was only after the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the Nisga'a people could see - way out there on the horizon - that a new day was about to dawn.
By 1973, the Supreme Court of Canada had replaced the British Privy Council as Canada's highest court, and it was in 1973 that the Nisga'a returned to the courts. We went to the Supreme Court with the same petition that the law firm of Fox and Preece had presented to the British Privy Council on our behalf in 1913.
In 1973, at the Supreme Court of Canada, the judges agreed with us about aboriginal title, thus initiating the modern day process of land claims negotiations. The federal government agreed with us that it was best to negotiate a treaty, a modern-day treaty, to correct shameful history. Canada agreed that it was time to build a new relationship, built on trust, mutual respect, and the rule of law. In time, the Province of British Columbia came to the negotiating table as well.
And that is something of the history that led to the historic day, August 4, 1998.
The Treaty itself represents a hard-fought compromise. Under the Treaty, we will no longer be wards of the state. We will no longer be beggars in our own lands. We will own our own lands, which now far exceed the postage-stamp reserves that were begrudgingly set aside for us by colonial governments. We will once again govern ourselves by our own institutions, in the context of Canadian law. We will be allowed to make our own mistakes, to savour own victories, to stand on our own feet.
Clause by clause, the Treaty emphasizes self-reliance, personal responsibility and modern education. It also encourages, for the first time, investment in Nisga'a lands and resources, and allows us to pursue meaningful employment from the resources of our own territory, for our own people. It gives us a fighting chance to establish legitimate economic independence, and to prosper in common with our non-aboriginal neighbours in a new and proud Canada.
There is much work to be done. For the past six years, Canada has topped the list of the world's nations on the UN human-development index. Canada may boast that its people enjoy the highest standard of living of any country in the world. But it is also true, according to a study published in October by the Canadian government itself, that the same human-development index, applied to Canada's aboriginal communities, reveals a standard of living that is at Third-World levels. The UN's human-development index measures per-capita income, education levels and life expectancy. Applied to Canadian Indian reserves, these measurements show that our aboriginal communities rank alongside some of the poorest countries in the world, such as Trinidad, Mexico and Brazil.
Also, I cannot pretend that the Nisga'a Treaty does not have its detractors. The commitment by the present governments of both Canada and British Columbia to complete the long-overdue negotiation of treaties with the aboriginal nations west of the Rockies, remains under constant attack by an influential segment of public opinion. But that segment of the settler population is in a minority, and we must hope they are fading away. Time and again, public opinion polls show that most Canadians, and most British Columbians, understand that treaty-making is the right thing to do.
Despite all this, there may be some who wonder why the Nisga'a Treaty is so important.
Let me answer in this way.
The Nisga'a Treaty is the result of a hard-fought compromise. Even though generations of Nisga'a people waited in vain for it, and a generation of Nisga'a men and women has grown old at the negotiating table, still, to the Nisga'a people, a treaty is a sacred instrument.
A treaty represents an understanding between distinct cultures, a covenant that declares respect for different ways of life. And stands as a beacon of hope for indigenous people throughout a divided, fractious world.
We are showing the world that reasonable people can sit down and settle historical wrongs, despite of a legacy of unspeakable pain, suffering and despair. I would hope that the successful conclusion of the Nisga'a Treaty negotiations proves that modern societies can indeed correct the mistakes of the past, and can ensure that the rights of minorities are willingly respected.
It is my sincere hope that far beyond Canada's borders, the Treaty sends a powerful message of hope and reconciliation around the world.
Now, the Nisga'a can go forward with dignity.
Now, after all the suffering and the tribulation since the days of Wilksi Baxhl Mihl, after all the years that have passed, the Nisga'a may say to all the nations of the world, 'We are still here. We have survived.'
And to all the world, we hope our experience is testimony to the faith that justice will ultimately prevail, that those who seek justice will not be turned away wanting, and that the noble principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will continue to nourish us all.
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