00:00:00:23 – 00:00:12:16
Singing (Tla-o-qui-aht Master Carver and Historian Joseph Tutakwisnapšiƛ Martin, Board Director, IISAAK OLAM Foundation)

Woo woo woo ho ya.

čukʷaa haʔuk! (Eli Enns, Tla-o-qui-aht Nation Citizen, Co-Founder and CEO, IISAAK OLAM Foundation)

Whoa whoa ho ya!
(Drumming)

00;00;21;28 – 00;00;49;27
Monica Shore (Executive Director, Co-Founder, IISAAK OLAM Foundation)

Okay, so here we are for čukʷaa haʔuk session number two. And I’m gonna, share with everybody where we left off. In our first episode with Eli, so, in his words: there’s no such thing as one single first contact. Many think of 1492 as that moment of first contact with Europeans. But first contact with Europeans on the West Coast of Vancouver Island didn’t happen until the 1770s, over 280 years later.

00;00;49;29 – 00;01;41;18
That dwarfs even the time of “Canada”. British Columbia is situated quite uniquely within the evolution of North American geopolitics. That is all intertwined with the original Peace and Friendship Treaty at Fort Niagara in 1764.

So the former British colonies of Vancouver Island and New Caledonia, also known as mainland B.C., united to negotiate terms of union with the Dominion of Canada in 1871 – four years after the British North American Act of 1867.

So what happened during those four years? And how is that driving the so-called modern-day treaty process here in Canada? And the unique position that places IPCAs within a British Columbian context? It’s unique in diverse regions across the country – all unique geopolitics. This is a huge, diverse, and dynamic country ecologically, climatically, and legally, geopolitically.

00;01;41;20 – 00;02;04;27
This history is consequential for IPCAs in terms of the progression of decisions that led to where we are today and in terms of our ongoing geopolitical relationship with the United States of America – with Trump and his reinvigoration of manifest Destiny, American exceptionalism, and the drive to make all of North America part of the United States of America, including what we call today the Dominion of Canada.

00;02;04;29 – 00;02;16;08

So, Eli, how do we place IPCAs within this evolving North American geopolitics? And how does British Columbia fit into the story?

00;02;16;10 – 00;02;42;03
Eli Enns (Tla-o-qui-aht Nation Citizen, Co-Founder and CEO, IISAAK OLAM Foundation)

Sweet. Yeah, thank you, Monica. I want to start off by sort of channeling one of the one of the criticisms when we talk about how the Treaty at Fort Niagara is influencing what’s happening in British Columbia today. Sometimes the criticism is, well, “we didn’t sign treaties. That’s way over there. We don’t have anything to do with that.”

00;02;42;06 – 00;03;13;15
Which is a very understandable position. Now, there’s two parts to the answer there. One is when you look at the modern-day treaty process, you have, from the other side of the room, the heckling gallery, people are saying, well, why are we negotiating treaties with natives today? Didn’t we sign all those historically?

00;03;13;15 – 00;03;37;21
Or the other is worse, we conquered them. They lost, you know, like, you know, we’re now we’re in charge. Like, we don’t have to negotiate treaties. Why are we negotiating treaties with Indigenous Peoples today?

So you see the two pressure points here, right. One is coming from the, you know, the indigenous side saying, oh, we, that’s not not applicable to us.

00;03;37;24 – 00;04;20;03
And the other side is from the non-Indigenous residents of British Columbia saying, no, no, don’t treat Indigenous Peoples any special ways.

You know, they’re British Columbians like everybody else. You know, they can stay on their reserves, but the rest of the land is Crown land, right? Do those two, contending pressures. And so when you look at the court logic, in the Supreme courts, you know, first of all, when you look back at the history, in its terms of union, British Columbia said, we want full control of our Crown lands.

00;04;20;05 – 00;05;02;05
They had three major deal breakers because there was a real possibility that British Columbia would join and become part of the United States of America. There was a lot of American business interests. And they were trashing their treaties and renewing wars with the Dakotas. And, it was you know, survival. And, and so there was more loyalists to King George than Americans in British Columbia at the time, or New Caledonia and Vancouver Island colony.

00;05;02;07 – 00;05;29;07
And they came together. They said, well, look, we would rather join the Dominion of Canada, but on three terms. Number one, we want to have full control over our current lands from day one. None of this Northwest Territory stuff.

So if you look back at a map of Canada from 1871, in the Canada Archives, you’ll see that the Northwest Territories, which then was federal Crown land, is huge.

00;05;29;10 – 00;06;14;04
It includes all of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and most of modern-day Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, as we know it today, including Yukon.

And so the negotiators on behalf of B.C. said, we don’t want any of that Northwest Territories, we want full control of our Provincial Crown lands from day one. The second thing is, they said, we want you, the federal government of Canada, to create, construct a railway that goes through the Rocky Mountains and connects our economy and our communities to your economy, in your communities on the other side of the Rocky Mountains.

00;06;14;07 – 00;06;42;00
And then the third deal breaker was, we want you, the federal government, to continue to have responsibility for Indians and lands reserved for Indians. And so within the first and third deal breaker, there was that tension that arose. They wanted full control of their Crown lands, but they didn’t want to have to deal with Indians and lands reserved for Indians.

00;06;42;02 – 00;07;10;02
And so, out of necessity at the time, the Dominion agreed to these three things because they wanted to fortify the 49th parallel as the geopolitical boundary with the United States of America. And, you know, the Russians had been setting up camp along the coast of Alaska, and they were sort of pushing east and south from Russia across the Bering land bridge.

00;07;10;04 – 00;07;34;15
And the Americans were pushing north and west.

So B.C. was a pivotal geopolitical region to secure, what largely, you know, the lion’s share of the continent being Canada. And gave us a Western port as well.
00;07;34;18 – 00;08;12;02
Now, successive provincial governments refused. So the feds came along and they said, okay, you know, the dust was settling on the 49th parallel. And, in 1871, you know, British Columbia joined the union. And, and so there was convoys from Ottawa that came to the West Coast and urged the provincial government leaders in the early years of the Confederation to quickly get past their Treaty obligations.

00;08;12;04 – 00;08;50;26
So what’s hingent in there? So had a responsibility to negotiate treaties. The Crown governments. And where that responsibility arises is because of King George’s Royal Proclamation of 1763. There’s something known as the honour of the Crown. So if King George, if any monarch, at any point in time makes a proclamation, you have to maintain the honour of the Crown by doing good on the promises and commitments made by that monarch.

00;08;50;29 – 00;09;27;04
Now, King George’s Royal Proclamation of 1763 is recognized by constitutional lawyers and scholars as the earliest semblance of Canadian constitutional law. So constitutional law in any country is the supreme law, and so it supersedes these lower jurisdictions, like federal, in this case, federal, and provincial, and municipal jurisdictions. And so that was the crux of the matter.

00;09;27;04 – 00;09;54;25
And they said, well, we have to maintain the honour of the Crown. King George and his Proclamation of 1763 said that he would make treaties with all Indigenous Nations of North America. So, in order for British Columbia to legitimately be a part of Canada, you have to honour the Crown and negotiate treaties with Indigenous Nations in British Columbia.

00;10;27;17 – 00;10;52;14
But successive provincial governments said, thanks, but no thanks. We have full control of our Crown lands, and you can’t tell us what to do. Basically. And so, there was a series of court cases that challenged this in British Columbia. And eventually, the province was dragged kicking and screaming to the negotiation table to say that you have no choice.

00;10;52;17 – 00;11;31;10
There’s a constitutional responsibility to negotiate treaties.

And so, they created a modern-day treaty process that was trying to, as quickly as possible, just settle it and get it over with, kind of a deal. And it has not worked out for them. But this is the crux of the modern-day treaty process. So, in other words, to those who say, well, the Proclamation and the Treaty of Fort Niagara don’t apply to lands here because we didn’t sign on to that agreement.

00;11;31;13 – 00;12;08;00
That’s true. But if we went the other direction, then what you’re looking at is the uncertainty of either Russian control, or the United States – being a part of the United States. So there you get into a situation of a lesser of so many evils, and unless we could manage to raise our own military and successfully defend ourselves from the United States, and or the Russians.

00;12;08;03 – 00;12;37;05
So, that was kind of the crux of the matter that our people found themselves in. And so, there was the… James Douglas, he was able to create a series of small treaties, known as the Douglas Treaties. And then Monica also asked me if I could speak a little bit to Treaty 8 in northeastern British Columbia.

00;12;37;08 – 00;13;06;22
So I guess it’s easier to start with Treaty 8. This was…and by the way, just to put this on this, this is still relevant to IPCAs today, I think. I think that’s an assumption I’m making. But I wanted to state it: that we’re resolving these things, these geopolitical frictions and dysfunctions.

We’re still seeking to, you know, the treaty process didn’t help.

00;13;06;26 – 00;14;03;04
It didn’t help resolve in a big way what the tensions were. And so we use Tribal Parks. There’s IPCAs, there’s Salmon Parks. There’s a variety of other jurisdictional innovations that can help us to resolve those, that historical crux that arose out of the terms of Union, of British Columbia with the Dominion of Canada.

So, yeah, going back to the northeast, this bore the last part of the legacy of the wide sweeping settlement of treaties where delegation from the federal Crown would show up, and everyone from the local Nations would be invited. They would sign off on a simple Treaty.

00;14;03;07 – 00;14;30;17
And then that would have implications beyond the scope of those individuals.

And Treaty 8 was one of the last ones. I mean, and it’s sort of evident it’s, I think, evidenced in the number. Just calling it a Treaty 1, Treaty 2, Treaty 3. Like, there’s no narrative there. There’s no compelling story about what that agreement was about.

But the Indigenous Peoples remember. So Treaty 8, as it relates to IPCAs today. Taking it straight out of the mouth of a Dene diplomat and politician, Steven Nitah. Steven Nitah was born and raised on the Land. He was raised by his grandparents. He was a hunter and a fisher and a trapper in his early life.

00;14;59;11 – 00;15;32;24
And only spoke the Dene language until a certain time of his childhood. And later became quite educated in the English language, and he led the negotiation in the establishment of Thaidene Nëné Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area. I believe it is around 26,000km² of land in the Northwest Territories, with a tripartite establishment agreement.

00;15;32;27 – 00;16;14;09
So three parties: tripartite. The federal government, the government of the Northwest Territories, which, by the way, this is a remnant of a vast Northwest Territories federal Crown land. And there’s been this successive process of devolution and decentralization of power and authority.

So literally just in the last couple of years, the government of the Northwest Territories has been receiving federal powers and becoming an independent territory from the federal government, similarly to the Yukon and to Nunavut.

00;16;14;11 – 00;16;44;07
How they became independent, quasi-independent from the federal Crown.

Anyhow, so you go back to the tripartite establishment agreement for their IPCA, and you’ve got the federal Crown, you’ve got the government of the Northwest Territories, and you have the Dene Nation. They created a tripartite establishment agreement for their own IPCA. And the way that Steven Nitah describes that on more than one occasion publicly…

00;16;44;10 – 00;17;14;05
Is that from a Dene perspective in the Treaty 8, they don’t call it Treaty 8 in their history, they call it the Treaty of 1900.

And in the Treaty of 1900, the Dene people agreed to share in the benefits and responsibilities of the Land.

00;17;14;07 – 00;17;40;03
So the Dene people, their recollection – and it wasn’t that long ago, 1900 and what the oral history that was passed down through the generations – is that they did not cede and surrender their land. They agreed to live in peace and friendship and to share in the benefits and the responsibilities of the Land.

Responsibilities is a really key point here.

00;17;40;06 – 00;18;25;17
Many Elders have focused on that. Having a rights-based conversation is often adversarial. It can be divisive. In fact, it has a high tendency to become divisive. Even if it’s politely divisive.

Responsibilities-based conversation is more conducive to good relations. But if you don’t have any responsibility in your own home and you only receive rights from the landlord, then you’re becoming, you’re disempowered in that environment.

00;18;25;20 – 00;19;01;21
This is what the old folks talk about, anyways. And so, Nitah said they did not sit and surrender their land. They agreed to live in peace and friendship and to share in the benefits and the responsibilities to the land.

And from their Dene interpretation of the Treaty of 1900, also known as Treaty 8, they, the establishment, you don’t, from their perspective, you don’t make Treaty once. You have to, seasonally and continuously reconnect to that Treaty relationship.

00;19;01;23 – 00;19;34;27
It’s not just one and done. It’s more akin to a marriage. A marriage – you get married once. And you can’t just expect that marriage to go well. You have to continuously recommit and invest in that relationship over time. And from the Dene relationship, perspective, the establishment, the tripartite establishment agreement was a continuation of the Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1900.

00;19;35;00 – 00;20;12;17
And this is a really key point, because what they’re doing is they’re exercising constitutional agency. They recognize fully that the Dene people have their own law, they have their own sovereignty. That’s what was the prerequisite to entering into a Treaty. An international treaty is a treaty among sovereign nations, independent nations. So they have their own law, their own economy, everything. Their own language, their own spirituality, everything.

00;20;12;19 – 00;20;46;18
And then they enter into Treaty with the Canadian government in 1900, which gives them a place in the constitution of the country. So when they established their IPCA, they were exercising their peace and friendship responsibilities. And they were also exercising their constitutional agency in that relationship. So I would invite everybody to read the wording of Treaty 8.

00;20;46;20 – 00;21;23;16
However, let’s put a caveat on there: that the Indigenous interpretations of those Treaties is often very different than what is put onto paper. And the Indigenous interpretations of those peace and friendship Treaties actually has held up in courts of law and has been reaffirmed in the Constitution Act of 1982 – Section 35.

00;21;23;16 – 00;22;00;02
So in that way, here’s like a little bit of an assumption that, a voice I mentioned earlier, the B.C. treaty process didn’t work for everyone. And part of the reason why it didn’t work is that, when the provincial government was preparing to enter into treaty negotiations, they did a referendum to all of the residents of British Columbia who ever wanted to weigh in with a set of questions.

00;22;00;04 – 00;22;39;14
And you can go on to Wikipedia, or it’s probably lives in other places as well. But the questions themselves were unconstitutional, and they’re almost designed to provoke fear and discrimination. And there is some there is some funny wording of it.
And what it did is it put gasoline on fire, threw gasoline on fire among landowners, private landowners in the province who were posed the question should should Treaty negotiations impact private lands?

00;22;39;17 – 00;23;09;09
Well, of course people are going to come out en masse. No, I don’t want what do the natives already get? Everything for free. What now? They want my land? No. And then. So this problematic referendum formed the Treaty mandate for provincial negotiators. And the provincial negotiators held a stronger position in the modern Treaties than the federal negotiators because of the terms of union.

00;23;09;12 – 00;23;33;04
Remember, in the original terms of union, the B.C. negotiators said, we want full control of our Crown lands. So the feds had very little to work with. They couldn’t say, you know, well, we got a bunch of federal Crown land here that we can, you know, you know, give back to you, kind of a deal.

00;23;33;06 – 00;23;48;20
They, the feds mainly came with money and some strategic tactics of negotiating fisheries. Was a part of it for the feds.

00;23;48;22 – 00;24;31;16
Anyhow, so because of these problems and what the provincial negotiators did is they thought they were very clever. They came up with a six-stage, modern-day Treaty process.

And then the province created the B.C. Treaty Commission and then endowed a bunch of money into the B.C. Treaty Commission. So if you, as a First Nation, if you want to have some justice for all these many years of being alienated from your homelands, here’s a route that you can take.

00;24;31;18 – 00;24;59;26
You can sign on to the six-stage Treaty process, and we will lend money to you through the B.C.Treaty Commission. Right there is a conflict of interest. So I’m negotiating with you. I lend money to you so that you can negotiate with me. Now there’s a power dynamic. And this power dynamic played out in real ways because First Nations were becoming more indebted.

00;24;59;29 – 00;25;22;09
They’re becoming frustrated in a six-stage Treaty process that was a cookie-cutter, that didn’t really appeal to the interests of the Nation. It wasn’t responsive. It was like, well, no, we can’t talk. No, you’re in stage two. We can’t talk about that until stage four. We want to see you progress through this process that we’ve created.

00;25;22;11 – 00;25;48;07
It’s really a paternal and disempowering process. And by the way, if you don’t… well, if you don’t get to stage six, you’ll have to pay back all the money that we borrowed to you. So they always have that hammer over your head that you have to pay back the money that you borrowed from the B.C. Treaty Commission.

00;25;48;07 – 00;26;21;19
Now, since then, a lot of that debt has been forgiven because enough people were wise to this, you know, impracticality, and inherent inequity built into this process that they were challenged. And so those Treaty debts were forgiven. But imagine all those years where you were being coerced into signing off on a bad agreement, that this money was always being held over your head.

00;26;21;22 – 00;27;02;01
So now what we decided… now, Terry’s on the call here. Well, we got frustrated in the B.C treaty process, and we decided rather than, you know, do this six-stage process that has been predetermined and is inherently bad faith.

And by the way, I know provincial negotiators now, and I’ve had candid conversations with them, saying that they were instructed to obstruct and slow down Treaty negotiations because there was there was a strategy that was going on behind the scenes…

00;27;02;04 – 00;27;28;01
While you keep them busy talking, we’ll continue to liquidate the natural resources that you’re negotiating over.

There are somewhat of a blockage put in there with the Haida-Taku cases and the Duty to Consult. But if a company can say I’ve consulted, I’ve tried to accommodate these Indigenous Peoples, but they just cannot be satisfied. I’ve done my duty to consult.

00;27;28;03 – 00;27;57;00
And then the province said, well, go ahead. And so all that’s left to you is blockading. And then taking it to the next stage of court. And so what we proposed is that there’s an alternative route to certainty. Because we became quite successful at blockading on the West Coast and winning in court also, by the way, raising money, you have to raise the money to go to court first.

00;27;57;03 – 00;28;41;18
So this is all in the realm of adversarialness. Resolving these historical injustices has been too often left to the courts, where it’s inherently adversarial. And even sometimes court decisions aren’t honoured by governments. And then the other option is political negotiations. But if the game is rigged and the person you’re negotiating with sets all the terms of negotiation, then it’s, you know, not a good solution.

00;28;41;20 – 00;29;37;00
The third option that we chose was to assert our jurisdiction through what we call Tribal Parks. And then to open up the side door and work in a congenial fashion with local governments like Tofino, with the Small Business Association of the Tofino Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, with civil society organizations, with academia.

Even some provincial government agencies like some provincial government agencies worked with our Guardians to provide services to some of the assets that were out in the field. Like changing the toilet paper and making sure the outhouses weren’t getting vandalized or pushed into the lake.

00;29;37;03 – 00;29;57;29
You know, they didn’t have enough staff. The province didn’t have enough staff to get out there. And if we had Guardians with trucks that were already going out there, we actually found some ground for cooperation with some of these provincial governments. Even though we were at odds with the negotiators at, on the other tables, we were at odds with them.

00;29;58;01 – 00;30;33;00
But over here, we could work with the folks on the ground. And it wasn’t always perfect. But the way I would characterize this is an alternative pathway to certainty. And in parallel to that, we look at nation rebuilding. So over the hundred years for us, since 1909, it became more aggressive: the erosion of our government, the erosion of our nationhood.

00;30;33;02 – 00;31;10;13
So while asserting and exercising our constitutional agency to unilaterally create Tribal Parks and then work collaboratively with anyone who wishes to work with us. At the same time, pursue a nation rebuilding strategy, which includes language and culture revitalization, economic diversification, the production of our own energy systems, and food security. A very comprehensive approach to nation rebuilding.

00;31;10;15 – 00;31;44;02
Then, maybe one day, we can come back to the table and negotiate a true nation-to-nation relationship. Once we’re financially independent and we can fund our own negotiators, and we have regained control over our lands and waters through Tribal Parks and decision-making over what does and doesn’t happen.

And by the way, that doesn’t mean that all of the non-Indigenous peoples have to leave our homelands.

00;31;44;02 – 00;32;16;27
In fact, our hereditary chiefs said we are also responsible for the non-Indigenous peoples who live in our homelands. There’s that word ‘responsibility’ again.

So in the Meares Island Tribal Park declaration, it literally says that “We will provide water to the district of Tofino.” Whereas the province of British Columbia had failed in its fiduciary responsibility to its own municipality.

00;32;17;00 – 00;32;51;15
Municipalities are created through acts of legislation by provincial governments. There arises the fiduciary responsibility. The Province of British Columbia issued industrial logging permits to Macmillan Bloedel to clear-cut log Meares Island in the early 1980s, and that included the drinking water supply for the District of Tofino.

So Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht stepped in and we says, no, this is not a tree farm license.

00;32;51;15 – 00;33;23;18
This is Wanajus Hilth-huu-is. This is a Tribal Park. And in the writing and the detail of that Tribal Park, we say that we will be the ones that take responsibility for the provision of water to the District of Tofino and all of its guests.

Now, even we could have, anyways, not to get into all the details, but the main point there is that exercising responsibility goes hand in hand with exercising jurisdiction.

00;33;23;20 – 00;33;59;01
If you claim to have ultimate authority in the land, then you’re also ultimately responsible.

And so the disempowerment of Indigenous Peoples to become dependent on welfare, to be dependent on handouts – that’s how you take control over somebody. You make them dependent on you, and then you can control their life. And, they don’t take responsibilities. They’re given rights or recognized rights.

00;33;59;03 – 00;34;32;28
Well, we don’t see that in natural law. If you observe nature, and that’s what iisaak is all about – observing nature. We don’t see that kind of relationship in natural law, where one creature is given rights. We all have a role to play – roles and responsibilities in the world that we share.

And so that’s what, you know, when I hear Moses talk about it as simply as he can put it, he says, “This is a place where we can be who we are.”

00;34;33;00 – 00;35;08;02
I’ve heard him say that. I’ve heard Myles Richardson say that, I’ve said others,”What do we want? We want to be who we are.”

And, the Indian Act and residential schools and all of these genocidal policies have tried to take that away from us. So Tribal Parks is a way of taking back control over our own lives, our self-determination, and taking responsibility for clean air, clean water – not only for ourselves, but everybody who lives and resides within our homelands and the ones who are not yet born.
00;35;08;04 – 00;35;44;24
So this is, it’s hard to stick to just the legal aspect of it because, the legal – the unfolding of the legal relationships between Crown and Indigenous Peoples unfold through human interactions. They’ve been unfolding through human interactions for so long. And so the opportunity that IPCAs presents itself in a land of uncertainty.

00;35;44;27 – 00;36;17;13
No geopolitical region of Canada is more uncertain than Canada, sorry, than British Columbia. British Columbia has the most uncertainty.

And that’s an important word. You might have heard that word flying around in the media nowadays. In terms of the trade war, the so-called trade war and the tariffs, and the crashing of the stock market, consumer confidence going down. The name of the game is always comes back to certainty.

00;36;17;16 – 00;36;57;09
If we can have some certainty, then we have something to build on. And so you can establish certainty ideally through court, which is adversarial, or through negotiations, which is also adversarial. The third option is through IPCAs where we actually focus on our shared responsibilities. And we welcome private sector, who ethical entrepreneurs, ethical investors, philanthropists, academia, you know, civil society, will work, and local governments.

00;36;57;12 – 00;37;31;05
I really do believe that the future of this work will focus more on collaboration between local governments and Indigenous Nations. And I want to be clear, that doesn’t mean I propose that Indigenous Nations become municipalities. I do not propose that whatsoever. But what I’m observing in the evolution of Canadian geopolitics is that municipalities are often being neglected by provinces.

00;37;31;08 – 00;38;09;18
Look at what happened in Ontario with Doug Ford when Doug Ford first took power: his late brother, Rob Ford, was the mayor of Toronto. Rob was in conflict with certain municipal officials and electives. And so Doug went in and gerrymandered the city and cut out a bunch of seats – all the seats that bothered his late brother. And the Toronto, the Mayor and Council of Toronto took the province of Ontario to court on a charter rights violation.

00;38;09;21 – 00;38;39;27
And they were successful in doing that. They successfully demonstrated how Doug Ford and the Ontario government had violated the charter rights of Torontonians. But there’s something called the ‘notwithstanding clause’ that is usually only used in rare exceptions. But Doug pushed the notwithstanding clause without even batting an eye. So, in other words, he could move right around that court decision, and his gerrymandering was stayed up.

00;38;40;00 – 00;38;57;29
So there you have a conflict between a major city and a province.

In Alberta, under what’s his name. Not this not Daniel Smith, but the one for, his name will come to me.

00;38;58;01 – 00;39;29;10
He was unpopular during the pandemic because a lot of people felt like he was following malpractice.

But anyways, the city of Calgary and Edmonton stood up to him. And I see the trend happening. The district of Tofino, sitting alongside Tribal Parks against the mining, at the exploratory drilling at Tranquil Creek, the small business community aligning themselves with us.

00;39;29;12 – 00;40;09;16
That’s strength in the face of provinces that fail to uphold their fiduciary responsibility to their own children.

I’ll just, I’ll just close off by saying that, there is a trend in Canadian politics, known, you know, like I mentioned earlier, devolution. And this is where provinces have slowly gained jurisdiction in power away. So there’s decentralization and devolution. And so provincial powers have gone up and the federal government has become weaker.

00;40;09;18 – 00;40;50;29
And when Canada was first created, there was a high – there was more power concentrated in Ottawa. Now that’s been slowly changing over 100 plus years, 150 plus years. And I see a natural progression of that to big cities and local governments taking more responsibility away from provinces. And I think if Indigenous Nations can work collaboratively with municipalities and local governments, we can support one another.

00;40;51;02 – 00;41;17;25
And that’s where true reconciliation can happen. True reconciliation doesn’t happen, really, with provinces in my mind, or federal government even. True reconciliation happens at the watershed level. People who have to live with each other, people who see each other at the co-op grocery store, or the local bank, or the post office, you know, people whose kids grew up playing baseball together.

00;41;17;27 – 00;42;07;19
That’s where true reconciliation can happen. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I think that’s where it will have wherewithal. And IPCAs can be a model to empower that.

I guess, where we could go from there is actually looking into some examples of how this third option – maybe delve a little bit more into certainty, economic certainty, and human security and the interplay between economic certainty and human security. Because Canada has also signed on to international agreements to ensure that the human security of its domestic populations.

00;42;07;25 – 00;42;39;04
And, I would argue, unpolluted access to clean drinking water supply is a fundamental prerequisite of human security as it falls within the parameters of environmental security.

So maybe that would be a nice place to go next. Let’s explore: what does the concept of human security mean? What does the concept of economic certainty mean? And how can IPCAs assist in realizing those two things?

00:42:39:06 – 00:42:46:27
Singing (Tla-o-qui-aht Master Carver and Historian Joseph Tutakwisnapšiƛ Martin, Board Director, IISAAK OLAM Foundation)

Woo woo woo ho.

00:42:47:00 – 00:42:51:03
čukʷaa haʔuk! (Eli Enns, Tla-o-qui-aht Nation Citizen, Co-Founder and CEO, IISAAK OLAM Foundation)