Who Did the Petroglyph?

The proposed sea otter kill is solely for the purpose of "status" or pandering to swollen egos of petty tribal chieftains in an effort to resurrect their vainglorious illusions about life before legislated individual rights and freedoms, rule of the law, democracy, endangered species legislation and other concepts alien to their pre-contact culture.

The residential school issue is settled. For all its faults it was modeled after the British private school system which was considered a privilege to attend. If it was so bad, why do national FN leaders like Phil Fontaine send their sons to a Catholic boarding school in Winnipeg?

On the subject of Europeans predating present-day FNs in BC, you may be interested in reading the following editorial (posted separately due to length) from the Bridge River Lillooet News.

Who did the Petroglyph?

This week marks the anniversary of the 1911 Declaration of the Lillooet Tribe and every year members of the St’at’imc Nation gather to remember it. “We have always lived in our country,” it states with certainty. “Our ancestors were in possession of our country centuries before the whites ever came.”

On the surface, it would seem absurd to challenge this but in June of 1996, a mountain biker skidded off a patch of wet moss on a hill near Mount Currie and collided with the rock beneath it, damaging his bike in the crash. He set a wrench down on the rock and was astonished to see a deeply incised eye staring back at him. Excitedly, he started stripping the moss-covered granite surface until he’d revealed an oversize humanoid petroglyph with a mouth that looked “like a spaceship.”

He took the news of his discovery to the Mount Currie Band office and, initially, the Lil’wat were as amazed as he was. Their tradition is of pictographs, rock paintings, and not petroglyphs, rock carvings, so it represented an unprecedented find in their territory. They even sent out a press release and the event was documented in the Whistler Question but after consultation with some Elders, the Band requested there be no further publicity. They named it a sacred site and feared it would be defaced or otherwise disrespected. The mountain bike trail was rerouted and though many in the Pemberton Valley are aware of the petroglyph’s existence, few have ever seen it or any image of it. Although rock carvings cannot be carbon dated, similar petroglyhs near Nanaimo are estimated to be 10,000 years old.

One month after the discovery of the Mount Currie petroglyph, two college students were sneaking into a hydroplane race when one of them stumbled over an ancient human skull half-buried in the Columbia riverbed. It made headlines around the world when the local coroner determined that the 9000 year old human remains were caucasoid rather than amerindian in origin and Kennewick Man became an international celebrity when facial reconstruction turned him into a prehistoric Jean Luc Picard.

The discovery also brought attention to numerous other finds of ancient skeletal remains, some with blonde and red hair, of an ancient race whose habitation of North America appears to predate modern First Nations. The Paiutes even have a legend of exterminating a white, red-headed enemy race.

Who did the Petroglyph? cont.

The petroglyph is on private land already proposed for subdivision with its immediate location sliced off and offered to the Lil’wat Nation. However, an online collection of the Pemberton Museum on the theme of UFO sightings contains testimony that the petroglyph is “not part of our First Nation culture” but may be “part of the aliens” as strange lights and burn marks were observed near its location.

Aliens did the petroglyph? Probably not, but it seems more accepable to say that rather than, in the words of a Skatin Elder, that it was done by “the people who were here before us.”

It's ALL About Getting Away With It

Whatever song & dance accompanied by violin music, some lawyer can conjure up to get his client off. That's what this story REALLY is.
IT IS AND ALWAYS WAS ABOUT MONEY!! Not anything about any of the other drivel. It was kill, grab, run and sell.

Skookum1 should be here

explaining these things.

Mr Moderator: couldn't you arrange for him to return to his specialty of commenting on First Nations history in
B.C.?

Some comments on First Nations history.

"I suppose many native people have learnt from the white man . . . and realized that one can ignore honour and ethics in one's actions if there is enough money in it!"

Why is it assumed that any negative values held by native cultures were learned from the white man.

This is from Philip Drucker's essential Cutures of the North Pacific Coast:

"Distinctive of North Pacific Coast culture is the inclusion of natural resources as items of wealth - the foodstuffs, the materials for dress, shelter, and transport, and the places from which these things were obtained. Each group regarded the areas it utilized as the exclusive property of the group."

Human labor, too, was regarded asa a resource to a certain extent . . . part of the value set on slaves, who themselves formed a category of wealth goods, derived from the labor they performed."

The prime purpose of Indian wealth was display and ostentatious consumption to demonstrate prosperity and prestige, thus enhancing the local group's prestige."

"Slaves were "sold," that is bartered, for other forms of riches (but) Profits were accumulated for the sole purpose of publicly giving them away or destroying them, to prove to envious or reluctantly admiring neighbours that the group was rich enough to be distainful of vast wealth."

"In the Indian view slaves were not members of the society but were outsiders, reduced to the level of chattels."

"Slavery was regarded as shameful to the hapless captive and his people because he had been reduced to the level of chattel, a thing of less than human status. There was no implication of that cowardice or stupidity or other defects of character were involved, because usually only women and children, who were not expected to defend themselves against armed warriors, were taken as slaves. Adult males who by fortunes of war were captured alive usually were mercilessly butchered on the war party's return home."

"Possession of slaves was prestigeful because since it implied success at war or great wealth; to sacrifice a slave on a formal occasion demonstrated a splendid disregard of wealth that only the richest and mightiest could indulge."

" . . . with the coming of the missionaries (slaves) were set free. Their descendants live among former owners to this day, but slave origin is told only in whispered confidence or in anger, for the feeling persists that being a slave was shameful."

Hmm . . . hereditary privilege, ostentatious displays of wealth & plunder, murder, kidnapping, slavery and human sacrifice. Is this some of the traditional native culture the Canadian taxpayer is being milked to resurrect?

Slavery

In his landmark and pro-aboriginal book, Indians of the Americas, (1947, I believe), John Collier noted that natives were not used as slaves in the early days of colonization beause the shame of being made a slave was so great that not even the threat of death could make them work.

Warriors taken in battle were either killed on the spot or brought back to be ritually tortured to death. This latter was considered an honor, a chance for the Warrior to demonstrate his bravery even in the face of certain death.

In his book Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America (1997), Leland Donald notes that if a slave was somehow returned to his / her natal tribe, it could be only as a slave, for once a slave, always a slave, as was his / her descendants.

This was a necessary part of a rigid hierarchical system in which escape for the slave was an exercise in futility.

The opprobrium of slavery lingers still, for even today being called "son of a slave" is the supreme insult.

Re-living the past

"Hmm . . . hereditary privilege, ostentatious displays of wealth & plunder, murder, kidnapping, slavery and human sacrifice. Is this some of the traditional native culture the Canadian taxpayer is being milked to resurrect?"

Resurrect? All those things are thriving just fine under the white man's law thanxverymuch.

Use one man's misdeeds as emblematic of a whole culture and you run the risk of having the same erroneous process done to you. If you're ready to have James Joseph stand in for all First Nations, then be prepared to have Bernie Madoff and Robert Pickton be the representatives of white culture. Death and money, those are our favorite things.

Stump's visible minority argument

Point made and would be given, Stump, if for the last 30 years FNs had not been claiming these failings to be the exclusive traits of the white man, while at the same time painting themselves as the simon-pure victims.

If and only when those FNs who disapprove of James Joseph's actions can feel free to unreservedly voice that opinion, will you be free to make yours.

I'm tired of race. Let's all

I'm tired of race. Let's all be humans with the same rights and responsibilities.

"Point made and would be

"Point made and would be given, Stump, if for the last 30 years FNs had not been claiming these failings to be the exclusive traits of the white man, while at the same time painting themselves as the simon-pure victims."

It's a bit of a stretch to lump so many people under one banner and claim they all subscribe to the same group-think.

Blaming others is a grand tradition in our culture. (Some) First Nations people have embraced it. First Nations people will always be condemned, whether they adopt our ways or stick to their old traditions, simply because they are a not-so-subtle-reminder that we live on stolen land and destroyed cultures to advance our own way of life.

History, victors. We all know the drill.

It seems as what happens so

It seems as what happens so often on this site that the story line fades rather quickly. So I guess I'm no better when I tell us a little true story of an event I saw at a treaty meeting. A fellow stood up and talked about his time in residential schools( this is around the time , money was to be given out for those damaged) He shed tears, and had some of doing the same. Turns out he had never been in residential school but saw a chance to make some bucks so invented a history for himself. I figure he wasn't alone as the cops were checking the stories.
The guy suppliying eagle feathers outside the law can say what he wants, he knew what he was doing and must admit it. I'm sure many other Indians arn't too pleased by the eagle feather salesman.

That's a pretty flakey battleground, Stump

I feel not the tiniest bit of guilt for my forefathers having treated Canadian aboriginals in the manner they did, since they followed the ethics of conquest common to all peoples of the world at that time, including those of aboriginals.

OTOH, I feel considerable pride that that alone among all cultures, we have expended vast sums of money trying to drag them away from cultural traditions that were overnight rendered counterproductive, and which still remain so.

Again OTOH, I do feel a sense of shame for our treatment of the Japanese and the Doukhobours, when we deliberately and hypocritically set aside our recently developed concern for human rights.

If we're going to cherry-pick what we feel guilty about, we had better find a better reason than "destroying a culture", for it was a dead duck the moment we stepped ashore, since there is NO minority culture anywhere and throughout time that has survived intact during such a drastic change - particularily to its money (value) system.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Stump you are living in a fantasy if you think North American Indians have not embraced the modern world in all it's bling. It's not anything specific to race anymore.

Stolen land? Nobody owns the earth. At least that's what Indians believed.

Why should I feel guilty? My father's family came to this continent as Spanish galley slaves who were marooned off the Carolina Coast by Sir Francis Drake. I feel no shame over this whatsoever nor do I think that I should henceforth pledge my life to the local Indian chief.

My mother's family didn't leave their homeland voluntarily either. It was that, murder or the GULAG,

I agree with moonbug. We all just need to be human beings now. I didn't come here from anywhere. I was born here and that, according to the creator's law, makes this my home and native land.

The situation that is evolving in rural BC is already creating a hugely unjust situation for young people. Why should they have to pay for the way BC was 150 when, as a matter of historic necessity, Douglas signed the declaration of BC as a British crown colony with the Lytton Chief.

What exactly do people think is going happen by turning control of crown lands and resources back over to a string of family cliques, for the purpose of making them easier pickings for multinationals with the rest of us just shunted aside, non-persons in our own land.

We're about to head a long way down a rocky road.

I LOLed

"What exactly do people think is going happen by turning control of crown lands and resources back over to a string of family cliques, for the purpose of making them easier pickings for multinationals with the rest of us just shunted aside, non-persons in our own land."

I'll put aside the fact that you Janie (and ME2) aren't reading what I wrote, but rather inferring a certain p.o.v. and bringing a whole host of other things that aren't relevant to the discussion to the table, like where your parents came from or how they got here.

Anyway, your quote above is quite humorous to me. If you're really seeking an answer to your rhetorical question, you can find out what happens to people when they become non-persons in their own land by observing colonial history. First Nations people could simply answer with a 'been there, done that.'

"I feel not the tiniest bit

"I feel not the tiniest bit of guilt for my forefathers having treated Canadian aboriginals in the manner they did, since they followed the ethics of conquest common to all peoples of the world at that time, including those of aboriginals."

The explorers of the time 'came in peace' ostensibly to trade and explore 'new' worlds. That's not usually a precursor to attempting conquest.

The treatment of Doukhobors or the Japanese is irrelevant to the discussion.

error of fact

"Stolen land? Nobody owns the earth. At least that's what Indians believed."

Notwithstanding the fact that Christians hold the same view, as do most religions, the reality is that for the First Nations peoples of the time, they had traditional territories and fought border skirmishes with their neighbors, etc. Clearly there was some apportioning of land and resources going on.

One only need look south of the border to the Indian Wars to see that explorers and travellers were by and large treated peaceably by the bands and tribes whose land was being traversed. It wasn't until settlers entered the mix that the conflict escalated into an attempt at genocide.

Your comment about modern bling is also irrelevant. Must one live in the stone age to be a 'real' native? All cultures evolve and advance and incorporate new technologies into their world. The Amish use cel phones, for example. Using that kind of reasoning, indigenous South Americans shouldn't be allowed use of the wheel since they didn't pre-contact, and Scandinavians shouldn't be allowed to have boats with keels, since the Vikings didn't either.

No sympathy

I grew up in the area near where the eagle carcasses were found and still know many people there. The eagle killings were traumatic to the whole community, natives and non-natives.

Every human being has many sides to them, and if you look deeply into the life of any criminal, you can usually discover some good, as well as a troubled past that has driven them to do harm.

James Joseph seems to have plenty of excuses and little remorse or shame. I hope he is punished and made an example to others.

to clarify my point

"One only need look south of the border to the Indian Wars to see that explorers and travellers were by and large treated peaceably by the bands and tribes whose land was being traversed. It wasn't until settlers entered the mix that the conflict escalated into an attempt at genocide."

I should have mentioned also that this says to me that there was clearly some sense of territorial 'ownership' at play.

cars, smokes, and women

"I like what ME2 has to say. I consider myself very sympathetic to First Nations people, but perhaps it is time their "traditional" practices went the way of some of the European's "traditional" practices, such as driving gas-guzzlers, smoking tobacco and considering women as chattel."

driving gas-guzzlers is pretty much a N. American practice. Europe got tobacco from the First Nations, and the practice of 'woman as chattel' is far too widespread to be considered a "European' thing only.

Fines/Jail for both

If the Government was really serious about stopping illegal trade/sales of any animal parts they would impose huge fines and jail on both the seller and buyer.

Now there is an allowed legal kill or "cull of up to 20 at risk sea otters a year by the Nuu-chah-nulth.
Does anyone really beleive that the Nuu-chah-nulth will stop at 20 sea otters?

Perhaps the government needed to look at Zimbabwe's legal cull of elephants before allowing this.
The "legal" and poached Ivory is sold-no problem finding buyers. The buyers don't care if it is "legal" or not. They will buy banana shaped tusks from baby elephants.
These poachers and buyers have no conscience.

This is a dirty business and the consequences for selling and buying must be so severe that folks like James Joseph, whatever his problems, do not consider it as a way of getting "easy money".

The Zimbabwification of British Columbia

Just quickly, Stump you are wrong. The Indian peoples of North America had no concept for the private ownership of land prior to the coming of the colonists.

Cathy Narcisse clarifies this point in a 2007 article in the St’at’imc Runner when she stated that the reason the Chiefs used this term in 1911 was because they had “already been influenced (by) colonialism and (the) coming of Confederation” and also because they “came to believe (in) using the English terminology as a way to get their message across.”

You are also wrong that BC was conquered. It became a crown colony 150 years when the Douglas Treaty was signed with First Nations representatives in Lytton.

And there have already been demonstrations wherein First Nations people demand that the Douglas Treaty be honoured:
http://calendar.wildernesscommittee.org/view_entry.php?id=2273&date=20071015

Do you care about British Columbia and its history?

I think almost everyone who participates in The Tyee's discussions, as well as most of those who read The Tyee, do care about B.C. and its history.

So I ask each of you to contact David Beers and ask him to welcome Skookum1 back here.

That's all. Just get off the high horse, David, extend a hand, and welcome this valuable historian back. Here's the latest example of what The Tyee has been missing:

Skookum1 wrote:
While I agree overall with the sentiments in Janie Jones' post this has to be corrected:

"You are also wrong that BC was conquered. It became a crown colony 150 years when the Douglas Treaty was signed with First Nations representatives in Lytton."

The Douglas Treaties - plural - had nothing to do with the treaty signed at Lytton at the end of the Fraser Canyon War. They applied to various tribes of the Victoria area and one of the tribes in the Nanaimo area, and also to the Kwiakah and Kwagyewlth at Fort Rupert, and were signed in 1850 as part of the making of the Colony of Vancouver Island, not the Colony of British Columbia, which was not formed until 1858. Here are some of their texts:

http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/al/hts/tgu/pubs/trtydg/trtydg-eng.asp

The treaty signed at Lytton is known as the Snyder Treaty and there are no extant copies and its content is unknown; if the Lyttons have an oral tradition about what was in it, I've never heard its terms nor know where it was published. It was reached between the chiefs of the Nlaka'pamux and allied tribes, who had gathered at Lytton to meet the companies of miners, and Captain Synder of the Pike Guards and John Centras of the Austrian Company, who had journeyed up the canyon in force in response to the Nlaka'pamux onslaught which had driven most miners out of the canyon south to Spuzzum and Yale. Snyder presented a copy to Governor Douglas upon his arrival at Lytton but there is no trace of it in government records; the theory goes that Douglas could not tolerate a treaty between native peoples and American volunteers (and "Austrian" ones - the Austrian company was formed of German and French mercenaries who had fought in Nicaragua and were among the miners who had come up from California) and so destroyed the treaty rather than have it remain in existence, which would call into question British sovereignty. He had already declared the Colony of British Columbia on his way up the Fraser in a stop at Fort Langley, so as to pre-empt and intimidate the Americans from even THINKING about declaring a US territory, as the mainland was not yet incorporated although it had been in the British sphere since the Oregon Treaty of 1846 when previous American claims had been limited south of the 49th Parallel.

[Continued ... ]

Skookum1 continued ...

Prior to that, Douglas HAD made various chiefs into justices, with the mandate to enforce British law on the Queen's behalf. These included Kowpelst of Spuzzum and Nicola at Kamloops (who stood aside from the war and stayed neutral, though had the war escalated it is believed Nicola would have joined in as well) in addition to Spintlum (CxpentEm), who was the presiding chief of the Lytton Nlaka'pamux that Snyder and Centras met with as already mentioned. The chiefs of the Stl'atl'imx also stood aside from the war (an alliance with the Nlaka'pamux and the allied Shuswap and others was a no-go, as this same alliance had ravaged and occupied the Lillooet Country only a generation before); except for a few incidents along Seton Lake, overall the Stl'atl'imx welcomed the miners and were as a result of this, and because of their neutrality during the war, were known as the "Friendly Indians"; whereas the Nlaka'pamux had already earned the name of the Knife Indians (their alternate name, Couteau, is simply French for "knife"). On the other hand, during the mass migration of miners via the Douglas Road through Pemberton and the Lakes to Lillooet, they had protested loudly when their large village and food-plots in the Short Portage (renamed Seton Portage in 1958) were ripped up and overturned in a search for placer deposits (this same ground is central to the text of the Lillooet Declaration's claims).

So bringing up the Douglas Treaties in reference to the Stl'atl'imx, and especially the Snyder Treaty, which appears to be what Janie Jones is talking about, is just "not on". There is no connection; the terms of the Snyder Treaty were reached without Stl'atl'imx participation, although it's likely the Lytton chief had in it the usual Nlaka'pamux claim that Lillooet (i.e. today's Lillooet, not "Old Lillooet", which is Mt Currie aka Lil'wat) was one of the four "corner posts" of his domain (the others being Ashcroft, Merritt/Nicola and Spuzzum), as described in Cole Harris' "The Resettlement of British Columbia".

Again, I support the line of argument that Janie Jones is presenting; but she's wrong about any of these treaties having to do with the creation of the Colony of BC in 1858; the Snyder Treaty was reached before either the Americans/"Austrians" and the Nlaka'pamux even knew about Douglas' declaration of a Mainland Colony, and the Douglas Treaties were old news by then....

Skookum1

BC Mary....

..did Skookum1 get "banned"? If so-how long ago?

Enough BS

I am just sick and tired of all this privilege crap!

So someones grandfather was camping in a remote area, while hunting for instance: big deal, nomads travel all over, but that does not mean they can claim every overnight spot as some heritage site.

Most countries in the world have been invaded and occupied at least once, but borders and rights do not reflect that today!

If they did my ancestors could claim half of Europe as their own; yeah I come from viking stock.

fine, but important points

"Just quickly, Stump you are wrong. The Indian peoples of North America had no concept for the private ownership of land prior to the coming of the colonists."

I didn't say anything about private ownership of land. I think you've jumped to a conclusion that's wrong. Clearly various groups had their own territories. The land may not have been 'privately' owned in the way we know it, but there were (seems to me) borders and public stewardship in the exact same way that Canada and the U.S. have a border between them land that belongs to no-one/everyone.

Alive:

Coastal natives weren't nomads. Even if they were, by your argument, the vast grain farms of the Prairies, the cattle ranches of Texas or Australian sheep stations would all be land up for grabs simply because someone didn't cover it all in buildings.

oops

Canada and the U.S. have a border between them AND land that belongs to no-one/everyone.

Bring back Skookum1

Thank you BC Mary for posting Skookum1's excellent account of the early formation of the colony of British Columbia. I knew I was off the mark when I made that statement but did not have the time to do any further research.

And now we have the Skookum1 definitive version.

However, to the letter of exising law or not, by an agent of the crown, BC was peacefully declared a British colony 150 years ago and it has functioned and been interantionally recognized from that point ever since and not as an American colony in the wake of a long and bloody war.

My reference to the St'atl'imx, however, was only in relation to citing a sovereignist newspaper published by a white woman for the St'at'imx chief's council and in fact, it has been my oberservation that much of what has happened regarding aboriginal claims to BC has been driven not by the native people themselves but by their (largely female) tshama champions as band membership can be gained by anyone of any race from anywhere by marriage.

At this point its all moot. There are actually bigger fish to fry. WW3 has already started and when it's over, there is only going to be one race living in British Columbia and they are going to called survivors.

Stump

"we live on stolen land and destroyed cultures to advance our own way of life."

I'm tired of the "stolen land" bollucks. I don't own any land, so it is rather disingenuous to suggest that I stole the land I don't own - and I have never "destroyed cultures" in my entire life.

Who did it? Not me. Stop the blame! Leave history in the past! Focus on today and the social problems we face - we all face, no matter what colour our skin is or who our ancestors were.

Most of our ancestors were peasants of one sort or another and all of us had at least a few ancestors who were oppressed.

However, instead of trying to right that past wrong, or blame our current failures on it, we ought to learn from the oppression by not advancing it.

the past

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

Part of being a productive member of society is addressing problems you had no part in creating. The social problems First Nations face (disproportionately) are in many ways a direct result of past practices towards them.

Well said, Stump.

Well said, Stump.

Whine, sniff, snivel.

Past injustice cannot be addressed by creating present and future injustice.

Please outline these present

Please outline these present and future injustices Janie. I don't see any.

How would you feel if I 'discovered' your house, said I was just here to visit, then invited all my friends to come over to your house, take over the place, planted a Stumpikistan flag in your front yard and told you that you were to confine yourself to the bathroom while I held a garage sale and sold all your stuff? D'ya think you might want redress, no matter how many years passed?

Nobody is whining, sniffing, or sniveling. Just pointing out that we knew it was wrong then, we know it's still wrong now.

Caught

But Janie Jones when you write:

Quote:

"The residential school issue is settled. For all its faults it was modeled after the British private school system which was considered a privilege to attend. If it was so bad, why do national FN leaders like Phil Fontaine send their sons to a Catholic boarding school in Winnipeg?"

I would add: but perhaps not quite so easily and quickly "settled".

Instead, still very disturbing memories remain for the children, now adults, who experienced that abuse. The paperwork of legalities in addressing issues is just a first step. When it comes to our deepest human feelings, how abuse makes you feel inside, the road that must be travelled towards personal address is a much harder and more individual one.

Phil Fontaine's statement to the pope:

http://www.straight.com/article-216494/phil-fontaine%3F%3Fs-statement-pope-benedict-residential-schools-apology

What a sad and complicated entreaty and very revealing... especially of the ever present and controlling forces of many religions and their manipulation of both hope and despair. Past and present day.

For the record, Mr. Fontaine is not saying this... I am...but in my opinion, his words reflect a man ( and a culture) caught by a catch-22 of "intervening" forces...all those forces acting, "supposedly", for the good of First Nations. Mr. Fontaine obviously still believes... and that again is his individual choice.

Just as Mr. Joseph's disturbing actions above are his alone and do not reflect those of all First Nations.

Alive..

“If they did my ancestors could claim half of Europe as their own; yeah I come from viking stock.”

And, hey, there’s more, to quote one of our popular TV personalities…Try to check out this site, and you will see how REALLY old Norse presence in North America may be. ..

http://www.frozentrail.org/
including the site referenced there:

http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/fell2.htm

stump

Do we though? We're still pillaging away.

moonbug

If you use auto fuel that was processed from oil pumped out of the ground in Canada, then you are helping to "destroy cultures"..............

@RickW

good point!

Stump

Marvelous posts; I especially liked this: "Part of being a productive member of society is addressing problems you had no part in creating."

Thanks for the pleasure.

Bleed on, Stump

'Quote:

Nobody is whining, sniffing, or sniveling. Just pointing out that we knew it was wrong then, we know it's still wrong now."

Oh? So please tell us, Stump, just WHO "knew it was wrong then"? - when ALL cultures and nations at that time - and up to that time - believed that adding to territory through conquest was a normal and natural event.

It was a traditional practice of aboriginals at that time as well, but I have yet to hear even one of you guys say THAT practice was wrong.

And while you are at it, please tell us of ANY aboriginal culture, ANYWHERE, that has sought to improve the condition of a conquered tribe.

What's to learn from the past?

Not to create two different classes of people within one society and expect that it will work for everyone.

I do not see Indian people as a problem. I live and work with them and they mostly seem pretty happy to me. In comparison to the way their ancestors were living when us foreigners came, really, how can their lives get any better?

They certainly all have great teeth.

It's true that abuse has left serious scars but from what I understand child abuse is still a big problem on reserves and that is the ugly issue that gets swept behind the focus on residential school abuse of the past.

Non-aboriginal children were also victims of abuse in school situations and I know some who were hugely damaged by it. How they have dealt with it has varied from individual to individual but alcoholism and drug abuse has mostly entered the mix and then that becomes the problem.

A lot of us have suffered damage from social institutions of the past (i.e. the practice of taking newborns from underage and unwed mothers for closed record adoption) and secretly nurse gnawing wounds all the while being productive members of society.

I went to school in rural BC in the 1960s and, by that time, the local Indian kids, my friends and neighbours, went to the same schools as everybody else.

In the late sixties small town social barriers broke down during the acid revolution and everybody started wearing their hair long and mixing it up pretty good.

Most small towns in BC are fully integrated now and it is now enormously unfair to endow one race at the expense of everyone else. Child poverty is a huge issue in BC yet the funding for non-aboriginal children is being cut but that's justice right?

The people of British Columbia have voted for resource revenue sharing with the bands and that means they are going to get rich while everyone else loses any right to influence or benefit from the wide open gold rush now on for formerly public but now tribal assets because in order to get revenue those resources need to be developed.

And fortunately the new FN partners are exempt from paying and fuel er consumption taxes. Taken a drive through a reserve lately? You might just run into an industrial compound.

RickW

I have never driven a car. That said, we all, including First Nations people, in Canada use fuel one way or another. There isn't much choice in it.

I can't afford to grow my own food, I haven't got any land and I need to work 9-5, so not enough time to raise everything I need to eat even if I had the land and the knowledge...

So it is really a moot point. We have to live, it is an imperative. Unless you are suggesting I commit suicide to avoid "destroying" cultures.

Stump

"Part of being a productive member of society is addressing problems you had no part in creating. The social problems First Nations face (disproportionately) are in many ways a direct result of past practices towards them."

I address other folks' problems almost every day. It is my passion.

I understand that there are echoes of the past in today's problems. I don't deny it.

However, creating new wrongs or excusing new wrongs because of those past actions, or deflecting the blame for those new wrongs on the descendants of supposed past villains (and assuming a person is descended from a villain because of their skin colour) helps no one.

Yes, First Nations people are more likely to have poor social outcomes than many other folks, but the problems they face when those poor social outcomes occur are pretty much the same problems anyone of any "race" faces in those situations.

So my solution is to work on the social problems, not the "race" or on trying to make up for something that happened to one's ancestors.

I fully support the residential school reparations. Anyone who directly had something inflicted upon them by our current government should be compensated. I don't think the money did many people one lick of good, but, heck, it needed to be addressed.

I don't care what "race" a human belongs to. I don't want to see them suffer. I want to design a caring society that has greater respect for the earth and for the place of human life on the earth.

It can't be done by pandering to "race" and living in the past. Decisions about the land need to be made with the best interest of the world's life supporting capacity in mind.

That should be the only criteria for making decisions about the land. Because without the life supporting capacity of the land, we all die. Our grandchildren will have no future. Social outcomes won't matter.

moonbug

No -- you simply have to recognize that what you (and I, and 99.9% of citizens) take for granted is the continued pillaging of resources that don't belong to us. Granted that much of these resources are "needed", the least we could do is pay the appropriate parties for the privilege.

Either that, or admit that we are stealing them through "right of conquest" -- which inevitably leads to the conclusion that conquest is acceptable.

Or -- we can continue to live in hypocrisy.

unbelievable

As a Metie person (1/2 CREE NATION) I am so disgusted with all the usual rhetoric, yes terrible things have been done regarding schools and just pure racism against first nations believe me I can attest to that, however what the HELL has that got to do with KILLING EAGLES for MONEY
it is about time all NATIVES stood up to condemn this terrible CRIME. I would also add that at the same time speak out against the decimation of YOUR/OUR WILD SALMON runs and get rid of the FISH FARMS remember this TOO is YOUR/OUR LEGACY
Leonard Graham

responses

"when ALL cultures and nations at that time - and up to that time - believed that adding to territory through conquest was a normal and natural event."

AFAIK, Territorial borders on the West Coast were relatively stable. Conquest of the land base wasn't really an issue here until European explorers came. If you can enlighten me otherwise, please do.

"In comparison to the way their ancestors were living when us foreigners came, really, how can their lives get any better?"

Due to the bounty of nature and relatively mild climate, Natives on the coast had a longer average life-span than Europeans, were better fed, and worked less. The majority of Europeans were over-worked, under-fed and lived in unsanitary conditions. Their ancestors were better off than ours. If they had needed more, wouldn't they have done as the Europeans did, and gone exploring for more resources and land to address the problem? You need to ask yourself why Europe was the only place aggressively seeking new territory and the rest of the world was staying home.

"However, creating new wrongs or excusing new wrongs because of those past actions, or deflecting the blame for those new wrongs on the descendants of supposed past villains (and assuming a person is descended from a villain because of their skin colour) helps no one."

As I asked Janie... What are these new wrongs or injustices? There's a lot of talk about them, but no one seems able to actually list a single one.

"I fully support the residential school reparations. Anyone who directly had something inflicted upon them by our current government should be compensated."

It wasn't our current gov't. It was in the past. What's your statute of limitations on these things?

"I don't care what "race" a human belongs to."

Clearly you do. You're claiming injustices due to race, when the bigger issue is prior claim to the land and resources.

"Most small towns in BC are fully integrated now"

Are you f*cking kidding me? I grew up in small town BC too. It's still a racist, homophobic place for the most part and anyone who tells you different is a Pollyanna or a goddamn liar.

Fascism is fascism no matter what race fronts it.

Just because you're living in smug hypocrisy RickW doesn't mean that I am. Once again, BC was never conquered, except by lifestyle which Indian people are bought into as much as anyone.

At the end of the day, it is cheaper and easier to pay off 5% of the population in order to access 100% of the remaining resources.

Anyone who thinks aboriginal rights & titles legislation is about anything other than increasing elitist NWO corporate ownership of BC's lands and resources lives is in a fantasy world that bears no relation to reality.

Or led by their own self-interest which is easy enough to get. All you have to do is marry/breed with a band member.

"In 1970 while filming his Fraser River documentary The Politics of Power, producer Mike Poole met an elderly Native man named Sam Mitchell at Lillooet. As a young boy, Mitchell had heard his great-grandfather tell of seeing, when he was a young boy in 1808, the arrival of Simon Fraser and his men at Bridge River Rapids. He overheard a debate about whether the white strangers should be killed; it was decided that by allowing them to live, more blankets could eventually be acquired than by taking only those that Fraser and men carried with them"

from The Mighty River by Richard C. Bockling

The term "blankets" was a blanket term for acquiring valuble goods of any kind, for example, a women sold into prostitution by the chiefs was said to be "earning blankets."

After 200 years of interbreeding, most band members are genetically much, if not more, cowboy than Indian out here in the hinterlands. Conversely, many others who now have as much actual Indian blood as their numbered neighbours, whose families have been here for generations and worked like dogs for everything they have are now about to lose their right to their home and native land.

It is simple math. Two wrongs have not and will not ever make a right.

The real world is that all four races of the sacred medicine wheel are now native to the slice of Gaia now called British Columbia and, by design, balances in harmony and this is the Creators plan, not one race dominating the others.

Nobody owns the earth yet all whom the Creator sends here have a right to walk and be sustained by it not just those with "status."

"families have been here for

"families have been here for generations and worked like dogs for everything they have are now about to lose their right to their home and native land."

Toes get a little pinched when the shoe's on the other foot eh?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Your comment was posted while I was composing the above Stump and now I have no time to address your concerns but BC is more than just the coast and Europeans didn't come here for land, they came here to do business and, starting with the sea otter, native people have been their willing partners in plunder ever since.

Natives are free to go back to their former lifestyle of no mod cons - electricity, plumbing, internal combustion engines, supermarkets, medical/dental, ghetto bling gear, techno toys etc.- anytime but although they may occasionally bang the drum, none that I know are even remotely interested in it.

They'd much rather have even more special privileges and money, a lot of money.

Oh please

"Europeans didn't come here for land, they came here to do business "

Vancouer and Quadra sat on a beach near Campbell River and divvied shit up between England and Spain

"I claim this land in the name of the King" and plant a flag. That's not business. That's expropriation. You don't send the Royal Navy on trade missions. Exploration and conquest. That's what happened

"Natives are free to go back to their former lifestyle of no mod cons - electricity, plumbing, internal combustion engines, supermarkets, medical/dental, ghetto bling gear, techno toys etc.- anytime but although they may occasionally bang the drum, none that I know are even remotely interested in it."

So what? I don't want to live in the past either. It has nothing to do with land claims. It's prejudice to say you have to live a certain way to claim what's rightfully yours. And anyway, it's almost impossible to live in a traditional manner in most places in the world even if you wanted to.

"They'd much rather have even more special privileges and money, a lot of money."

Who wouldn't? I've never seen a family turn down the baby bonus either.

BTW

you can't claim it's a 'race' thing on the one hand and then claim everybody's all inter-married and inter-bred on the other. It's not a race thing, it's a people thing.

Mod cons??? Really!

I think that needs a response....Stump's been doing very well defending his turf but the suggestion that First Nations have a life style which compares, in terms of convenience and comfort, with that of the average non-native Canadian is absurd.

All of those who think that First Nations in this country have it good ought, I'd be so bold to suggest, to trade places with them.

So far as I know the only Tyee poster who was ever willing to take up that challenge was Ron Erwin (IAMC)....and you know how seriously HE was taken...

Janie Jones wrote:

Quote:

"Anyone who thinks aboriginal rights & titles legislation is about anything other than increasing elitist NWO corporate ownership of BC's lands and resources lives is in a fantasy world that bears no relation to reality."

The treaty process/aboriginal rights and title legislation has been co-opted by corporate interests BUT that doesn't mean the treaty process is not in itself a worthy endeavour....and that it is still, hopefully, redeemable from its present devious imposter status - one that the Campbell government has slyly crafted into a corporate double agent working both sides for its own benefit.

We need to stand up and call the present government on these sly and immoral tactics and ensure that the treaty process is restored to one that "openly" addresses First Nations rights and title ...instead of being a process that is now being manipulated behind closed doors to create rights and title for corporations alone.

Every one of us, First Nations and non-First Nations alike, have everything to lose - our rights extinguished through the present government's facilitation and legalization of what is really corporate sabotage of the ability of "all of us" to control our own future.

Janie, Janie, Janie.........

Say what? Are you telling me that British Columbia has existed in perpetuity? That the natives that were here before the proverbial "white man", were damming the rivers, clear-cutting the forests, and mining with open-pit mines?

My apologies for thinking FN as pastoral folk.

Stump, et al

You pro-aboriginal rights people continue to wallow in spasms of guilt whenever someone backs you into a corner that you can't weasel-word your way out of.

Onn top of that, you continue to dream up fanciful visions of an Eden-like aboriginal history or, at best, deliberately one-sided and erroneous intepretations of it.

At present, Stump is the most persistent in conflating fable with fact - too many instances of it to deal with here, since as each fallacy is refuted, he simply ignores that and tosses out several more.

Re his assmption of stable borders :

"AFAIK, Territorial borders on the West Coast were relatively stable. Conquest of the land base wasn't really an issue here until European explorers came. If you can enlighten me otherwise, please do."

OK...Excepting for very brief, unstable periods of treaty, All pre-contact Canadian aboiginal tribes bitterly hated each other and were at unending war with one another. To be captured outside of one's territory meant slavery or a sure and unmerciful death.

The rule concerning relations between neighbouring tribes, or even within some tribes such as between the Northen and Southern Haida and within the Bella Coolas, was that you took by force whatever you could and held only what you could defend. The driver for this imperative was - then as now - the more territory you controlled, the more warriors you can feed.

Since territoies required warriors to defend them, the extent of boundaries were an artifact of population size, and so changed from time to time.

Yes, I know, Stump, what makes my forefathers a venal, bloodthirsty bunch is otherwise quite forgivable if it is just natives pursuing their glorious cultural traditions.

And regarding relative age-spans, living beyond the twenties was a rarity for most Interior and Northern tribespeope. On the Coast, in particlar in the larger villages on the Lower Coast, longer lifespans due to easier lifestyles may have been possible - on the backs of the up to 25 % of slaves they held.

nothing eden-like at all no serious person makes that argument

BUT it was THEIRS.

WE stole it and, for the most part, killed and or infected the residents.

That's the indictment and there is no way we can wiggle out of it.

Doesn't mean we need to hand the province or the country to First Nations either - which is, of course, the drop back position of those who really don't want to acknowledge that there IS a huge problem.

One aspect of which is, of course, poor governance, corruption, crime, poverty, illness, alcoholism, fetal alcohol syndrome and effect, and lack of personal initiative.

You know the statistics ME2 - and you choose to ignore them with phony and insubstantial anthropology.

How long did it take to elect a black man President of the United States after the end of slavery?

When did Native Indians get the vote here in Canada?

I wager it'll be a long time before we have a First Nations prime minister - in fact, it'll a similarly long period before that happens in the USA too.

Give me a break

"Yes, I know, Stump, what makes my forefathers a venal, bloodthirsty bunch is otherwise quite forgivable if it is just natives pursuing their glorious cultural traditions."

Don't put words in my mouth. I haven't make any kind of statement that even comes close to a reflection of the nonsense above. If it's the only way you can defend your weak argument then that says it all doesn't it?

BTW

It wouldn't matter to me if the First Nations people wallowed in their own filth and ate each other, I could still recognize theft when I see it.

Revenge is not Justice

I live in a fourplex in a rural town. Two of the other units are occupied by native tenants. They have the same standard of housing as me. The only diffence is that their rent is susidized by the Band and that I'm a better housekeeper. When was the last time you visited a reserve? Or do you get your all your information about native housing from BCTV?

Native people are not a statistic or a problem. They are individuals like everyone else. When I say that BC towns are fully integrated I am referring to the edge of kinship and friendship that knits the communities together but if you are two generations removed from your native forebearer you have status but if you are three, you do not. It's about membership. It's about re-creating Indian bands in the corporate model so that they can cut corporate deals.

Natives got the vote around 1960 when the age of majority was 21. A native person would have to 70 years old to have lived in a time when they couldn't vote. Historically they have a very low turnout anyways and traditionalists don't even believe in voting. They believe in divine right, a system Europeans fought centuries of wars and revolutions to rid themselves of.

When did women get the vote? Remember all those laws against us. That we were non-persons who couldn't legally own propery? When do we get for half the eath's assets that rightfully belong to us? Why don't men have to pay us "guilt" money for the sins of their forefathers.

When I say that BC was never conquered, I mean in war. Certainly a superstitious and stagnant culture driven by the oversize egos of warring tribal autocrats was overtaken by the western world whose main driver is the lust for money. The sly Campbell government is in cahoots with creepy self-stlyled "grand chiefs" like Ed John with the implication that they are some kind of grand high chief of chiefs when in fact, they have not.

The original natives never developed the technology to dam rivers or clearcut forests, but along with their corporate partners they are certainly doing it now. They've even signed off on the Enbridge pipeline to the coast and that means dirty oil tankers and ultimately oil spills. But WTF do they care about their neighbours downstream. Isn't it time to take a little revenge on the Haida?

The Cheyenne prophet Sweet Medicine summed it up best when warned of a people “looking for a certain stone. . .these people will not listen to what you say; what they are going to do, they will do. . .They will try to change you from your way of living to theirs. . .They will tear up the earth, and at last you will do it with them. When you do, you will become crazy, and will forget all that I am teaching you.”

"When do we get for half the

"When do we get for half the eath's assets that rightfully belong to us? "

I thought you said the earth belonged to no-one?

/Irony

Is that all you can come up with?

when you're basing your

when you're basing your opinions of people's rights on their clothing (ghetto bling) and their housekeeping, why bother putting in any effort?

perspective

"superstitious and stagnant culture"

Native culture could have thrived as it was until the Sun collapsed into a black hole. 'Western' culture has about 40 years until we cook ourselves into extinction using our belief in our know-all, growth uber alles approach.

Who's the smarter people when you look at the long-term?

Your prejudice is only matched by your hubris Janie.

Janie

It was a rhetorical question:

John Diefenbaker extended the franchise to First Nations people with no strings attached. In 1958, Diefenbaker appointed James Gladstone to the Senate, where he was the first member of First Nations origin.

Diefenbaker, prime minister from 1957 to 1963, achieved a long-held personal goal when Parliament extended the franchise to registered Indians in 1960 before which they were required to give up their Indian status in order to vote.

In 1968, the first Status Indian elected to the House of Commons was Len Marchand, representing the British Columbia constituency of Kamloops–Cariboo. More First Nations people have been elected since then, though by no means in proportion to their presence in the Canadian population.

Status Indian women experienced a different and more complex history. Under the Indian Act, until 1985, an Indian groom conferred status on his non-Indian wife upon marriage, while the Indian bride of a non-Indian or a non-Status Indian man lost her status, as did any children of the marriage. They could no longer live on-reserve and lost the right to own reserve land or inherit family property; they could not receive treaty benefits or participate in band councils and political or social affairs in the community, and they lost the right to be buried in cemeteries with their ancestors. They could decide to vote or not in a federal election without further concerns about loss of status. On June 28, 1985, Parliament passed Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Indian Act, which, among other things, removed this form of discrimination against First Nations women.

more errors

"The original natives never developed the technology to dam rivers or clearcut forests"

Natives used dams, weirs, etc as a way to capture fish in rivers.

They never needed to clear-cut forests. What an odd thing to say.

All of us

Quote:

"Historically they have a very low turnout anyways and traditionalists don't even believe in voting."

But so do non-First Nations have a low-voter turn-out....and can't really blame them for not voting as they probably think our elections never change a damn thing for them anyway - which is becoming an increasingly prevalent belief held by more than just First Nations.

Quote:

"They believe in divine right, a system Europeans fought centuries of wars and revolutions to rid themselves of."

Divine right like the Bush and Kennedy dynasties. Divine right as practiced by King Gordo.

Quote:

"Certainly a superstitious and stagnant culture driven by the oversize egos of warring tribal autocrats ."

Name a culture that has not been based on a fairly good dose of superstition.

As for "over-size egos of warring tribal autocrats"...geez, sounds just like us.

Quote:

"The original natives never developed the technology to dam rivers or clearcut forests, but along with their corporate partners they are certainly doing it now."

Again, "some" are. Not all. I guess they figured out (like all of us eventually do) that here, in the reigning non-First Nations "stagnant" culture the power button is the money button. That's the pathetic superstition we worship.

I agree, co-operating and partnering with corporations is an extremely bad choice made by poor leadership on the part of "some" First Nations chiefs.

But then the people of BC just re-elected a chief CEO who has been doing exactly that for the past eight years - selling out this land and its resources with devastating consequences in terms of both autonomy and the environment. (He and his corporate "friends" must have figured out some time ago that under the veil of treaty secrecy, that "partnering" with First Nations would give corporations all of the pie to dish out in their favour and thus to ultimately control....and consume.)