[Indigsol] "Democracy" Can Never Take Root On Stolen Land

[mattm-b at resist.ca]

"Democracy" Can Never Take Root On Stolen Land

by Aziz Choudry, courtesy of Znet, May 04, 2002

I keep seeing books, articles and correspondence which refer to a
"post-colonial world". Which world is that? Hand me a telescope. It
doesn't seem to be in this galaxy.

Many of us liken the situation of Palestine to that of Bantustans in
apartheid South Africa. Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein and others
have described "autonomy" for Palestinians as being "the autonomy of a POW
camp". Edward Said recently wrote that Israel is engaged in a "current
all-out colonial assault on the Palestinian people".

Absurdly, others still claim that Israel is an "island of democracy" in a
dangerous, hostile region.

In another part of the world, a man described by a local trade unionist as
a "jackbooted thug", ruling a territory based on land theft, dispossession
and genocide has initiated a referendum to serve the powerful political
and economic interests that benefit most from extinguishing the rights of
the rightful owners.

He wants to define and limit their rights to self-determination to a form
of "self-government" with delegated authority from federal and provincial
levels of government, like running a municipal council. This is the latest
chapter in another all-out colonial assault conducted over generations. It
has stirred up yet more hatred, tension and racism against the rightful
owners of the land, who have survived invasion and continued colonial
occupation, not infrequently backed up with massive military and police
force.

Strangely enough, most of the world behaves as if this place is a
progressive democracy, a humanitarian state, a shining example to other
countries.

The leader's name is Gordon Campbell. The place is British Columbia,
Canada. (And yes, BC president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees,
Barry O'Neill did say "Gordon Campbell is more than a liar, more than a
thief, he's a jackbooted thug," at a rally in Victoria against January 's
provincial budget cuts.)

Promising a "new era of hope and prosperity" for all, Campbell was elected
as BC Premier last May when his BC Liberal party won a landslide victory
over the "social democratic" New Democratic Party (NDP) which had ruled
the province for ten years.

Friends in BC despairingly tell me how Campbell models his economic
policies on New Zealand's radical free market reforms, slashing spending
and public sector jobs while giving tax cuts to the rich and big business.
Meanwhile, Campbell has been enthusiastically promoting BC's "investment
opportunities" to international audiences, including February's World
Economic Forum meeting. But BC isn't his to give away. It is unceded
Indigenous land.

But Campbell's government has hatched a plan to try to extinguish
indigenous title through what he claims is a "democratically accountable"
process.

Along with his neoliberal economic masterplan has come the realisation of
Campbell's election campaign promise to hold a one-time province wide
referendum on principles to guide provincial treaty negotiations with
Indigenous Peoples. From April 2 until May 15, British Columbia's eligible
voters can vote by mail on an eight-question referendum. Many note with
irony that BC's government is spending Cdn $9 million on this, while
radically slashing social welfare, health and education spending.

Under International and British law, the lands now defined as "British
Columbia" are Indigenous lands subject only to Indigenous jurisdiction.
Successive provincial governments have claimed that BC is "terra nullius"
and that Indigenous title had been extinguished, even though this argument
has been rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada.

In his 1999 book, "Peace, Power, Righteousness: an indigenous manifesto",
Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred, Director of the Indigenous Governance
Programme at the University of Victoria, wrote, "To assert the validity of
Crown title to land that the indigenous population has not surrendered by
treaty is to accept the racist assumptions of earlier centuries, when
European interests were automatically given priority over the rights of
supposedly 'uncivilised' indigenous peoples."

That is exactly what previous BC governments, and now Campbell's have done.

During the 1990s, BC's NDP government, along with Canada's federal
government set up the BC Treaty Commission through which it sought to
conclude treaties with Indigenous Peoples living within the province's
boundaries.

The government's starting point was the mistaken premise that it owned the
land. It did not recognise the title and rights of Indigenous Peoples. It
insisted that no privately owned lands would be available for settlement
of the lands and resource rights of the Indigenous Peoples living within
the borders of British Columbia. Under five percent of the total lands in
BC would be available for settlement.

Even under Canadian law, the provincial government has no power to
legislate in relation to Indigenous Peoples and lands reserved for them,
as this power is assigned to the Crown -- i.e. Canada. Some Indigenous
Nations in BC took out loans totalling around Cdn $ 180 million from the
Treaty Commission in order to take part in the negotiations. Others
refused to participate in the process.

Indigenous Peoples who dared to defend a sacred Sundance site from
ranchers at Gustafsen Lake on unceded Shuswap territory in the summer of
1995, were met with Armoured Personnel Carriers, landmines (remember
Canada's international stand against the use of landmines?), and
heavily-armed paramilitary police SWAT teams, ordered in by the NDP
government. Like the Israeli Defence Forces, the RCMP blocked media access
to the area while they laid siege.

Such struggles continue. For example, Shuswap people are now actively
opposing a major expansion of Sun Peaks ski resort near Kamloops. There
have been many arrests and racist attacks. Sweatlodges and homes have been
bulldozed, and injunctions taken out by Sun Peaks against Shuswap people
defending their lands and resources.

Cree lawyer and scholar Sharon Venne reminds us, "Canada, the great
peacekeeping nation, must maintain its international image because its
treatment of Indigenous Peoples makes its human rights record as black as
the record of white South Africa. After all, the legislation to keep
blacks down in South Africa was modelled upon legislation drafted and used
in Canada against Indigenous Peoples."

Voters are being asked whether they agree that "the Provincial Government
should adopt the following principles to guide its participation in treaty
negotiations" and to enter a yes or no vote, for example, to principles
like "private property should not be expropriated for treaty settlements";
and "the terms and conditions of leases and licences should be respected;
fair compensation for unavoidable disruption of commercial interests
should be ensured."

These and other questions were already set as parameters in the BC Treaty
process, and completely ignore the fact that Indigenous Peoples in BC
never released, extinguished or ceded their lands to the settlers. On what
legal basis can private property rights be said to exist in BC? And by
what authority have leases and licences been given?

The current BC government says it is "committed to negotiating workable,
affordable treaty settlements that will provide certainty, finality and
equality".

This is the same sort of logic that the World Bank, the Asian Development
Bank and other multilateral financial institutions use when pressuring
"debtor" countries (many of which share the same Pacific Ocean with
coastal BC) to "reform" traditional land tenure systems.

This must be done, they say, to attract foreign investment, create
economic growth, and encourage "optimal land use" under a free market
regime which guarantees the rights of private capital over local
communities' rights. Like earlier colonial projects, this agenda
ultimately seeks the commodification of all things. Indigenous Peoples'
relationships with their lands and resources are seen as mere impediments
to "progress" and "development".

There has been widespread opposition and condemnation of the BC referendum
from Indigenous leaders and communities, churches and other religious
communities, trade unions, opposition parties, women's groups and others.

Hupacasath Chief Judith Sayers, whose people are from the west coast of
Vancouver Island, sought an injunction to halt the referendum but was
unsuccessful in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Indigenous Nations
in BC also called on the Canadian government to stop the process. While it
said that it did not agree with the process, it would not get involved.

Chief Sayers now co-chairs a movement to promote an active referendum
boycott which calls for unsigned ballots to be sent to a local Indian band
office, labour council or church in protest. These will then be presented
in protest to the BC Government or disposed of at a public ceremony.

She says: "The proposed questions are one-sided, leading, ambiguous and
designed to elicit yes responses from the voter as well as to spread fear,
racism and hatred for the Indigenous Peoples." The referendum "has created
the most contentious, public display of emotion that has ever been seen"
in BC....There have been public demonstrations, forums, and everyday the
newspapers, radio and TV are reporting the heated public debate that shows
how polarized and divided this issue has made the province."

In her submission to the UN Commission on Human Rights of April 15, she
says that school authorities in the small town of High Level in
neighbouring Alberta have warned principals and teachers to be aware of
bullying and violence in schools due to the increased tensions in BC
caused by the referendum.

In the BC city of Kelowna, a white supremacist group, BC White Pride,
recently delivered leaflets urging people to support the treaty referendum
to make BC "a better place for white families." The leaflet said that the
referendum will go down in Canadian history as "the most fundamental
symbolic expression of White unity since racial pride went out of style
almost 40 years ago."

Chief Stewart Philip of the Penticton Band and the Union of British
Columbia Indian Chiefs is also calling for an active boycott. He
says:."The referendum questions seek a self-serving mandate to perpetuate
an outdated, economically racist and colonial relationship, of which many
features have been repudiated by the Courts.

By refusing to adequately consult and to enter into good faith
negotiations, the province has only left many First Nation communities two
choices to defend our title and rights, enter the courts or prepare for a
protracted campaign of confrontation vis-à-vis land-use conflict arising
as a consequence of acclerated resource development activities."

In November, Taiaiake Alfred wrote: "Distracted by the on-going 'war on
terrorism' south of the border, it seems that we have forgotten about the
war on us. Remember that one? The war that was so important in the days
before 9.11, the one for the environment, for our homelands and our
rights? .... The enemy is still after our lands and our resources, and sad
but true, they are winning the fight."

Our outrage and activism against the brutality and injustice wrought by
the coloniser Israeli government and its armed forces, and our support for
Palestine's struggle for self determination is vital if we are to build
massive international pressure on Ariel Sharon's government.

Recent mobilisations in Washington, DC and other cities around the world
have linked issues of corporate globalisation with the war on/of terror
and Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine.

But governments like those of Canada and BC cannot be allowed to keep
getting away with ongoing violations of Indigenous Peoples' rights by
virtue of their membership of an elite group of "Western democracies" and
their carefully maintained international image.

Canada will soon get another chance to showcase its "democracy" to the
world when the ski-resort of Kananaskis in Alberta hosts the June G-8
summit.

But how can "democracy" ever exist on stolen land, anywhere?

Global justice movements must subject governments like those of British
Columbia and Canada's federal government to the same kinds of condemnation
and pressure that people have brought against Suharto's Indonesia for the
genocide in East Timor, apartheid South Africa, and Israel.

As Chief Judith Sayers says: "There needs to be a light shone on the state
of Canada and the province of British Columbia for such a gross violation
of our rights as Indigenous Peoples."

In our global struggles for justice we need to do whatever we can to shine
such a light.


Aziz Choudry is an activist and writer who works for GATT Watchdog in
Aotearoa (New Zealand). Aziz has written on GATT/WTO, APEC, the MAI,
colonisation and the rights of Indigenous Peoples’ to self-determination,
New Zealand’s neo-liberal reforms, workers’ rights, multilateral financial
institutions, the politics of aid and “development”, biopiracy, the
anti-globalisation movement, the post-Cold War role of security and
intelligence agencies in monitoring and suppressing dissent, and other
topics. His articles have been published in around 20 countries in
Australasia, Asia and the Pacific, North America, and Europe, and
translated into several languages. He can be reached at
notoapec at clear.net.nz. For related work, see the APEC Monitoring Group.
-- 
"All oppression is relative.
All oppression is specific."

- Albert Memmi