[IPSM] tahltan article from vancouver sun

[Devin Butler Burke]

Saturday, February 05, 2005
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=11b965cf-4f9f-43ab-9913-9bbe26f9e60e&page=2

Last June, the province was trumpeting breakthrough relationships with
first nations as a welcome to new investment capital for British
Columbia's mining sector.

Initiatives with first nations like the Tahltan of northwestern B.C. aimed
to assure certainty for mining investors. The Liberals continued to push
this theme in their Mining Plan, released in mid-January.

Prominent in the literature promoting new relationships between
government, industry and aboriginal peoples is articulate Tahltan Chief
Jerry Asp, who's now the government's pro-development poster boy.

"Relations have definitely improved," Asp is quoted as saying in a
government newsletter. "We wanted to send a signal that the Tahltan people
are supportive of mining on their land . . . We want to make sure that any
mining that happens on our traditional land is a win-win for all parties
-- the Tahltan people, the mining industry and the government."

The newsletter quotes Dan Jepsen, executive director of the B.C. and Yukon
Chamber of Mines, describing Tahltan support as a major step toward the
certainty industry requires.

So imagine the surprise when, on Jan. 17, a group of 35 traditional
Tahltan elders, some of them in their mid-80s, occupied the band office in
Telegraph Creek to protest mining development on their territory and
repudiated Chief Asp's authority to speak on their behalf.

They were still there, 18 days later, when I called the band office
Thursday. Elder Pat Etzerza told me they have no intention of leaving any
time soon, despite the fact that Asp has obtained an injunction that would
legally oust them.

The chief sighed when I asked him where things stood.

"You tell me," he said from his home in Dease Lake. "Me and my council
can't figure this out."

Asp confirmed he has indeed obtained an injunction to clear the band
office -- "I can use it any time" -- but said he was reluctant to invoke
the law against elders he thinks are being exploited. "It's the elders who
have to settle this."

Oscar Dennis, a Tahltan graduate of the University of Northern B.C. with
degrees in first nations studies and anthropology, said he recognizes the
horns of the dilemma upon which Asp finds himself. Bringing outsider's law
down on elders might well prove an act of political suicide.

Asp said he's supported by a Tahltan majority and he'd soon talk to other
elders as well as those he says are being misled and exploited by outside
interests -- environmentalists, feminists and agitators from other tribal
groups.

"We elders have been used as window dressing," countered Etzerza. "The
window blinds have been closed to us. Well, the elders have learned how to
open the blinds. We're talking accountability, transparency and
responsibility. That's all we're asking."

A tiny community of 450 on the Stikine River about 1,000 kilometres
northwest of Vancouver, Telegraph Creek and the tribulations of Chief Asp
might seem a blip on the consciousness of the Lower Mainland. But it
serves as a powerful reminder of something that government and industry
frequently fail to take into account.

First, aboriginal government is far deeper and more complex than many
mainstream politicians and business leaders comprehend. The elected forms
of government imposed by the Indian Act rest, sometimes uncomfortably,
upon governing structures that reach back to the beginning of time for
many of these communities -- and sometimes seem invisible to outsiders.

Relationships among elected leaders, people on the land and elders who are
custodians of the traditional culture are influenced by the complicated
dynamics of ancient family territorial jurisdictions, hereditary clan
ranks and affiliations, and rights to intellectual property based on
lineages legitimized by principles that don't apply in mainstream culture.

Elders such as those occupying the band office in Telegraph Creek, for
example, have a moral suasion in aboriginal communities that simply does
not exist in mainstream society, where seniors are routinely marginalized
-- turn 65 and you're out -- and their social role trivialized.

Second, elected aboriginal councils with which mainstream government and
industry prefer to deal, remain a colonial -- and therefore suspect --
veneer upon these older forms of government.

Third, the era of colonization is ending. Nobody, least of all aboriginal
communities, wants to return exclusively to the old ways, but traditional
forms of governance -- as they have been in the Nisga'a Treaty -- will
have to be acknowledged and accommodated.

So if government and industry are sincere about wanting to establish
certainty in resource development, they are going to have to get past the
temptation to stage dog-and-pony shows that amount to public relations
exercises.

Too often these events only pay lip service to genuine consultation. What
set off the Tahltan eruption, it seems, was a pro-development session that
Dennis said industry considered consultation but which offended many
elders because "all they did was tell us their plans for exploiting
resources on our territory."

Protests like the one taking place in Telegraph Creek, whatever the cause
of the breakdown in relations between the chief and a significant faction
of his band members, are a reminder that in the age of elders with e-mail,
the old way of doing business is ending.

In future, consultations must be genuine. They should be organized not by
public relations specialists but by anthropologists and aboriginal
advisers who are sensitive to both the official and the unofficial power
structures in communities.

They have to involve everybody on a forthright and honest basis,
particularly elders. Industry must learn to listen as well as talk.

The alternative is more upheavals like the one tearing apart Telegraph
Creek, where there is indeed a signal being sent to other first nations in
B.C. -- but it's hardly the one endorsed by glowing government propaganda
and industrial public relations.

shume at islandnet.com
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