The Tsawwassen have lived and harvested resources on their land, including the land they're claiming as part of the treaty settlement, for many generations prior to European contact. It seems more than a bit hypocritical to complain that they won't take proper care of it, particularly when they've seen their traditional territory chipped away at for things like the ferry terminal and the superport (not to mention the municipality of Delta).

This criticism also carries the implication that First Nations are supposed to remain frozen in time, hunting and fishing and not doing nasty white sorts of things like building condos -- and then we turn around and complain that First Nations aren't economically self-sufficient!

Vancouver Sun

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The Tsawwassen First Nation, now in negotiations with federal and provincial governments..., stand to be given more than 427 hectares of land around their reserve, on the waterfront near the community of Tsawwassen.

Most of that land was put in the agricultural land reserve more than three decades ago to preserve it for future generations. Aside from being fertile farmland, used to grow some of the produce British Columbians find in their supermarkets, it is also a key spot on the Pacific Flyway, used by migratory birds.

But Tsawwassen Chief Kim Baird said if British Columbians want a treaty with her people, a large chunk of the 427 hectares, about the size of Stanley Park, will have to be rezoned for development.

She plans to make an application to the Agricultural Land Commission within weeks to find out if it is willing to rezone the land around the super port at Roberts Bank that is key to the province's strategy of expanding Asian trade. ...

"This will be the end of this land," said Susan Jones, a member of the Boundary Bay Conservation Committee. "It's needed by all sorts of migratory birds. The sandpipers will be at risk from this. The salmon will be a risk. Even the orcas will be at risk because they feed on the salmon."

Delta Mayor Lois Jackson, often at loggerheads with Baird, plans to fight back. ...

Jackson believes she's in an uphill battle, however, because the provincial government is eager to sign a treaty with the Tsawwassen to prove Premier Gordon Campbell's "new relationship" with first nations is working.

She also says both the province and Ottawa are eager to expand the super port, which will need more space for bigger volumes of containers and traffic destined to move through the area.

"I have to stand up and ask what is going to happen to the rest of the Delta lands, the best and richest land we have," said Jackson. ...

Baird said not all the lands the Tsawwassen would receive under the treaty would be developed. Most farmers are on two-year leases, meaning "nothing's going to change overnight." ...

Deciding if the lands will be removed from the agricultural land reserve is likely to be equally controversial for the government. The decision will depend on the views of the Agricultural Land Commission, whose three-person southcoast panel has the power to make the ruling.

But there would be no public hearing, said Brian Underhill, the director of strategic planning at the commission. And at the moment, two of the three spots on the panel are vacant, meaning the appointments will be highly scrutinized given the unfolding battle.

In recent weeks, the New Democratic Party has repeatedly questioned the neutrality of some of the the Liberal government's appointments to the commission. ...

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[ 03 June 2006: Message edited by: Yossarian ]

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The Tsawwassen First Nation are on the verge of making history by creating British Columbia's first urban treaty, one that may prove to be a new model for native and non-native Canadians living side-by-side for years to come. ...

These are key concessions Baird has decided to make, moves she acknowledges leave some in her nation nervous, even unhappy: In the treaty, the Tsawwassen would give up the right to be called an Indian reserve under the Indian Act and lose most of the tax benefits that entails. In about a decade, the nation's members will have to start paying income tax just like other Canadians.

Perhaps most significantly, the Tsawwassen First Nation will in many ways become just like any other municipality.

While it will remain a first nation, with formal nation-to-nation relationships with the federal and provincial governments, the Tsawwassen will also become what one might call a "supra-municipality."

It will likely become a member of the Greater Vancouver Regional District, though with side agreements. It will have to weave itself into the same structure governing all other Lower Mainland municipalities, which are required and expected to meet existing development, regulatory and taxation standards.

These are sweeping concessions from an aboriginal people that has long claimed title to vast tracts of the Lower Mainland. To extract them, the federal and provincial governments have had to open up their chequebooks considerably.

By one estimate put together at the negotiating table, it will cost taxpayers at least $56 million to make this treaty -- about $160,000 for each Tsawwassen First Nation member.

Here is a breakdown of the key, though still-evolving, elements based on a confidential negotiating document: Upon signing the treaty, the Tsawwassen will receive $10.1 million, most of which will be invested, to pay for their community's new infrastructure projects. Another $5.3 million lump sum payment is earmarked to kick-start self-government and there's another $16.7 million in "enhancements," to get the new government up and running and supply the resources to train band members, not lawyers and consultants, to run the show. (Part of the deal is that the Tsawwassen must return more than $4 million in legal and consulting fees and other negotiating costs.)

Roughly another $8 million is the estimated value of giving the first nation a guaranteed salmon fishery quota, a handful of fishing licenses and setting up a viable local fishing business as well as other economic and cultural opportunities (see the accompanying chart.) In all these areas, current environmental and conservation laws would prevail.

But the most valuable -- and contentious -- item is what it's always been: The land. ...

From the air, coastal Greater Vancouver's sprawl stretches in almost every direction. With one exception: Delta. Its western edge is one of the last and largest areas not overtaken by parking lots and subdivisions. In fact, it holds some of the last, best and most profitable farmland in the region, lending parts of Delta its unmistakably bucolic feel. ...

But, as Chief Baird will tell you, one person's bucolic ideal can be someone else's life of poverty.

Walking through the Tsawwassen Reserve, it can easily seem a quaint oasis from the development pressures of the Lower Mainland. Bald eagles and herons fly overhead, a near empty bay stretches out, flat and blue, toward the sun setting over the Strait of Georgia. There's so little traffic here an old arthritic dog walks down the blacktop of the reserve's empty main street.

But that's only what the casual visitor sees. To fill in the full picture, one needs to look at the social statistics Chief Baird grew up with and has been elected to try and change:

* Unemployment Rate: Tsawwassen 38 per cent; Delta six per cent.

* Average family income: Tsawwassen $20,000; Delta $67,000 .

* High School Graduation Rate: Tsawwassen 47 per cent; Delta 77 per cent.

"Sure, it's a beautiful place," says Baird. "I love it. But life's not easy here for people."

Gazing out to the Strait of Georgia, Baird notes that reserve life has been irrevocably changed by the development all around it. That seemingly idyllic bay stretching into the strait no longer has clam and crab beds that the Tsawwassen can safely harvest and eat.

The reason is the engineering marvels around her: to her left, the BC Ferries terminal; to her right, the superport. These massive man-made spits of land have changed the flow and flush of sea water in and out of the bay.

"You wouldn't want to eat any shellfish from here now," she says. "But there was a time we always did."

Yet at the same time, the Tsawwassen people have also been shut out of the prosperity those engineering marvels brought to their surrounding neighbours. Most of her band members looking for jobs have been unable to reel in work at the superport or the BC Ferries terminal. Over the years of dead ends, many simply stopped trying.

"There isn't even a bus that comes into the reserve to take people to work," notes Russell Williams, a 72-year-old resident of the reserve, nodding toward a bus stop where transit buses never come. "Something's got to change. We've got to be given a chance to build something for our people. This treaty might help." ...

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Sacrificing farmland for a treaty will be for the greater good

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In the context of treaty negotiations, Delta Mayor Lois Jackson's plea to the Tsawwassen band to leave farmland untouched is a bit hard to swallow.

No doubt she represents what she perceives to be the interests of her community in trying to protect productive agricultural land. But we are pretty sure what the reaction of European settlers would have been to similar advice from aboriginals as the newcomers cleared the natives' traditional territory for farming in the first place.

The dispute over the final use of farmland that would be included in a land-claims settlement is the only really dark cloud hanging over a historic accomplishment for the 348 members of the Tsawwassen First Nation, who appear to be on the verge of achieving what would be British Columbia's first urban treaty.

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I would not be surprised if the Band is moving to turn the mud flats that the migratory birds fed on into the next streaming video Nature show. It would be a great idea imo.

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The tentative deal with the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation is important....

But for several reasons, the Tsawwassen First Nation assumes greater importance in the government's effort to move beyond seemingly endless treaty negotiations to an era of treaty-making.

Tsawwassen is set in the midst of an urban region....

Prince George is central to the Interior of the province. But northerners already have some experience with treaty-making, because of the Nisga'a' deal, negotiated outside the modern-day process.

It's long been the hope of those involved in treaties to bring settlements to the forefront in a major urban region, so big-city voters can see what is involved.

Tsawwassen is central to federal and provincial economic planning, too. The band lands are the key to proposed expansion of Deltaport, itself a critical element in the gateway-to-the-Asia-Pacific trade and economic strategy.

Then there's the opportunity to settle the running controversy over the fishery. ...

The Lheidli T'enneh incorporates a similar harvesting agreement. (It allocates the band a bit less than one per cent of any commercial catch on an annual basis. I mistakenly reported it as two per cent last week.)

But Tsawwassen assumes a greater importance, because of the high-profile fishery on the lower Fraser and because it is in the federal riding of Conservative MP John Cummins.

Cummins, a part-time commercial fisherman, has been one of the strongest critics of proposals to allocate an exclusive share of the commercial fishery to first nations. A treaty that did so in the midst of Cummins's own riding would tend to settle the question of where the Conservatives are headed on this issue.

Then there are the implications for the running debate over the status of agricultural land in treaties. ...

As well, the Liberals believe a Tsawwassen treaty would present the local government with a fait accompli.

Delta has for many years had one of the poorest relationships with its first nations neighbours of any municipal government in the province. Prince George, by away of contrast, went out of its way to cultivate the Lheidli T'enneh.

A deal with Tsawwassen would send the message to local governments to get on board, because treaties are happening with or without them. ...

Plus -- though the politicians wouldn't admit this publicly -- there is a concern that the Lheidli T'enneh may not ratify their treaty.

There's strong opposition within the aboriginal community to the current version. ...

Tsawwassen, assuming the deal proceeds to the final stage, is thought to be more likely to ratify. And if the Lheidli T'enneh deal were turned down, the government would like to be able to point to Tsawwassen as a second chance to save the treaty process.

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For now, Gerald Fudge goes to sleep in Tsatsu Shores, a condominium on Tsawwassen First Nations territory, obeying the laws of the municipality of Delta, but able to vote for the councillors that make them.

After the signing of the Tsawwassen First Nation final agreement yesterday, Mr. Fudge, who is not aboriginal, is concerned that when the treaty is ratified he'll wake up and have no vote in the new quasi-municipality run by the Tsawwassen band. ...

Only band members can cast a vote in the new entity, according to the treaty. But across Highway 17 from the longhouse, three residential developments built by the native band house a largely non-native population that outnumbers the small, 350-strong Tsawwassen band.

About 43 per cent of the people in the new territory will be band members and will be allowed to vote in elections. The remaining population are non-aboriginal and will not be allowed to vote.

The non-aboriginal members must be consulted in issues that concern them and must be allowed to participate in the debate. Any representatives they choose, however, are not allowed to constitute a majority on any body.

Representatives of the three communities, including Tsatsu Shore, are meeting with the band administration now to determine just how they will be consulted. ...

A plan being discussed now would have each of the three housing developments choose two representatives each. But Mr. Fudge said that real power may lie in the fact that the leases on the properties constitute a significant portion of the band's income.

"That's our bargaining power -- they don't want to risk sending us away," he said.

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Keep in mind that the FN is MORE THAN just a municipality. Even the term “supra-municipality” is misleading. I’m sure if they were merely becoming a “municipality-plus” they wouldn’t be signing the treaty. The FN will likely have a membership code (which they may call citizenship code) that will lay out the criteria by which people become members; this is nothing new, it’s been going on in all three of the Territories for almost two decades, starting with the Inuvialiat Final Agreement. The fear-mongering that takes place in the media is quite pathetic if you ask me.

This is what bothers me. He has Not lost his vote or his civil rights, he has decided of his own free will to live as a guest on Native land leased to him, probably at a better rate than he'd get elsewhere, yet now acts like its terribly unfair that he too, a non-native, can't vote for the band council. Hmm. How much say does the Tsawwassen band have on the politics of Tsawwassen city coucil or in the running of the province? MNot much from what I've seen, yet local white residents seem to feel *they* have a right to protest everytime the Native community builds a housing complex or puts up a billboard. I also have to wonder if *any* of these N-NDNs has ever spoken a word of concern Before about protecting the ALR from White developers. Or overfishing or overlogging or whaling or big money influence in Our local politics, etc etc. Hmm.

It is a complex issue on various levels, but I notice that yet again most of the focus Re land use questions lately seem to rest on FNs while the vast majority of long term environmental pain for short term gain by the White majority remains above comment. Methinks that the powers that be are laying the ground work for another anti-land claims campaign. Definite moves in that direction on several fronts now, including recent court decisions. The Liberals may be playing this both ways too by being more generous with ALR land than with Other crown land claimed by Weyerhauser etc.

[ 10 December 2006: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]

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The Sencot'en Alliance, a group of primarily southern Vancouver Island bands that includes the Semiahmoo First Nation of Surrey/White Rock, [says that] these Tsawwassen treaty provisions include fishing territories that extend to the shores of the native Semiahmoo village in White Rock. Further, the Sencot'en also say they're about to take a legal step within B.C.'s treaty process that would stop any ratification of the Tsawwassen treaty dead in its tracks.

A letter outlining the Sencot'en position has been sent both to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Gordon Campbell. It was also due to be tabled last night at Delta council. ...

The Douglas Treaty was signed with members of the Sencot'en Alliance in 1852 and the group claims that it gave them full land and water rights throughout the Saanich Peninsula, the Gulf Islands and through ancestral ties to the Semiahmoo territory in south Surrey as well.

"We thought there was some protection within the treaty process regarding consultations that are supposed to happen with neighbouring First Nations," says Eric Pelkey, the Sencot'en's co-ordinator.

"Our chiefs and councils have never had any contact with the Tsawwassen at any phase of the B.C. Treaty Commission process, nor have we had any notification from any level of government that the Tsawwassen had any interests in our core territory during negotiation of this final agreement."

No one in the B.C. Treaty Commission could be reached for comment yesterday, but Pelkey says his group will likely file a "statement of intent" with the commission to halt Tsawwassen treaty ratification until the Sencot'en overlapping claims are resolved. ...

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Tieleman opposes Tsawwassen Treaty between First Nation and Provincial, Federal Governments over farmland exclusion from Agricultural Land Reserve

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It is totally unacceptable that the treaty terms would take 207 hectares of valuable farmland out of the Agricultural Land Reserve and turn it over to the Roberts Bank port terminal for container shipping expansion. And a further 278 hectares of farmland could also be turned into an industrial wasteland.

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I expect that Liberals and Liberal pundits, including papers like the Georgia Straight, will be accusing Tieleman of being, if not racist, then a labour union supporter who is typical of labour politicians, ignorant of and insensitive to more complex issues that aren't class based, in other words, political gambits arising from race, religion and the like.

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Probably they will. Puss tends to fester in an open wound.

I suppose they can include me. I am now and always have been a staunch supporter and loud-mouthed promoter of redress for the Aboriginal Nations damaged and decimated by colonial capitalism, and this includes support for land claims negotiations and treaties.

So, in principle, it's obvious that I think the Tsawwassen nation has the right to do what it's doing now. Sadly, though, I think they goofed on this one.

It's no secret that the BC Liar regime is looking for ways to wipe out the Agricultural Land Reserve. It can't do it directly, knowing how unpopular that would be.

But a deal like this likely serves as yet another crutch for the regime to weasel its way around it and weaken it further.

Also, I don't think the argument that since many European settlers and colonial forces ignored Aboriginal warnings not to destroy community-sustaining agricultural, fishing and hunting grounds it makes it acceptable for the Tsawwassen Nation to do the same is valid.

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Bertha Williams, who works as an on-board cook for B.C. Ferries, has been a lone band voice in speaking publicly against the treaty.

"I feel the chief and council have not listened to the band members regarding the treaty," she tells me. "And everything about it has been so secretive."

Williams' list of treaty concerns is long and includes what she says will be a loss of Indian status by band members, loss of tax exemptions and a ratification-vote date that's too early. She also questions whether the real government agenda here is expansion of nearby DeltaPort, not a treaty settlement.

"Despite what we were told earlier, we're now finding out that under the treaty we will lose status," she says.

"We will be losing our identity as a people and the treaty will have a big impact on us for many years to come as well as on the outside community. That's why we need more time for study before voting."

Williams is also upset that the band has denied her access to the off-reserve membership list for campaigning even though Baird has access to it but says she won't use it in her campaign.

"This treaty should have been based on our needs, but at the end of the day I think it's based on the needs of the port's expansion," Williams adds.

However, it's the expansion of DeltaPort that, in Baird's opinion, will play a key part in TFN economic development as the band becomes self-governing. ...

...Baird says the treaty explicitly states that fiscal transfers from Ottawa based on native status will continue for benefits in sectors such as health or education.

And while another major concern by band members is the loss of some tax exemptions, Baird says: "The economic opportunities that the treaty provides for individuals and our whole community far outweigh any tax implications."

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[ 15 March 2007: Message edited by: obscurantist ]

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Originally posted by Yossarian:
The article below portrays this as a clash between the wish to achieve justice for a First Nation and the value of environmental preservation. However, that seems like an oversimplification to me, a false binary.

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I agree completely. The problem is simply that our property value system does not give proper value to agricultural land. Harold Steves has proposed that people taking Agricultural land out of the ALR be required to pay the difference in value from the rezoning. If that was the case then deals like Tsawwassen (and Richmond's Garden City Land debacle) would be done properly.

This article is a bit confusing, as it also mentions a vote on a proposed membership code that was to be used for the July treaty ratification vote. It sounds like voters rejected the proposed code, but the article doesn't actually say that.

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Chief Kim Baird was returned for a fifth term this week following a Tsawwassen First Nation election.

Baird bested challenger Bertha Williams, an outspoken critic of the treaty, 87 to 43. ...

Baird won a three-year term; elections had previously been held every two years.

The 61.8 per cent voter turnout was one of the lowest in many years. In previous elections, it's been between 70 and 80 per cent.

Almost 84 per cent of on-reserve voters cast a ballot, compared to just 35 per cent of off-reserve voters.

Of the 216 registered voters, 133 cast ballots.
...

Williams is claiming a small victory. Voters also cast ballots on the proposed membership code, a document that would have replaced the band membership list. The new list was supposed to be used to ratify the treaty.

Williams opposed it, saying it would have meant that even old time residents would have had to fill out an application and re-enroll in the band in order to vote on the treaty.

She was also concerned about an adoption provision in the code that would allow non-natives title to band members' land and other benefits of membership, including voting rights. That adoption would have included stepchildren and any other non-native children to become band members if a member adopted them.

"It left a loophole for spouses to be adopted, so I could adopt my husband Doug and he would be a full member," Williams quipped.

Her husband is not a member of the Tsawwassen First Nation.

Baird said the code was the result of a set of compromises that may have, in the end, not served anyone. ...

Now the band will have to look for a way to nail down just who will be eligible to vote on the treaty.

There is a discrepancy in how many members belong to the Tsawwassen First Nation. The band and the Ministry of Indian Affairs say there are over 350 members on and off reserve, but the federal government's website lists only 270 registered members. About 160 call the reserve home.

The treaty ratification vote is scheduled for July 25.

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[ 02 April 2007: Message edited by: obscurantist ]

A lot of crazy things were said last week at an SFU Downtown forum on the plan to take 207 hectares out of the Agricultural Land Reserve to settle a treaty with the Tsawwassen Band. Some folks just lose all their marbles when you show them two sacred cows and ask them to pick one for slaughter.

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SFU professor and treaty negotiator Doug McArthur noted that when the ALR was created, aboriginal communities had no voice in the process, and that's a shortcoming we cannot disregard.

It's also true that we lose our best farmland one small piece at a time. And it's a given that governments sneak their most controversial plans through the back door, as far as possible from such messy inconveniences as public opinion and due process.

As such, pundit Bill Tieleman's assertion that the proposed settlement is "an attempt by the Gordon Campbell government to use the treaty process to get land out of the ALR to facilitate a huge expansion of Deltaport" seems pretty reasonable. ...

The core of the problem is that governments -- aboriginal and otherwise -- are opportunist creatures of circumstance. From the Social Credit and Richmond's Terra Nova lands through the NDP and the Kamloops area's Six Mile Ranch to the B.C. Liberals in Tsawwassen, governments that ought to protect agricultural land too often view its conversion to another use as a cheap solution to a short-term political or economic challenge.

Governments regularly attach some noble cause to their efforts to exclude land from the reserve -- it's needed to raise the tiny town out of poverty, or for the old folks' home, or a ball field for the kids, or a park for the ages...anything that will get those little heartstrings a-humming. Lately, governments at all levels have been surfing a raft of land removal applications through the Agricultural Land Commission process on a wave of guilt over our society's treatment of aboriginals. We've seen the strategy in Prince George and Powell River, in Richmond and in Delta. ...

There's lots of evidence to suggest that the B.C. Liberals have steered the treaty negotiations in a direction that will facilitate port development. ...

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