LITMIR.BIZ

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a recovering alcoholic, says that he sees the cycle over and over. “They drink and party and end up fighting. It’s a big thing in Native culture.” Some fights can lead to years of animosity, which spill over into the governance of the nation. Band members have made some reforms in tribal governance – such as instituting four-year terms for the chief – that will give businesses that work with them a sense of certainty about the future. But a lot of decisions are clearly driven by family politics.

      The band did manage to get a loan from the federal government to build the resort, but band members did a lot of the actual construction. Despite the lodge’s success, Arnouse says they’ve had to be very careful about any expansion plans because it’s still very hard for them to get credit.

      Arnouse is a supporter of the property rights legislation, but some of his band members, not to mention other band leaders, are opposed to it. But because the legislation doesn’t bind First Nations to adopt the policies, Arnouse and Lebourdais seem confident that Parliament will pass the First Nations Property Ownership Act within the next couple of years. Regardless of which political party is in power, Lebourdais believes there’ll be enough support for it. “This isn’t my first rodeo,” he assures me.

      The biggest opposition, Lebourdais says, has come from other First Nations. “They think that white people are going to buy up the reserves,” he tells me. But under the terms of the act, the land would remain part of the reserve, just as other land might remain part of a city. And there’s something else, says Lebourdais: Aboriginal people in Canada “think property ownership is a white thing.” He worries that they really don’t understand their own history. “They’ve come to think that reserves are the way it was.”

      But Lebourdais has educated himself about the way things were. In the summer of 1910, Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier went on a tour of Canada. On August 25, he was met in Kamloops by a delegation of chiefs from the Secwépemc, Nlaka’pamux, and Syilx nations, who offered him a history of how their people had lived before whites came to their territory and what had happened since their first encounters a century earlier.

      When they first came among us there were only Indians here. They found the people of each tribe supreme in their own territory, and having tribal boundaries known and recognized by all. The country of each tribe was just the same as a very large farm or ranch (belonging to all the people of the tribe) from which they gathered their food and clothing, etc., fish which they got in plenty for food, grass and vegetation on which their horses grazed and the game lived, and much of which furnished materials for manufactures, etc., stone which furnished pipes, utensils, and tools, etc., trees which furnished firewood, materials for houses and utensils, plants, roots, seeds, nuts and berries which grew abundantly and were gathered in their season just the same as the crops on a ranch, and used for food; minerals, shells, etc., which were used for ornament and for plants, etc., water which was free to all.⁵²

      The purpose of this letter to Laurier was to complain about the reserve system – that is, the chiefs noted that they had been promised sufficient land to continue their farming and ranching activities, as well as access to water sources and the ability to travel freely off the reserve. White settlers had gone back on these promises, as occurred across much of the American and Canadian West. But in their hopes to get Laurier to intervene on their behalf, the chiefs invoked their own history of property rights.

      As the authors of Beyond the Indian Act write, “the historical evidence shows that the aboriginal peoples of North America are like all other human beings. They claim territories as collectivities but have no particular aversion to private property in the hands of families and individuals. Unless they are prevented by the force majeure of government, they change with the times and are willing to adopt whatever institutions of property are most economically efficient for the world in which they live.”⁵³

      It’s astonishing just how much First Nations have managed to accomplish while living within the confines of the Indian Act. After getting the heli-skiing venture off the ground, the Simpcw worked to ensure that they had more of a say in other sorts of development going on around them.

      In 2004, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that the Crown had a “duty to consult” with Aboriginal Peoples before developing land on which they may have claims, even if those claims are unproven. In reaction to this decision, Matthew and his colleagues developed a “consultation accommodation framework,” which they now present to companies interested in doing business on their territory (both on and off reserve). “In the past, companies have just treated us as a second thought, so they would get a license to do business on the territories without telling us what they wanted to do.” Now, the Simpcw not only get some of the revenues from projects with companies like BC Hydro but also ensure that companies mitigate the environmental impacts of the projects and reserve a certain number of jobs for members of the band. A lot of Simpcw have gained experience from these ventures, says Matthew, experience that they’ve been able to put to use on other projects. The arrangement and its benefits are similar to the ones that the Seneca Nation has been able to gain in upstate New York by creating construction firms that contract with the federal government.

      In a 2007 agreement with Kinder Morgan Canada, Matthew says, the Simpcw were given contracting agreements. They provided emergency flagging crews for construction workers, for instance. This has led to other opportunities, such as driving ambulances. Now, even when companies like these aren’t working on Aboriginal lands, they hire Simpcw people with this kind of experience to help.

      These frameworks are frankly not the ideal means of economic growth. Many companies probably see them as an elaborate shakedown mechanism, but at least the firms are getting some “certainty” out of the agreement. Matthew doesn’t see these agreements as the endgame for his band, either. He calls these projects “low-hanging fruit” that his people can pick while waiting for some kind of reform to come out of Ottawa.

      He complains that anything from registering a lease to dealing with a will can take decades on the reserve. “My father passed away intestate and it took 20 years to settle the land issue,” Matthew says. “When you have archaic clauses that govern how you do business on a reserve, there is virtually no opportunity for the creation of our own local economy.”

      When I ask Matthew what could possibly take 20 years for the approval of his father’s will by the Canadian government, he answers, “I don’t know; I’m not a bureaucrat. I don’t know anyone who works in Indian Land Management.” Of course, one problem is that federal bureaucrats are far removed from what’s happening on the ground with these bands. But another is what Matthew refers to as the “cover your ass policy,” which simply means, as he says, “They’re not going to risk it.”

      Risk what?

      Because the land is held in trust and because the government has a “fiduciary responsibility” to protect the interests of First Nations, the Canadian government is essentially liable if anything goes wrong. For instance, if a band builds a copper mine on reserve lands and an accident results in some kind of environmental contamination, the Canadian government is responsible for the consequences. As Matthew notes, the band could sue Ottawa for allowing the mine to be built. Under this system, First Nations are essentially denied the chance to take responsibility for their own future. “In the eyes of the federal government,” Matthew notes, “as a Status Indian I am still a child.”

      This is a theme I hear again and again from the chiefs. As Jules says, “In Canada, there are three types of individuals not allowed to own property – kids, the mentally incompetent, and Indians living on reserves.” Fixing this problem, he says, is a matter of “social justice.” Indians need to be able “to participate in the economy.” It’s not enough to get a few jobs out of a big natural resources project. It’s not enough to be able to conduct a gaming operation. “We need a diverse economy.”

      But Jules worries that his people have been living in a state of dependency for so long that they’ll need to train themselves to take responsibility again. He tells me that he was recently at a meeting of Saskatchewan chiefs discussing the problem of crack cocaine in their communities. He relates one chief’s proposed solution: “We need a billboard outside the communities that says ‘don’t

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