Reconciliation in Perspective
The road to reconciliation has been long and arduous, and the journey is far from complete. Over the decades, there have been many who worked to clear the path—champions who have broken ground so those following in their stead might find the next stage of their travels, if not easy, perhaps a bit smoother. As a forum for celebrating those who have taken on these difficult tasks, IPSS enables these champions to share their success stories along with the challenges they encountered along the way.
One of the critical areas of reconciliation, and one most often fraught with difficulties, is Crown-Indigenous relations.
“One thing that we constantly come back to is how politics fits into the issues,” says IPSS Event Lead Margareta Dovgal. “Sometimes politicians respond, sometimes they lead, sometimes they're the fringes of social movements and they find themselves needing to rapidly catch up and be a part of the change that's taking place.”
During IPSS 2023, three individuals took the stage to discuss the important work they have done in this realm over the years: Tom Siddon, former Federal Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development; Ellis Ross, current BC MLA, Skeena; and Kimberly Murray, Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools.
Tom Siddon
Tom Siddon at the 2023 Indigenous Partnerships Success Showcase.
In February of 1990, Tom Siddon received a phone call from then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. At that point, Siddon had been an elected Member of Parliament (MP) since 1978 and had served as Minister of Fisheries and Oceans since 1985.
“[He] said, ‘Tom, I want to move you from the frying pan into the fire.’”
And so it was that Siddon was appointed Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
“We had been engaged and mandated by the Prime Minister to get on with resolving treaties that had been long expected and awaited ever since Sir Wilfred Laurier came to Kamloops in 1908 and promised that he would get on with treaties in British Columbia. And so, I was mandated by Prime Minister Mulroney to get on with concluding the comprehensive and specific land claims in this province.”
Siddon says that Bill Wilson [Jodi Wilson-Raybaud’s father], “who was highly respected in the history of British Columbia because he helped to include the recognition of aboriginal rights in the Canadian constitution” took him aside and told him it was key to talk with BC Premier Bill Vander Zalm and get the province onside.
“We had to persuade the province that they should be partners because they controlled most of the land and resources in this province. We were able to successfully do that.”
Siddon worked with four chiefs—Chief Sophie Pierre of the St. Mary's First Nation, Chief Wendy Grant-John of the Musqueam First Nation, Chief Joe Mathias of the Squamish First Nation, and Grand Chief Ed John of the Tl'azt'en First Nation—to put in place the British Columbia Treaty Commission Agreement.
The three-year period that Siddon served as Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development were marked by many other significant advances.
He worked with Chief Manny Jules to set up the process of Aboriginal taxation at the Indian Taxation Advisory Board, “which still exists and has created us a situation that was a hundred years overdue to allow for the taxation of railways, pipelines, highways, and other developments through every First Nation across Canada. Manny was a great inspiration to me in that period.
“Also, Robert Louie (Chief of Westbank First Nation), who headed up the movement to create effective self-government for First Nations across Canada. And Chief Roland Crowe, who helped us solve the problem of treaty land entitlement in Saskatchewan for which promises had been made even in the 19th century and never fulfilled by the federal and provincial government of Saskatchewan.”
Siddon was also involved with the signing of the Yukon Umbrella Final Agreement and the agreement to create the new territory of Nunavat.
“So, I learned to work with First Nations. The first lesson I learned was not to read from the notes that my staff officials at Indian Affairs, as it was called, provided me — all the advice, and what the lawyers were worried about, how we were going to pay for it, and what our obligations were. I wanted to hear from the chiefs.”
He says he remembers the first day in the Whitehorse meeting with the Council of Yukon First Nations. “I put aside the notes I was given, and I asked all the chiefs to go around the table. And they were led by Elijah Smith, a highly respected elder of the Yukon First Nations. And they told me what the issues were from their perspective, and I wrote down and took notes. And then we worked on creating the partnership agreement, which set out the framework to solve the land claims issues in the Yukon.
“The same happened in the eastern Arctic where we set out a process and we had consent plebiscites across the eastern Arctic. And Paul Quassa, the head of the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut, worked with myself and elders of the Inuit people to create a new territory, which is now called Nunavut.”
Siddon says the guidance he received from government was to create agreements with certainty that would be permanent. “What I heard so often from First Nations, was that we needed flexibility in our negotiating positions. But the bottom line is that we needed a spirit of true cooperation and willingness to give, so that we could achieve win-win solutions. And time was of the essence.”
Ellis Ross
Ellis Ross at the 2023 Indigenous Partnerships Success Showcase.
Ellis Ross served eight years as a Councillor of the Haisla Nation, then six years as Chief Councillor, before deciding to run in provincial politics. He was elected Member of the BC Legislative Assembly (MLA) for the Skeena region in 2017.
“By the time I became chief council, I realized that I wanted to pursue independence and self-determination 100 percent. And for me, that meant no more government money, no more government programs. I just wanted to get involved in the economy. And for that we had to fully realize the full potential of the Haida court case of 2004 and, to a lesser extent, the Chilcotin (Tsilqhot'in) court case.”
He says he hated seeing lawyers and consultants get rich while there was 80 percent unemployment on his reserve.
“Suicide was out of control. We turned that around by taking control.”
Ross had been involved with treaty negotiations for many years, but one of the first things he did as Chief Councillor was suspending his Nation’s participation in those negotiations. “We don't need it … If you want land, if you want employment, you want training, you want wealth, I can get that—and I don't need a treaty.
“You've got to leave a lot of those old narratives at the door, both sides. Most of what I hear in terms of complaints is how the Crown is not listening. But when I finally realized that we’ve got to get to a better place, I looked in the mirror and I realized I'm part of the problem. I'm not listening. I'm following an old narrative that was passed on to me by past leaders. And it does nothing to help the people on the ground.”
Ross has been a critic of BC’s passing of DRIPA (Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act), which he feels is unnecessary.
“The principles of reconciliation are already there. They've been there since 2004 with the Haida court case. Everything else has been political fluff. If you look at the UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) document that's passed in the BC legislature, it's all rhetoric. There's nothing substantive there. In fact, what is a crime to me is that now we're going to have to go to court to define what UNDRIP is.
“There's different levels of relationship with the Crown, but fundamentally it should be based on the case law that was established in the courts of BC and Canada. And that falls under section 35, the Constitution. It took us 40 years to define Section 35. But if you look at the principles of it, it lays out a roadmap in terms of how the Crown and First Nations should work together.”
Ross was part of the 2006 signing of a $50 million agreement to build a liquified natural gas (LNG) plant, Kitimat LNG, on Haisla Nation reserve land. While the project received environmental assessment approval in 2006 and obtained an export license, it ultimately never materialized. However, the LNG Canada facility, which received approvals in 2015 and is being built on the traditional territory of the Haisla, is nearly complete, and is on schedule to deliver its first shipments in 2025. The Haisla Nation also has its own LNG facility in the works: Cedar LNG, a proposed floating facility that is majority-owned by the Haisla, was granted an environmental assessment certificate by the Province of BC in 2023.
“I'm very proud to say that my band, the Haisla Band, is no longer talking about unemployment, poverty, reconciliation. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the management of wealth. We're talking about how many people are getting employed right now and building their own future without the help of Council, without the help of government. They're just actually pursuing the life that every other Canadian takes for granted, and I am extremely proud of that.”
He's a firm believer that First Nations’ prosperity benefits all British Columbians. “Think about this, a wealthy community like mine where everybody's got a job, they're making great incomes, the band is getting income, where are we going to spend it? We've got no economy on reserves, we've got no malls, we've got no car dealerships, we've got nothing. We spend it in our neighbouring communities ... If you uplift an Aboriginal community, the biggest beneficiaries, apart from First Nations, is the rest of British Columbia.”
Kimberly Murray
Kimberly Murray at the 2023 Indigenous Partnerships Success Showcase.
From 2010 to 2015, Kimberly Murray was the Executive Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), formed to document the history and impacts of the residential school system. The TRC’s multi-volume final report included 94 calls to action to further reconciliation between Canadians and Indigenous peoples.
In 2022, Murray was appointed as Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools.
She says her new appointment is a clear continuation of the TRC. Volume 4 of the report, which includes calls to action 71 through 76, was dedicated to missing children in unmarked burials.
“We identified 3,200 children that died. And we always knew that it was just the beginning. We always knew it was just the beginning because Canada and the churches hadn't given us all the records. Canada didn't fund the TRC to do a proper search of all this, the locations that we needed to go to.
“It needs to be picked up again because no one picked it up from the government to support communities. And we're so grateful for those communities that came forward and made announcements because it's brought your attention to the issue, it's brought the world's attention to it.”
Murray says that when Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced in 2021 it had discovered 200 potential burial sites on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, she felt anger “because not one of those calls to action had been implemented. Not a one. We need to do better. We're eight years later. We're still struggling to get those calls to action implemented.
“The children have been speaking for a very long time. They want to be found. They want proper ceremonies according to their family's traditions to be conducted.”
Onstage at IPSS 2023, she outlined the five principles guiding the work of her current office.
The first principle is that the bodies and the spirits of missing children must be treated with honour, respect, and dignity. “That's so important because we know that the children, when they were taken to Indian residential schools, were not treated with honour, respect, and dignity.”
The second principle is to honour the survivors. “We have to honour them and respect them as well because for far too long, Canada hasn't listened.”
The third principle is that Indigenous families and communities have a right to know the truth about what happened to their children.
The fourth principle is that the search for unmarked burials and the recovery of missing indigenous children must be governed by Indigenous laws.
“What does that mean? That means that the province and the country have to support this work to repatriate the children in whatever way communities want to see repatriation happen. They have an obligation to communities to allow communities to follow their protocols and practice their cultures in relation to the children and the burials and the burial sites.”
The fifth and final principle is that the searches and investigations must follow the truth.
“This requires tracing the children from when they were forcibly taken from their home communities to an Indian residential school or federal hospital, or any other institution they may have been taken. What we're now learning is that children were also transferred to other institutions, mental health institutions, provincial hospitals, reformatories, TB sanatoriums, and we're learning that children died there too. And that when they died there, Canada and the churches didn't tell their families that they had died or where they died, that Canada and the churches didn't tell their families where their children are buried.”
Murray says that she’s been hearing Indigenous communities and survivors saying that, for now, healing is paused. “There can't be full healing without the full truth, and they can't have healing because there's been no justice and accountability for what happened, to themselves and to their family members.
“I think what we're lacking in this country is a full framework for reparations, for full reparations. The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and the day school settlement agreement, they're just drops in the bucket. We've been approaching this a little piecemeal, like biting off little pieces. We need to address all the harms and wrongs in a full reparations framework, and then we'll get to reconciliation and healing.”