Supreme Court’s Tsilhqot’in First Nation ruling a game-changer for all – June 27, 2014 CBC article

Updates

A July 14, 2014 CBC article is entitled: “Tsilhqot’in ruling to be a focus at First Nations’ meeting in Halifax.”

A Sept. 29, 2014 Globe and Mail article is entitled: “Underwater discovery near Haida Gwaii could rewrite human history.”

A June 17, 2015 CBC article is entitled: Documentary ‘Trick or Treaty’ aims to tell the true story of Canada’s past.”

A June 18, 2015 Globe and Mail article is entitled: “Manitoba formally apologizes for mass adoption of aboriginal children.”

An April 15, 2016 Globe and Mail article by Bob Rae is entitled: “Attawapiskat is not alone: Suicide crisis is national problem.”

A Sept. 27, 2016 CBC article is entitled: “Prince William gets lesson in colonialism, cultural genocide at Black Rod ceremony: ‘The current Crown approach of deny and delay cannot continue,’ Grand Chief Ed John tells Prince William.”

[End of updates]

You can find the June 27, 2014 CBC article, entitled “Supreme Court’s Tsilhqot’in First Nation ruling a game-changer for all,” here.

A June 26, 2014 Globe and Mail article on the ruling is entitled: “Landmark Supreme Court ruling grants land title to B.C. First Nation.”

The version of the story that really inspired me is an article that appeared in the print edition of the June 27, 2014 Globe and Mail. The online version is entitled: “Supreme Court expands land-title rights in unanimous ruling.”

Here’s an excerpt from the latter article:

• The ruling “goes back to the Royal Proclamation of 1763,” said Brian Slattery, a professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, citing the foundational promise of the British Crown to secure ancestral lands for native use. “This is the fulfillment of that promise, held out by the Crown 250 years ago.”

• The case involved the Tsilqhot’in Nation (pronounced Sil-KO-tin), a semi-nomadic people whose elders had testified about customs and practices in a remote valley west of Williams Lake, B.C., for the 400 people who lived there – in an area more than half the size of Greater Vancouver – when the British Crown asserted its sovereignty in 1846. The province had argued the population was too small to be in control of such a wide space. And the B.C. Court of Appeal had said title was a matter of small, specific sites such as rocks from which aboriginals had fished.

• Aboriginal leaders in B.C. said they received the ruling with cheers and tears. They said it opens a new era in aboriginal relations with government, in which talks can proceed between equals as they assert land claims or deal with proposed development.

• “This case is about us regaining our independence – to be able to govern our own nation and rely on the natural resources of our land,” said Chief Roger William of the Xeni Gwet’in, one of the six groups that make up the Tsilhqot’in.

[End of excerpt]

The story of Oka

The story of Oka, which some people like to call the Oka crisis, helps to put this story into perspective.

First Nations history

The history of the First Nations is of interest for me.

Comment:

I was very pleased to know of this unanimous decision. I am very happy that this decision has been reached. Everything that I have read to date about it is a source of inspiration for me. This is a remarkable and inspiring story.

Updates

A Sept. 27, 2015 CBC article is entitled: “Lasting effects of trauma reaches across generations through DNA.”

An Aug. 10, 2016 CBC article is entitled: “Popular theory on how humans populated North America can’t be right, study shows.”

An Aug. 21, 2016 CBC article is entitled: “‘Trained our entire lives to ignore’: Gord Downie’s call to action for Indigenous in the North: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau praised because ‘he cares about the people way up north'”.

An Aug. 22, 2016 Toronto Star article is entitled: “Sixties Scoop survivors’ day in court finally arrives Tuesday: Indigenous Canadians taken from their homes and their culture suing Ottawa, decades later, over the federal government’s duty to them.”