The breathtaking hypocrisy of the howls for “rule of law”

The rule of law has been blatantly flouted for much of Canada's history when it comes to Indigenous land and rights.

An international celebration took place last October in the verdant coastal city of Bella Bella, BC. Heiltsuk Nation leaders finally opened their Gvakva'aus Hailzaqv, their Big House, a red and yellow cedar building which is the core of their governance and ceremonial life. The last Big House destroyed 120 years ago by Christian missionaries, the Heiltsuk say. Pivotal elements of indigenous life and law were declared illegal in those years, including the gift-giving potlatch ceremonies that "were once Coastal First People's primary economic system." The potlatch ban is hardly ancient history – that law wasn't removed from the book until 1951. There were nearly six million Canadians alive in 1951 who filled out the last census.

Unlike the Wet'suwet'en now at the forefront of national attention, the Heiltsuk people not only had to comply with odious Canadian rules (which could also be seen as breaching basic principles of justice), but have had their land confiscated beyond the Crown's negotiated systems. Treaties were not conducted in vast tracts of British Columbia – a direct affront to the rule of law. "At the time of the conquest, under international and British law, unless Aboriginal peoples were conquered or treaties were made with them, the aboriginal interest in their land was to be protected by the law of the European colonising government," explained historian and lawyer Bruce McIvor last week.

In view of the continuing demonstrations in BC and southern Ontario in support of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs opposed to the Coastal GasLink project, politicians and pundits have been calling for the rule of law to be upheld. CN and Via Rail trains were prevented from operating in areas of Canada by the demonstrations. Yet let's put the issue of the validity or illegality of such demonstrations aside for a moment. Where have all these influential voices been on the far larger question of the rule of law, the one that in the first place set the stage for these conflicts?

Aboriginal government structures and legal frameworks have been abolished for more than 150 years , traditional culture and language intentionally destroyed, treaties broken and aboriginal land acquired without a legal leg to stand on. Nevertheless, even with all the bad laws, bad faith, and shrugging away from the rule of law, we can not seem to have a pulse of empathy or tolerance, or self-awareness, as a society.

We also ignore that the courts have repeatedly acknowledged that indigenous laws and rights are part of Canadian rule of law. "Indigenous juridical traditions are among the legal traditions of Canada. They are part of land law, "Justice Sébastien Grammond, of the Federal Court, wrote in a 2018 decision.

National newspaper columnists have dubbed the Wet'suwet'en government structure a "oligarchy" founded on a "feudal genealogy," but that contempt has not been displayed by the courts (which help form the rule of law). The Supreme Court has acknowledged the limitations of the frameworks imposed by the Indian Act when considering Indigenous title holders – and expressly discussed the authority of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs in the 1997 Delgamuukw ruling. In the Tsilhqot'in decision of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Justice David Vickers put it succinctly: "While community level organisation might have meaning to a Canadian federal bureaucracy, it is irrelevant in addressing Aboriginal title and rights for the Tsilhqot'in people."

Indigenous communities have endeavoured to revive their original forms of government that existed before colonisation, but this is not a quick job. The Indian Act, the residential school system, the Sixties Scoop, and other assimilationist policies have gutted language, legal traditions, and skills. Groups like the First Nations Governance Center are working with communities to try to help restore the lost systems and empower local leadership. Canada was recommended by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1996 to support this restorative process but the report has languished on the shelf for decades.

Canadian legislation has been a slippery, discriminatory thing in the history of the country when it comes to Indigenous Peoples. Treaties are the norm but they are broken on a regular basis. Laws have been invented to suppress Indigenous society. It took the federal government until last year to fully delete the legislative gender discrimination from the Indian Act.

Throughout British Columbia, the form of land title agreements that established the Vancouver Island Douglas treaties (the subject of controversy themselves) were abandoned and unilateral settlement took place elsewhere in the province on large tracts of Indigenous land. The rule of law and the http://aboriginallawgroup595.lowescouponn.com/how-to-master-canadian-aboriginal-law-cases-in-6-simple-steps "Crown's Honour" were ignored. In 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada advised the Crown that it had a "moral, if not legal, duty" to settle the question of title in order to facilitate "the reconciliation of the pre-existence of aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the Crown." Today, however, deepening those fundamental issues surrounding land title and Canada 's fundamental violations of the rule of law appears to exhaust the situation.