British Columbia Treaty Process (BCTP)

Rights, Governance, and the BC Treaty Process

Producer
BC Treaty Commission
Year

The keynote address given at the BC Treaty Commission Conference for First Nations that discusses the rights, governance and the BC treaty process. Cornell emphasizes the fact that treating making can be more than a process. It can lead to the phenomenal concept of nation building that is sweeping Native nations across the world.

Native Nations
Resource Type
Topics
Citation

Cornell, Stephen. "Forging Linkages & Finding Solutions." A BC Treaty Commission Conference for First Nations. BC Treaty Commission. Vancouver, British Columbia. October 29-31, 2008. Presentation.

Sophie Pierre: Governance the Ktunaxa Nation Way

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Sophie Pierre is a respected native leader that has been at the forefront of building key components and infrastructure for modern self-governance in the Ktunaxa Nation. Her tenure as Chief Commission for the BC Treaty Commission appointed by governments of Canada and British Columbia and the First Nations Summit positioned her as a leading advocate and trusted representative for Ktunaxa people asserting sovereignty.  Her experiences reveal a broad and thorough effort within the Ktunaxa Nation to create a solid foundation that protects their indigenous rights and supports the well being of Ktunaxa people.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Pierre, Sophie, "Governance the Ktunaxa Nation way," Interview, Leading Native Nations interview series, Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ,  April 04, 2015.

Veronica Hirsch:

“Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host, Veronica Hirsch. On today’s program we are honored to have with us Sophie Pierre. Sophie is a citizen of the Ktunaxa Nation and as of April 1, 2015, completed her tenure as the Chief Commissioner for the BC Treaty Commission after being appointed in April 2009 by agreement of the governments of Canada and British Columbia and the First Nations Summit. Sophie served the St. Mary’s Indian Band for 30 years, 26 years as elected chief, and was the administrator of the Ktunaxa Kinbasket Tribal Council for 25 years. She also served as the Tribal Chair of the Ktunaxa Nation council, Chairperson of the First Nations Finance Authority, President of St. Eugene Mission Holdings Limited and is Co-Chair of the International Advisory Council to the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. Sophie, welcome.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Thank you.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“It’s good to have you with us today. I’ve shared a little bit about who you are but why don’t you start by telling us a bit more about yourself?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, first of all, thank you very much for the invitation to participate in this initiative. Well, I’m Ktunaxa grandmother of, it’s going to be four in July. But I have myself and my husband, we have three children and going on four grandchildren now. And I just recently retired, and I’m not sure yet quite what that means. I think it’s going to mean that I kind of get to do what I really want to do instead of what I need to do which will be nice.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“It’ll be a nice transition I’m sure.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Very good. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing with us a bit about your own personal life, and it sounds who inspires you, whom you love. That’s always important in any of the work that we do. And I do want to transition though to some of the work that you’ve done in the past and would really appreciate your reflections upon that experience. I’d like to begin by asking you, how was the Ktunaxa Nation Council formed?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, the Ktunaxa Nation Council as it is today as the corporate entity, it was formed in the early ‘70s and it was really as a result of the Canadian government policy at the time, Department of Indian Affairs policy. Previous to that as I think most people know, in the late 1890s the Canadian government formed Indian reservations, Indian reserves across Canada called Indian Bands and governed under the Indian Act. And there started to be a real change, a resurgence that went on through the ‘60s and ‘70s, as it did here in the United States. I think a lot of what happened in Canada kind of was as a result of the change that was happening here in the United States in Indian Country. And so the federal government until then had only recognized the individual Indian Bands. So in British Columbia there are 200 Indian Bands. But in terms of nations, of people, there are very, much smaller number closer to about the 30 number within British Columbia. Well, with our Ktunaxa Nation we have five Indian Bands in British Columbia in the southeast corner of British Columbia in the Rocky Mountain Trench that are part of the Ktunaxa Nation. We also have community in Idaho and also in Montana because the Ktunaxa Nation was one of those along the 49th Parallel where our nation was divided into Canada and the United States. And because we are a nomadic people, well we still are. We were a nomadic people, maybe not as much nomadic now as, but we certainly still travel a lot. Because we’re a nomadic people, those that happened to be at that point in time in the northern part of our territory became Canadians and in some instances like whole families were divided in half where part of the family would have been in Canada, the other part was in the United States either in Montana or Idaho when they put in the 49th Parallel and then created the communities. So it was through the ‘70s and ‘80s when just that whole Indian nationhood and understanding and going back to our roots and all of that when that was developing that we really came together strong as the Ktunaxa Nation and reconnecting. The connections between our people in Canada and the United States had never been really broken but they weren’t as strong and they have really become a lot stronger since. So that’s how, at that same time the Canadian government was now recognizing collectives of Indian Bands as a tribal council. So we started out as a tribal council and that evolved into the recognition of us as the Ktunaxa Nation.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you for explaining how the Ktunaxa communities that comprise the Ktunaxa Nation are and always have been one nation. Regardless of this 49th Parallel.”

Sophie Pierre:

“That’s right, yes. Absolutely, yes.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“But I do want to focus specifically on the Ktunaxa communities that are now located within the Canadian geographical boundaries and ask you what Ktunaxa communities comprise the Ktunaxa Nation Council?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Right now there are, four of the five are part of the Ktunaxa Nation Council. We have Tobacco Plains and I’ll also give the Ktunaxa names for the places. Tobacco Plains is Ê”akinkÌ“umÇ‚asnuqÇ‚iÊ”it. We have Ê”akisqÌ“nuk, which is in the north. We have Ê”aqÌ“am, which is St. Mary’s. And we have yaqan nuykiy, which is also Lower Kootenay or Creston. So those are the four that comprise the existing Ktunaxa Nation Council as its corporate entity. But we also have another community there, the Shuswap Indian Band that is a small Indian Band that the Ktunaxa people when Indian reserves were being created had made allowances for people who had come over from west of our traditional territory over the mountains into our traditional territory. They’d actually come for really for political asylum as it were, protection from their own people and they ended up staying and becoming a part of us. But right now they are not part of the corporate entity although they have been in the past.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. Do the communities comprising the Ktunaxa Nation Council have their own governance?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes. Each of the, and it’s a spillover right now of the Indian Act and being Indian Bands. Under the Indian Act each Indian Band has the ability to elect a chief and council members and as you mentioned in my introduction, I was on council for 30 years and 26 as elected chief. So each of the communities have that, we’re in the stage of transition between still being Indian Bands and eventually reaching and implementing a negotiated treaty and then our governing structure will change a little bit.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you for that. Thank you for explaining that change may be eminent. Whether that is soon or a little bit later.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. How do the communities comprising the Ktunaxa Nation Council define nationhood and citizenship?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, I think that with our, with the four communities and actually with many of the members of the fifth community, because the Shuswap Indian Band is, like half of the people there are of Ktunaxa ancestry so they also participate when we talk about our larger nation question as opposed to just what’s happening individually in the communities or at the Indian Band level. So how we’ve defined nationhood is that it goes back to citizenship and really it goes back to your roots.

In Ktunaxa our ancestors or our relations, our grandparents, our ancestors, are called, In our Ktunaxa language our ancestors, our, we refer to them as [Ktunaxa language] and when you take that word apart [Ktunaxa language] is a root. So really what you’re saying is that our ancestors are our roots and if you can trace your roots back to the Ktunaxa Nation, then you are Ktunaxa. You’re accepted as Ktunaxa because you are, you have [Ktunaxa language]. And what I’ve just said is your ancestors are Ktunaxa. And as a nation that’s how we’ve determined our citizenship and that’s how we determine our nationhood is by those, by everyone that can trace their ancestry.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“You mentioned this aspect of tracing ancestry and I would venture, please correct me if this is not an appropriate comparison, within the United States this terminology of lineal descent. Is that, is what you’ve just described of tracing one’s Ktunaxa ancestry distinct from lineal descent.”

Sophie Pierre:

“I’m not really sure just how lineal descent is defined but I know that one of the things that we do not, we do not uphold as I know happens in the United States is this blood quantum. Yeah, so is lineal,  If that’s what you mean by lineal descent, no we don’t have that. We say that if you can trace your roots then that is proof enough of being a citizen of the Ktunaxa Nation.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“At times, depending on what native nation in the United States we’re talking about may employ lineal descent criteria and in fact blood quantum may come into play whereas other nations within the United States have used a type of document and very often it has been a written record, perhaps not a written record that’s been drafted by the community itself but rather by an appointed U.S. Indian agent for instance. And using that as an example where a community might say, ‘We are going to use a specific document regardless of whether or not we had any real agency in its authorship to trace our “lineal descent”.’ The reason I ask that question is, is one’s ability to trace his or her Ktunaxa ancestry, is it dependent upon a written record, can it be a type of unwritten record?”

Sophie Pierre:

“It can, well, it’s really dependent on both. Obviously if you have the written record and in Canada we have what’s called the status Indians so that there’s the list of the Indians that the government recognized. But then for a whole lot of reasons, some of which were legal reasons, that people lost their status as Indians so we may have and in fact we have had, we do have Ktunaxa who are not considered status. Well, that doesn’t, the status, the idea of status or non-status does not matter to us. That’s not important, that’s not what’s important here. What’s important is that you have, if it’s a written record or you have your oral history and people know who they are. If you’re born Ktunaxa, you’re not going to change into a German. You’re always going to be Ktunaxa.

Veronica Hirsch:

“This idea or as you’ve express I should say of Ktunaxa identity and Ktunaxa citizenship is that, that applies at the nation level not at the specific community level. Am I understanding that?”

Sophie Pierre:

“No, it does apply also at the community level but we’re, as I mentioned before, we’re in transition. The communities right now are governed still through the Indian Act so the federal government still has a fair amount of influence on that and for example the federal government will provide money say for education. But they only provide it for those people who are considered to be status Indians. Now for the community, there, you find quite often, I know at St. Mary’s we did this all the time and probably still do where if we’ve got people that we know are our people but they’re not considered status, there are ways of finding ways that you can help them but they’re not going to be on that status roll where we get money from the government for them. And that really is the only difference. What we’re working towards once we implement a treaty is that we’re going to have the communities, we’ll still have a community governance level that will look after the internal affairs of that community but it will be more at a recognizing citizens as opposed to status Indians and also recognizing that they have certain responsibilities within their community but they also have responsibilities within the overall Ktunaxa territory, traditional territory.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. What is the Ktunaxa Nation citizenship code and is this code unwritten or written?”

Sophie Pierre:

“At the time, it’s being written. We don’t,  It’s written but it’s not to the sense where you can say that it’s been adopted because eventually it will have to be voted on by the people as will everything else that is going to be part of our treaty. And the same thing applies to the constitution. We are also, because citizenship of course will be part of our constitution and all of that is coming as a, it’s what we’re working on through the treaty process and will come as part of the ratification process as we start ratifying our treaty.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Realizing that the Ktunaxa Nation citizenship code is in process, who helped define and draft the code, who is helping to do that?”

Sophie Pierre:

“We’ve got staff of course with the treaty office that have been working on that over the years and they’ve been working in the community but we also have what we call TKL which is traditional language and culture group and they’re particularly elders. Unfortunately we’re like a lot of Indian nations where we’re losing many of our elders. In fact I think I’ve become one of them so it’s not like me talking about somebody else being an elder that’s bringing this knowledge forward. It’s now time for people of my generation that we need to step up and provide that direction, that leadership so that’s where all of that would be coming. Everything will be vetted through the TKL.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Are Ktunaxa defined nationhood and citizenship definitions and criteria distinct from band membership and status/non-status designations assigned by the Canadian government?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes. They will be different. Right now we are using both as I said because we are still under the Indian Act as Indian Act Bands so we still have those certain requirements that we have with the federal government but that is,  The whole point of being in treaty negotiations is as we say ‘to get out from under the Indian Act and to become self-governing.’ So of course citizenship and nationhood, all of that will be quite different from being an Indian Act Band under the Indian, yeah, under the Indian Affairs Department.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Realizing that citizenship as you mentioned will be different once the treaty process is complete, is finalized and as part of that drafting, completing the draft of the citizenship code, completing a constitution which would outline provisions for citizenship, is there any discussion among those individuals who as I believe you said TKL were part of that body. Is there any discussion of if it would be appropriate and if it is appropriate to let’s say restore the for lack of a better word status of current Ktunaxa community members who do not have that status Indian designation?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, the, there will be no status Indian designation once we are self-governing. We will be Ktunaxa citizens. Anyone who’s got [Ktunaxa language] that are Ktunaxa will be Ktunaxa citizens. No more status/non-status.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“That’s very empowering.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes, it is. Yes. And I think that it really is, that’s really what nation rebuilding is all about is reclaiming something so fundamental as your citizenship.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And being able to define it on your own terms.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Absolutely, yes.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“In ways that underscore one’s Ktunaxa identity.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Exactly. Yes. That I think is one of the, really the powerful parts about us being in this and pursuing treaty negotiations is to regain that.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“You mentioned how the treaty negotiation process is helping facilitate the actual drafting of a constitution.”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And the eventual ratification and implementation of same. At the current time, do Ktunaxa Nation council member communities themselves have unwritten or written constitutions?”

Sophie Pierre:

“No. None of the communities, none of the Indian Bands have written constitutions. They’re just Indian Bands. They’re pretty much under the Indian Act.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. What process did the Ktunaxa Nation Council use to identify and articulate the four pillars that comprise its national vision and how long did this process take?”

Sophie Pierre:

“The entire process probably took about five years. But just in terms of coming to an understanding of what our vision statement would be, that took definitely two years of going into the communities, going, sitting at the kitchen table, having Band meetings, having suppers, having just our AGM talking about it so that eventually we agreed on the wording of our vision and it covers those four pillars which are our people, our land, our language and culture and our governing process. And at the center of that with the spokes going out, at the center of it would be the administration of that governance.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“In the conversations you mentioned, sometimes even at the, a particular family’s kitchen table, were all age ranges included in articulating that four pillars statement?”

Sophie Pierre:

“That was the intent. I don’t know if it was always possible to have like the very young people, the teenagers. They certainly had an opportunity but usually teenagers are more interested in other things and find that kind of discussion boring but when they were at the kitchen table, I think that that’s probably when you had more involvement from the younger generation. They don’t really have much use for going to Band meetings and expressing their opinions there. They’d rather be out playing basketball or whatever. But yeah, the intent and I know that certainly the effort was there to get the input from all ages.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Why was it important to get input from all age ranges?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, of course the knowledge of our ways from the elders and then pass it down through the generations but really to, it’s always important to have as much involvement as possible from the younger generation ‘cause they are the ones really that are going to live with it and I think that that’s really how, and you’ve got to get that message across and have people understanding that and recognizing that yeah if,  They can choose not to participate but it means that whatever the rest of the people come up with is what they’re going to have to live with.”

Sophie Pierre:

“I think that what we are doing at home is using the social media because that’s such a big part of young people’s lives. I don’t really understand it. I think that it would get really kind of tiring to be talking so much chatter all the time but that really is the environment that our young people are in today and they thrive on that. So that is one of the tasks of the Treaty Nation Office is to get as much as possible on social media and to have that kind of chatter going on. We had a really good exercise in our community at Ê”aqÌ“am, at St. Mary’s. It was more about community development. We were talking about our Indian reserve lands and how we’re going to be developing it ‘cause we have an opportunity for commercial development but it has to go to a referendum for all the community members to decide if this land is going to be set aside for commercial development. So we had a very young woman, Denny, she was probably about 22 or 23 at the time and she went and she led this and so she was able to get all age groups to be involved including the teenagers and like very young, young people and it was just because she’s young herself and she was able to connect with them. And the community development plan that we ended up with, I’m really quite proud of at St. Mary’s. It depicts a teepee and each of the poles is something that goes on in the community. There’s a pole that represents education and a pole that represents housing and child and family services so all of these, health and everything. So when all the poles are together and they’re tied tight, of course you’ve got a nice sturdy structure to protect you but if one of the poles gets loose or one of the poles breaks, you start having trouble. So we’re always talking about how we’ve got to strengthen the poles within the teepee of our community. And so it’s that kind of example that we have in terms of just finding ways of encouraging the young people to participate.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. I’d like to transition a bit and ask how leadership is identified and specifically how are Ktunaxa Nation Council leaders chosen?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Right now because we are still under the Indian Act we do that by election and it’s all of our communities are on five year terms. I’m sorry, four year terms. Four year terms. In all of our communities those terms are staggered so that you never have a year where you’d have a total new council. And the,  When you’re elected, the council has five members and each of them would hold one of the pillars, would be responsible for one of the pillars in our vision statement, the four major pillars and then of course the overall administration.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Who is eligible then to vote for the Ktunaxa Nation Council leadership? You mentioned that the communities comprising the Ktunaxa Nation are eligible to vote. Could you explain maybe some of that voting eligibility criteria?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, again it’s through the Indian Act and so it would be those “status” Indians who are registered members of, I’ll use my community for example. So they’re status members of St. Mary’s Indian Reserve and so we have that anybody who is a status member over the age of 18 is eligible to vote. Now we have our own election code within our community and it determines who is eligible to vote, who is eligible to run. There’s concern that if you have,  We have people that can,  They can live anywhere. They don’t have to live on reserve to vote. So even if they lived in Montana, they’re eligible to vote at St. Mary’s because they are a “status” member of our community. However, they would not be eligible to run for office ‘cause it’s... It just makes common sense. You need people who are going to be in your governing structure to be people who are living in the community primarily. But even if they just, if they live in Cranbrook that’s not a problem, you can still run for council.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Do Ktunaxa communities define voting criteria and determine voting eligibility individually?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes. Under the Indian Act there’s, we’re all, we all have the ability to develop what I just called our election code so each of the communities has that.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And among the communities and regarding their election codes, are there any voting eligibility differences?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, yeah. I think there may be in terms of whether or not the person has to actually live say within the Ktunaxa traditional territory or they can live anywhere in the world and vote ‘cause with, I think with one of our communities it’s more that you had to live within the territory which still isn’t a real problem. Like I said in terms of anybody living in Montana in our traditional territory they’d still be able to vote. But yeah there was, and it was a result of a court case that the Canadian law says now that if someone’s living in Vancouver or Toronto, they’re still a Band member and they’re, so they’re eligible to vote. So you can have that in your own election code but if you don’t, so long as you have your election code developed, then that supersedes what is in the Indian Act.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. The reason I asked that is if there were any type of voting eligibility differences among the various Ktunaxa communities, if that had ever internally for the Ktunaxa Nation caused any type of discussion or concern over our criteria or our election code somewhat differs from our relative.”

Sophie Pierre:

“No, that has not, that has never really been an issue because I think that the fact that we’re all still considered to be Indian Bands right now and so there’s a certain fundamental like level of responsibility that comes directly from the Indian Act that is always going to be there as, determining.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And it sounds like if there were any differences that those will and are in the process of being resolved once the Ktunaxa Nation Council defines, completes defining its voting eligibility criteria at that national level.”

Sophie Pierre:

“That’s right, at that citizenship level. And so that of course then becomes all part of our constitution because we’ll have the governors of the nation which is our entire traditional territory and then we will have people who will still be in a community governance ‘cause the communities will continue to have their own responsibilities for their community and their members but it’s that overall, that larger government that we’re developing. I think that that’s the bigger step that we’re taking right now.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“With regard to that explanation of the larger overall governing structure which would be embodied by the Ktunaxa Nation Council and then the community level structure among the various communities, St. Mary’s for instance, Tobacco Plains and the other communities that you’ve already mentioned, is that structure of having this larger umbrella so to speak and then more localized governments, does that speak to traditional governance structures that Ktunaxa citizens themselves pursued as a means of self-organization?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, I think that it’s the modern if you will, it’s the evolving way of expressing our traditional governance because traditionally, as I said, our people were nomadic people and so there, within the group, within the family group that are in a particular area at a time, at a particular time say at Lower Kootenay and they’re there, either north at what’s called Creston now or just like five miles south at Bonner’s Ferry, those are all the same families really and so within that particular family grouping there would have been certain leadership positions and that was always the way that it was. And then when you have people come together, then there would be a recognized leader, I don’t know what you want to, like a chief of the, of Ktunaxa if they’re dealing with another nation, the Blackfeet or the U.S. government.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And I asked that question because as we notice nations, for instance Ktunaxa Nation Council define for itself who comprises us, who we are, that many native nations are looking at their traditional governance structures and asking, ‘Are elements of our traditional governance structures, do they still exist in some form or fashion simply are they translated or can they be translated to a contemporary context? Is that translation appropriate? Can we really make the successful argument for our current or I should say our contemporary structure that in fact it does arise from former contexts where we operated solely according to our own traditional governance systems?’”

Sophie Pierre:

“What we did as we’re doing the developmental work many, 20 years ago within our nation doing the developmental work for our treaty, we, there was a lot of work that was done around how traditional leadership roles would have been determined and so there was, like in all of our stories we have for example the Duck chief. So that was a person that was responsible for knowing when you go out duck hunting and how you do it and how you share so that person had that certain leadership responsibility. So to be similar today for someone to be in like an economic development kind of role. In all of our stories there’s always reference to like the Duck chief, the Deer chief and then there was their religious, they had a person that was responsible for spirituality. So there would be the head person who would be for that, I don’t know what other term to use other than the geographer who said, ‘Okay, well, folks, we’re going to have to move in three months time and we’re going to move over here.’ So there was those kind of, always those kind of roles and responsibilities and so we’ve taken that, those kind of stories and translated them into the types of positions we need today. So we need people who are responsible for lands and resources, we need people who are responsible for traditional language and culture. We need people who are responsible for government, for the overall governance. We need people who are responsible for child and family services, all of our social services.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. As you mentioned the geographer I thought, ‘A contemporary term we might say is an eco-manager.’”

Sophie Pierre:

“An eco-manager, sure. Yes. Yeah, ‘cause you don’t want to overuse an area. It’s time to move, yeah.”

Sophie Pierre:

“The ones who do choose to participate such as the Ktunaxa Nation, it is our desire to be self-governing, to be away, to be out from under the Indian Act and to have, to have things, to have certainty for our people so that we have certainty in terms of land that will be treaty lands and those are lands where we have complete jurisdiction and I think that it’s that whole jurisdiction and governance area that’s really, really important here. And then we would have areas where we have co-management, we have shared decision making and then we have some areas where we would, we actually give up having any kind of decision making. We don’t have it now to begin with but it’s more that it’s recognized, that we recognize and that we give up that. I don’t think that Ktunaxa people will ever really have decision making in certain municipalities unless you happen to live there. Just like I wouldn’t want the municipality of Cranbrook to have decision making over St. Mary’s then neither should St. Mary’s have decision making over Cranbrook except where it comes to this overall shared decision making of the area if they wanted to put a nuclear plant which I don’t think they would want to anyway. But if that’s what they wanted to do, then we would have a say in that just like anybody else who lives in the region.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. In your opinion is perhaps a particular community’s or First Nation’s reluctance to participate in the BC Treaty Commission process, is it for concern that in doing so that that community could sacrifice certain aspects or certain access to let’s say government services for instance that they currently possess?”

Sophie Pierre:

“I don’t think it’s so much the access to government services. I think that those First Nations who’ve made a very knowledge based decision not to participate in the treaty process do for some very fundamental reasons. Number one is that the federal government up ‘til very recently has always been and actually they haven’t really changed their policy in terms of they come in with a deniability of the existence of Aboriginal title, Aboriginal rights. That’s where they start with and then you’ve got to prove it as you go through your negotiations. Tsilhqot’in decision last summer Supreme Court of Canada says very differently that yes, Aboriginal people do have Aboriginal title. But the criteria for determining your Aboriginal title is quite strict with, if you just look at the Supreme Court decision that’s there. So there are those First Nations that say, ‘No, we are, ’ like I guess, I don’t think they’re actually saying, ‘We want to stay as an Indian Band,’ but what they’re saying is that, ‘We don’t feel that it’s the right decision for us to accept extinguishment of Aboriginal title, ‘which is where the Canadian government used to come in on. That position has changed drastically over the last 20 years but 20 years ago when this process started that definitely was where they were coming from. So it was always the elimination if you will of Aboriginal, but you had to accept that in order to get into the treaty process. So a lot of First Nations they said, ‘No, we’re not starting from that position.’ There were other First Nations that said, ‘We’re interested in having treaty negotiations,’ and they came into the process for a while but they were not happy with the level of mandate that they felt the federal government had was much too narrow for them and so they have pulled back and aren’t in negotiations. Their names are still listed because they’re intent to negotiate was actually registered. So until they say, ‘We want to pull our name from that,’ they would still be listed as having an intent to negotiate. But they’re very concerned with the limited mandate that federal and provincial governments have for their negotiation mandates.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Regarding those First Nations who as you mentioned 20 years ago were very concerned about the extinguishment of Aboriginal title perhaps as the reason, a very deliberate and knowledge based reason for choosing not to engage in the process, is there opportunity for any one of those nations to now engage in the process?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes, there is. There continues to be. The maiden BC treaty negotiation process that I was fortunate enough to be Chief Commissioner of for the BC Treaty Commission for the last six years, that process is there and it’s, hopefully it’s going to go through some changes so that the Treaty Commission really will be in a stronger position in terms of facilitating the negotiations and ensuring that the federal and provincial governments like keep their feet to the fire to get these negotiations through. But I think that there, the mandate and that hard line position about extinguishment, that definitely has softened over the years and it’s not that anybody ever went into it thinking that yes, we’re going to extinguish our rights. That was never the position of the First Nations who entered the treaty process. No, they’ve always said, ‘We’re not going to extinguish our rights. We’re here to negotiate.’ And so if you come in with a position of extinguishment, you’re not coming in to negotiate ‘cause you negotiate interests. It’s very, very difficult to negotiate positions.”

Veronica Hirsch: 

“Good point. How many First Nations treaties have been negotiated to date? You mentioned that some are in process and are listed as such. If you had to provide an estimate, do you have an estimate for how many have been let’s say finalized?”

Sophie Pierre:

“No, I know for sure. We’ve had, two days after I started as Chief Commissioner we enacted our first treaty so I always took credit for that saying, ‘I’m pretty good. I got a treaty in two days.’ But of course that took 20 years before that. So Tsawwassen Treaty has been enacted since 2009 and then in 2010 we had the Maa-nulth Treaty which were five communities that had come together very similar to our where they come together and negotiated together but they ended up with their own individual treaties, each of those communities whereas the Ktunaxa Nation we will have one treaty for the Ktunaxa Nation and we will have the four and hopefully five communities that will participate from the benefits of that treaty.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Do you have an estimate for how many nations are in process, not ones that have let’s say finalized a treaty but are at some stage, maybe close to finalization?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yes. We’ve got and actually a good source for this is always the website for the BC Treaty Commission. Our annual report, we have every year since the creation of this process the Treaty Commission has always put in a status report that shows,  There are six stages to negotiations so then they’ll show, we show the First Nations that are implementing treaties and then we show those First Nations that have a final agreement but not yet an enactment date. Well, they haven’t implemented their treaty but they have a final agreement and so they’re going from final agreement stage to actual implementation and right now we have four tables that are at that and that doesn’t mean four Indian Bands ‘cause a couple of them will have more than one community that’s working with them. And then we have another group of about eight that are in advanced agreement and principle stage which is Stage 4 and then another 10 or so that are less advanced but they’re also in agreement and principle and then we have a couple more that would be in the framework. So it starts out you put in a statement of intent then there’s a readiness criteria that would be Stage 2 so I think we have one or two that are in readiness. And then you go into framework, agreement and principle, final agreement and implementation. Those are the six stages. But for numbers, it’s best to get it off our website. They’re right there.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. You mentioned the Ktunaxa Nation Council’s decision, it sounds like it was a measured decision, to engage in the BC Treaty Commission process and I’d like to ask you, in your opinion, what impacts has the Ktunaxa Nation Council’s involvement in this process, what impacts have there been?”

Sophie Pierre:

“I think the impacts are incalculable. We have rebuilt our nation. The level of governance that is at the community and at the nation level is, it’s way better organized and it’s much stronger and it has more credibility first and foremost among our own people but the credibility that we as a governing nation, as the Ktunaxa Nation have, with government, both Canadian and provincial governments, with industry—really, really important. There was a time when I was first elected chief that the local mining or forest companies wouldn’t even think of calling the Indian reserve or the Indian chief if they were going to do anything. Now they wouldn’t even think of starting anything without first consulting with us and seeking our consent. So it has really been, well, it’s a game changer for us. It has been a game changer for us.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“And how has it been a game changer? You mentioned the ways in which Ktunaxa Nation has been able to really assert itself as a body politic and I wanted to ask is it because individual members of the Ktunaxa Nation chose to engage in dialogue that somehow inspired a sense of ability to create a platform where Ktunaxa citizens could come together and identify their own priorities and then articulate those priorities to for instance the BC Treaty Commission?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, that’s certainly a part of it but I think that it’s even more fundamental than that. It was the regrowth or the rebirth if you will of who we are as a people, that we’re not just [Ktunaxa language] which is like St. Mary’s or [Ktunaxa language], that we are in fact all Ktunaxa and that our relatives in Montana and Idaho we are all part of Ktunaxa [Ktunaxa language] and we’re all the same people and we have the very same land responsibilities to protect. And so it’s been that kind of, I think that that’s really where it’s had the most fundamental impact. And because of that, because of that re-strengthening of us as a nation, as we accepted that responsibility ourselves, it was then very difficult for government and industry to ignore that because we just wouldn’t allow that to happen. It’s very different if you’re just working as an individual Indian Band. You don’t have that kind of authority, you don’t have that kind of credibility. But as a nation, you can’t do anything in our territory without getting the consent of the Ktunaxa Nation.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. How do First Nations and the BC Treaty Commission address overlapping claims regarding traditional territory?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Now that is the $60 billion question I guess, bringing it up to date, not $60 million. Overlapping claims and shared territory are going to continue to be one of the biggest challenges I think for First Nations and a lot of it stems from this whole, the creation of Indian reserves and where you have a number of Indian reserves acting independently within a group of people who are all the same culture, language and where they don’t come together as a nation such as we’ve done in Ktunaxa. I totally understand where you have such a large geographic space or many, many communities that is very difficult to do that but this is going to be a really tough question. And as a treaty commission what we’ve done is that we’ve created an environment so that people can be encouraged to start finding their own solutions and we continue to provide resources so that First Nations can come together and talk, particularly those First Nations who are in treaty and their neighboring First Nation is not in treaty and they have an overlapping claim or they have a shared territory and that needs to really have some resolution before a final treaty can be implemented. In some instances there’s absolutely no incentive for the First Nation who’s not in treaty. They can just say, ‘Forget it. We’re not, we don’t want to talk to you. We haven’t talked to you for the last 50 years and we’re not going to talk to you now.’ We really have those kind of situations. It’s just, it’s unfortunate and these are people who are related, who are of the same language group, they’re the same culture, they’re the same people but they’re fighting with each other over their shared territory. Yeah, it’s going to be a tough one.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“What resources specifically have First Nations who are engaged in trying to address this overlapping traditional territory situation, what resources have those nations specified that this is one of our most pressing needs and we would appreciate help in this specific area?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, it’s particular for those First Nations that are in, they’re reaching the end of agreement and principle or they’re in final agreement and they really need to have some solution for their shared territory with their neighboring, either their neighboring families or in some instances it’s actually a different nation altogether. For example with the Ktunaxa, we have shared territory issues with Okanagans and with Shuswaps and so as a Ktunaxa Nation we have a responsibility to enter into some solution whether it’s going to be a protocol or I don’t know what we’ll end up with but some solution how we’re going to continue to share that territory into the future. And right now it’s just a matter of our neighbors saying, ‘Well, no, we don’t want to talk to you. That’s our land, it’s not yours and we’re not going to talk about it.’ That doesn’t help. That doesn’t help anybody. It doesn’t, because right now the government continues to use it,  industry continues to use and we’re both losing so that’s why we need to sit down and we really need to talk about not so much how we divide the territory amongst each other but how we share and protect the territory for all future generations. I think that’s really where we’ve got to put our minds to.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Would it be possible in certain instances for let’s say neighboring nations who are not of the same linguistic group for instance but for as long as anyone can remember have always lived side by side, is there any possibility in your opinion for nations that have always lived, coexisted side by side to perhaps look at some of their shared history and maybe some of the traditional governance approaches to using shared territory to inform perhaps a protocol that you mentioned?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Yeah. And we’ve got examples of that. We just,  I still say we as if I’m part of the BC Treaty Commission. It’s going to take me a while to get over that. But the BC Treaty Commission just hosted a forum in the middle of March and on the last day of the three day forum we talked specifically about overlapping claims and shared territory and we had a film clip that was shared with us between two very distinct nations and this was when Nisga’a were going for their final agreement, their treaty, and it was with one of their neighboring nations where they came together and,  It was long and hard work for them to reach this protocol but they did it in a traditional way and they celebrated the protocol in a traditional way like in a, it was a big gymnasium but it would have been like a long house kind of way where they were brought in, the leaders were brought in with the declaration, with the drums and with ceremony. And I think that that’s really where our strength lies is in our ceremony and once we realize that, once we reaccept that I think that we’re going to be able to reach resolution a lot easier. And that’s always been my position that we have,  We’ve shared this territory for thousands upon thousands of years and other than having straight out warfare which of course we did but eliminating that, there are other ways that traditionally we were always able to share that territory and it was never that there was a line drawn and this is where I’m so,  I’m just so afraid of us getting sucked into that where we divide the land between us as opposed to agreeing on how we continue to share it and protect it because if we divide it between us, we’re not protecting it.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you. I’d like to return a bit to how communities comprising the Ktunaxa Nation function really on a day to day basis and wanted to know if you could speak to how a community, if a community I should say as it functions on a day to day basis, to what extent do those communities make autonomous decisions and in what areas?”

Sophie Pierre:

“Well, autonomous to the extent of being an Indian Band where you still have the minister has the ability to change his mind at the end of the day. The communities, they’re responsible for the services and the community development like that is within their community and so they’re autonomous in that way. But I don’t think that it, it certainly isn’t true self-governance and it can’t be so long as it’s on Indian reserve lands determined by the Indian Act.

Veronica Hirsch:

 ”Returning to the structure of the Ktunaxa Nation Council, would the council potentially ever determine whether certain decisions made at the member community level are appropriate, whether they are in line, in support of the Ktunaxa Nation constitution for instance, at what point might the overall structure of the Ktunaxa Nation Council either step in or not when it comes to the day to day function at the community level?”

Sophie Pierre:

“I don’t think that there’s really anticipated that there would be a role for the overall governing body to step in and have a say at the individual community level. I suppose there might be some instances of that but I can’t think of anything right now on where we,  ‘Cause really what we’re more interested in is that the overall governing body,  Well, no, actually there is a way here. We have like a Department of Finance if you will, Ministry of Finance. So money that is raised off our traditional lands, the larger traditional lands, not the individual Indian Bands but the larger traditional territories, monies that are raised there go into the treasury for the communities and at the nation level decisions are made about what that, how that money will be distributed. A portion of it will remain at the nation level and it will remain there for certain purposes, then portions of it will go into the community and when it goes into the community it will go into the community specifically for like education or housing or economic development. So there’s I guess in that sense there might be some level of governance from the nation body but the autonomy really of the individual community for maintaining its own services and responsibilities, that will remain.”

Sophie Pierre:

“We have had this, the difficulty of having the Shuswap Indian Band be in part of our Ktunaxa Nation Council. They were not, they did not agree with some of the decisions that were made and we always go by, we try to go by consensus but if you can’t get straight out consensus then you go by the majority and so they were not happy with a couple of decisions made and that’s why they, the leadership at that time decided to pull out. Whether or not they will continue to be out of it, the nation council is a question for the future. But I think that that was a way of where we could not really meet the requirements of that one particular community that wanted to do things so different than what everybody else did where it was not necessary to accommodate the type of leadership that was coming from that community was so different from what was going on in the others so they just chose to pull out.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Regarding First Nations economic development efforts, why should Canadian citizens, provincial and federal agencies and their associated personnel, replace in a quality focused mindset in favor of one that focuses upon nation driven solutions?”

Sophie Pierre:

“I have a very straightforward answer to that and it’s this. When a First Nation benefits economically, the whole region benefits. It’s not true the other way around. That’s why in a very resource rich country, both Canada and the United States, why it’s possible that you have resource extraction where the larger community is doing very well but sitting smack dab in the middle of it is a poverty stricken Aboriginal or Indian community. Why is that? If you turn the tables on that and that First Nation, that Aboriginal community becomes economically viable, the whole region benefits and St. Eugene Resort is a perfect example of that. We turned a former Indian residential school into a resort. At the height of the season it hires 260 people. The majority of those are from the surrounding region. Maybe 50, 40 people are from our nation. Everybody else is from the region. And the success of our resort brings people into the area that spend their money everywhere else too, not just at the resort. So when we became economically viable, when we became successful, everybody benefited. But for 60 years we had a lead and zinc mine just 10 miles up the road from my reserve, in fact I’m convinced because our elders told me, that they dug under our reserve to take out the lead and zinc. We never benefited a cent from that. So that’s my response to that.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“What factors define and contribute to a successful nation driven solution?”

Sophie Pierre:

“It’s got to be owned by the nation. If it hasn’t been, if it’s something that some bureaucrat has dreamt up as the kind of flavor of the month solution for Indian problems, it ain’t going to work. Simple as that.”

Sophie Pierre:

“My whole, my focus always in the time that I’ve been in a leadership position is that succession planning and involving the youth,  You’d asked that question earlier and I really didn’t talk about this how it’s been a practice of mine that I always want to transfer the knowledge that I have gained to as many young people as possible as quickly as possible. And so with, like even with the experiences that I’ve had with NNI, in the past whenever I had the opportunity brought a young person from my nation to participate in that. And then when I became Chief Commissioner of the Treaty Commission I did the same thing there and brought Sarah Robinson to come to a meeting that we had, that NNI had hosted with New Zealand and Australian people and the United States and Canada, the Common Roots, Common Future. And now she’s heading up, she is the Implementation Coordinator of one of the Maa-Nulth treaties. So she’s just grown and I’ve, there’s nothing better than seeing and watching a young person develop and step into the leadership role that they are perfectly capable of doing so that’s something that I always encourage and especially as I get older encourage even more strongly that we do as much as possible to pass on the knowledge that we have been lucky enough to acquire within our own lifetime. My mother always taught me that knowledge that’s kept inside and not shared is knowledge that ends up with no power so you have to share it in order for it to have the power.”

Veronica Hirsch:

“Thank you, Sophie. That’s all the time we have on today’s episode of Leading Native Nations produced by the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy and Arizona Public Media at the University of Arizona. To learn more about Leading Native Nations, please visit NNI’s Indigenous Governance Database website which can be found at igovdatabase.com. Thank you for joining us.”

Sophie Pierre:

“God bless. Thank you."

Angela Wesley: Huu-ay-aht First Nations' Forging of a New Governance System

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Angela Wesley, Chair of Huu-ay-aht Constitution Committee, discusses the painstaking effort the Huu-ay-aht First Nations undertook to develop a new constitution and system of governance, and how they continue to work to turn the promise of self-governance embodied in their new constitution into governance practice.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Wesley, Angela. "Huu-ay-aht First Nations' Forging of a New Governance System." Leading Native Nations interview series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. April 4, 2013. Interview.

Ian Record:

Welcome to Leading Native Nations. I’m your host Ian Record. On today’s program we are honored to have with us Angela Wesley. Angela is a proud member of the Huu-ay-aht First Nation and has worked since 1980 with First Nations communities throughout British Columbia. Since 1992, she has been providing advisory and facilitation services in the areas of strategic planning, community development, communications and community engagement as well as governance capacity building. In recent years, her focus has been on providing assistance to her own nation as well as the other four First Nations that are signatory to the Maa-nulth Treaty. As Chair of the Huu-ay-aht Constitution Committee and member of the Huu-ay-aht Treaty Governance and Lands Resources Committees, she was instrumental in the development and community ratification of the treaty, the Huu-ay-aht First Nations Constitution and a suite of foundational laws that set the stage for her nation’s return to self governance as of April 1st, 2011. Angela, welcome and good to have you with us today.

Angela Wesley:

Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Ian Record:

So I went through your rather voluminous bio and shared some of the highlights, but why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit more about yourself. What did I leave out?

Angela Wesley:

I think you pretty much covered it. Some of the things that I’ve done more recently, or that I’m involved in more recently, involve being involved on some boards. And one of the things that I’m really liking doing right now is venturing into the academic world a little bit and I’m chair of the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology as well, which is a public post-secondary institute in British Columbia that was founded by First Nations in the interior of BC [British Columbia]. So I’m really starting to see my abilities to cross over and start sharing information on governance through that field as well, so really an exciting new eye opener for me and a new venture for me.

Ian Record:

So we’re here to talk about governance reform, constitutional reform and specifically the work that your nation has been involved in in arriving to the point it’s at today. And I’m curious -- let’s start at the beginning -- what prompted your nation to consider going down the reform road to begin with?

Angela Wesley:

Well, I think it’s a bit different in Canada than it is in the [United] States, where we didn’t have constitutions as I understand tribal governments in the States do. Really we were embarking on nation rebuilding. The constitution was one piece of what we were doing in rebuilding our nation. Our nation was involved in treaty negotiations and has been involved in the BC Treaty Commission process since about the early 1990s. So in thinking about where we wanted to go and really thinking about the vision for our nation, that’s what sort of prompted us to look overall at our nation and what needed to change. As we got deeper into our treaty negotiation process, we realized that we really needed to reform our government and start to rebuild our nation into something that meets the vision of our community. We started off I think back in the 1990s -- and not to say we didn’t always have a vision -- but we started to try to articulate that and bring that to our people and to say, ‘Where is it that we want to go as a nation? Clearly we have some healing that we need to do. We need to change the way we do business.’ So we really spent a lot of time talking to our people about what we wanted for the future, and our vision statement is not dissimilar to almost any First Nations’ vision statement, where we want a healthy community, we want to be able to govern ourselves, we want to make our own decisions, we want to set our own priorities, we want to revive and strengthen our language and our culture and we want opportunities for our people for the future. And that really set the tone for an entire nation rebuilding process I think.

Ian Record:

So it became obvious very early on that, 'If we’re going to fully engage in the treaty process and take advantage of that opportunity, we need to jettison the Indian Act system altogether and develop one that reflects who we are and where we want to head.'

Angela Wesley:

Absolutely. One of the biggest pieces that we were looking at or one of the bigger pieces we were looking at in treaty is the ability to have self government. We struggled originally in our treaty negotiations. We were being told by Canada that they wanted to keep self government outside of the treaty and that was a show stopper for us. Unless self government was included in the treaty and protected by the Constitution of Canada, we weren’t going to have a treaty. So on the basis that that was something that was so important to us we realized that we needed to start building our constitution and talking about what we wanted from our government in the future.

Ian Record:

We’re talking a lot at this seminar that the Native Nations Institute is holding on constitutions and the importance of process, that often for many Native nations, whether in U.S. or Canada or elsewhere, that there’s a broad recognition among people in the community that our current system is not working for us, it’s not going to get us where we need to head, but then a lot of folks have difficulty getting from that point to the point of a new system. Can you talk about the process that your nation devised to develop this new constitution, to engage in this nation rebuilding effort?

Angela Wesley:

Sure. I just want to start by talking about maybe there wasn’t such a broad recognition by our citizens of the situation that we were in and I think that sort of formed the basis of how we approached communication with our citizens as well. We started off, we have a general, what we called a 'band meeting' at the time, and I give a lot of credit to our leadership at the time and our former chief counselor Robert Dennis, Sr. was very instrumental in putting a process in place that the people would feel comfortable with. So it was opened up to the floor and it was the citizens that appointed the committee that was going to look at the constitution and we were told to go and find out what people wanted. So we were given a lot of flexibility and latitude in terms of how we approached things. So we really sat down, we talked as a committee about what it was that we wanted to achieve. We talked about our vision, the need to really get people to understand that that was the basis of moving forward was that we all had this collective vision and it was a vision of the people, it wasn’t a vision of a specific government or a specific council and I think that’s how we started. We did a lot of research, we looked at constitutions of other nations, we talked about other peoples’ experiences, and really what we started with was a questionnaire process. Once we had talked we went and did a little bit of interviewing and speaking with our people about the vision and is that in fact what we wanted. I don’t think anybody could argue with that’s what we wanted, we want to change our world, we want a better place for future generations. And everybody agreed with that.

So having said that, then we started to probe a little bit further, what people wanted from their government. So we started with a very intensive questionnaire process, and I always give credit to a young woman in our tribe, Trudy Warner. She was in her 20s at the time and very enthusiastic. She was working with us and she was assigned to the committee to be our administrative support. She ended up taking a questionnaire around, and I don’t think it was so important what was in the questionnaire as the fact that we went out and talked to people about it. So we devised some questions, some of them were good, some of them not so good, but it opened up the doors for people to start to tell us what it was that they wanted. We asked about terms of council, we asked about what kind of ethical behavior we expected of council, we asked about what kind of terms we thought would be appropriate, we asked about how disputes might be resolved, we asked about how to incorporate our traditional hereditary system into our government, which was huge for us. That was one of the things we really wanted to do. So we engaged in a process of communicating with our numbers over a long period of time. We probably did this over five to seven years on and off; it wasn’t consistent. We were a committee and we were limited by finances and what we could do; it was very expensive. We have probably 80 to 85 percent of our people living away from home, so it involved going out and going to the people or bringing them in, which was very, very expensive as well. But we really, we talked a lot to our people, we talked we brought that back and we talked as a committee about what that meant and what did our people really want. I think that some of what we found was that what I started with is that people didn’t really understand the system that we were under. We’re so used to blaming our band councils for things that go wrong without understanding that the Indian Act is behind all of that and that our councils really are structured under an Indian Act system that so clearly does not work for us, that oppressed us for so many years. And that’s what our people grew up with. So a lot of people didn’t know about our traditional systems, they didn’t know how we used to govern ourselves. All they knew was this oppressive system that we’d lived under that had hurt them in huge ways.

So sort of interesting, maybe to back up a little bit to the questionnaire process, our young citizen went out door to door, bless her heart, by herself and knocked on people’s doors and said, ‘I have this questionnaire and it’s my job to come and talk to our citizens about what it is you’d like to see in government.’ And she heard a lot of venting. So we tried to give her a lot of support and told her to not to react, don’t get defensive, don’t feel like you have to defend the council for things that happened 30 years ago, but listen, allow people to say what’s on their mind and bring that back to us, because that’s all relevant to what we need to change in the future.' Along with that commitment from the committee, she also had a commitment from our chief councilor at the time, who said that, ‘If somebody needs to talk to me, come back and tell me. Don’t take it on for me, but I will go.’ And he made that commitment and he did go and follow up with people, which was huge. So once people had a chance to get some of that stuff out that they had been holding on to a lot of times for 30, 40 years -- people had gone been taken out of our community, they’d gone to residential school, they’d seen what had happened to their parents and grandparents in the community and they’d gone from there and never come home. So these are people who have memories from the past that aren’t good memories in a lot of cases. So we were able to get through a lot of that. When people had the chance to just say that and get it off their chest with nobody trying to defend how they feel, then they kind of went, ‘Oh, okay.’ And they would say to Trudy, ‘Well, what are you here for?’ She’d say, ‘Well, I have this questionnaire.’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, come in. Who are you and what family are you from?’ And there was this warmth all of a sudden that, ‘Come and have a cup of coffee and do what we do traditionally,’ is share information. So she was able to, I think, with her personality, with her youth, with her enthusiasm and with the commitments and backing that she had from the committee and from our leadership was able to break through in a lot of cases and make people feel Huu-ay-aht again. We actually had people say, ‘I didn’t think I was Huu-ay-aht anymore, I didn’t think anybody cared about me. But I was important enough, somebody came to my house and talked to me about these things.’ It was a huge breakthrough for us.

Ian Record:

It’s interesting you bring up this thing about recognition. My experience in the many nations I’ve worked with on constitutional reform -- primarily in the United States -- has been that people in the community fixate on the symptoms of dysfunction, which typically means they focus on the council, ‘Everything that’s wrong with us is because of the council,’ when they don’t it’s very difficult for them to draw that connection back to the roots of the dysfunction, which in many cases are an imposed system of governance. How important was it for you guys to shift that focus in your community to show people that, ‘Look, at the root of what ails us, what’s holding us back,’ if you will, ‘from rebuilding our community into something that we think is important and is culturally relevant is this system that is not of our own design.’

Angela Wesley:

It was the foundation of our communications, both in our constitutional communications as well as in our treaty negotiations. We just felt that it was so important for us to realize that there was no way out of that system unless we created something ourselves, and that’s what we were trying to do through treaty negotiations, to be able to get governance tools, access to lands and resources, additional financial boosts that could help us to move forward and to create that economy for our people. So in order to do that, we had to show that there was nothing in the current system that we could see that was going to allow us to dig ourselves out and to be able to change our world. We needed something else to add to it and having governance, having good governance in place through our constitution together with having some extra tools, access to lands and resources, recognition of our rights, the ability to build the economy was what was going to change our situation. And like I said, so many of our people just had no idea what the problems were and when we started to talk about that I think it really opened eyes and gained a lot of support. And the support wasn’t 100 percent. A lot of people were taking a leap of faith. We were creating trust through doing this kind of communications with our people and saying, ‘Can you give us a chance? This is what we think is going to help us to change our world. Let’s do all of this together.’ So that was it was really the root of what we were communicating to our people is that how else are we going to change, how else are we going to change our social situation because it’s not good the way it is right now.

Ian Record:

I wanted to back up to something you said earlier about the importance for Huu-ay-aht of having this new governance system that you were creating be an expression of the people’s will and not necessarily an expression of political will, meaning you wanted to ensure that it was the product of the people as a whole versus the product of a particular council or particular elected official or someone else. And we’ve seen where other nations have succeeded with constitutional development or reform, that recognition going into the process, that we’re going to sabotage our own effort if this either becomes politicized or becomes viewed as a politicized process at the very beginning. Can you speak a little bit more about why that is so critical to sort of make sure that the process itself is an apolitical process in how you guys ensured that you insulated it from sort of the political impulses along the way?

Angela Wesley:

Yeah, it probably was a key to our success in terms of the communication or in terms of the approval and ratification of the constitution. I can’t give enough credit I think to our leadership to be able to have stood back not only from the process of building a constitution, but also recognizing that we were trying to incorporate in some fashion our hereditary system back into our government or at least the ability to do that as time went on into the future. And again our chief councilor at the time is a very traditional individual as well. He’s a historian for our tribe and I think that really helped to show people that we were really trying to do what was best for the nation. So there wasn’t political interference, but there was huge political support for developing that system and I think that the leadership showed that they weren’t afraid, that they weren’t afraid of the changes that were coming up because this was what was the best for the nation. So the separation is good, but the leadership was such a critical element of it as well to be able to stand up and really support what we were doing.

Ian Record:

It’s interesting you keep using the word 'support,' because where we see tribes succeed is where the elected leadership plays a supportive role, not a directive role. Where we see tribes struggle is where the reform process is quickly viewed by people in the community as just another initiative by the current leadership that’s in charge. Do you see that as crucial where do you see that as maybe sending a message to the people in terms of, ‘This is something that’s so critical that it’s got to be bigger than us as a group of leaders, it’s got to be about the nation as a whole?’ Did people kind of stand back and say, ‘Wait a minute. This is a real opportunity for us to re-engage, to have our voices heard,' as you mentioned? You mentioned the one person saying, ‘Wow, my government’s never asked me for my opinion on anything before,’ to say it’s not just a command and control decision anymore, this is going to happen from the ground up.

Angela Wesley:

We really it is critical. We really emphasized that with our people as well to say when and who have you ever seen that’s had the opportunity to say how it is that we want to be governed as a nation. To take advantage, we encouraged people to take advantage of that possibility; we encouraged people to use their voices in a positive way. The system that we were in, I think, really led people to be complaining about things all the time. There was no way out, there was no way to resolve disputes, they just went on and on and on. And to have us going out into our community and talking to people about solutions and to have them feeding into, ‘Okay, if that didn’t work, what can work and how can it work better for us, how can we take how we used to govern because it sustained us for thousands of years, how can we take those principles and those values and move them into our government of today so that we can do things better?’ And I think people understood that and it didn’t even really become a visible issue of, ‘Oh, it’s not the politicians that are involved in this?’ People just started to engage because they liked the conversation. So I don’t think it was so much a factor that people hung anything on the process and said, ‘Well, the politics aren’t involved.’ I think they just started liking having the conversation and started feeling more and more comfortable with it. Probably one of the earliest things that people really responded to was the chapter in our constitution that talks about individual rights, to actually see in black and white that people would be treated equally, that they would have equal opportunities within the nation as citizens of the nation; that really sparked something. So starting there, having that conversation as a basis for our communication on the constitution was really, I think, winning as well.

I think people really felt that it was something that was going to reflect what it is they wanted. Because when you go out we often talk about how you explain such complex matters to people who are just trying to get by in their lives and we really chose to try to make our communications really relevant as opposed to saying, ‘This is what provision 16 is going to say in legal language.’ We tried to keep our constitution as plain language as possible and to make it relevant to people because that’s their question, ‘What does this mean to me and my family? How is this going to change the world? How is this going to protect the assets of our nation for future generations, for those who aren’t born yet?’ Those are the kind of things that were on people’s minds. So having the conversation around those kind of things as opposed to around what the provision is going to say, we tried to capture what people were saying and put it into the language.

Ian Record:

It’s interesting you bring that up because often the refrain that we hear in many Native communities -- particularly those that are struggling with reform -- is a sense among many in the community that they simply don’t understand why they should even care about the constitution. They have no sense of how it impacts their daily life, the current constitution and how a new constitution could improve their daily life, and so forth. And it sounds like that was at the forefront of your mind as you went into this process, is to educate people about and making sure that the deliberations were accessible so they could understand, ‘This is how this new system will improve your situation individually, your family’s situation, and the nation’s situation as a whole.’

Angela Wesley:

I think so, and I think that people saw that this was a way of helping to make our governments, future governments and present governments, more accountable to the people. The way the Indian Act is set up right now, your funding flows from the federal government to the council. So the accountability of councils in a legal sense is right back to the Ministry of Indian Affairs, and there’s really not a whole lot of concern on the part of the department as to whether you are accountable back to your citizens. It’s becoming more and more prominent now, but and it’s also becoming more and more of a practice among First Nations to be accountable to their people. So despite the fact that it’s not really a requirement -- although Canada has paid a lot of attention to that in recent years -- nations are becoming more accountable to their citizens and citizens are demanding that accountability. And I think the constitution strengthens that and allows us to do it  to have councils be accountable in a way that is acceptable to the people. What are you going to report to us, when you are going to report to us, to see that these things have to happen? They have to happen according to our own laws, not according to the Indian Act or Ministry of Indian Affairs. It’s because this is what our people want.

Ian Record:

It sounds like things have gone well with your nation in terms of governance reform, really governance rebirth, if you will. But I’m sure at some point you encountered some challenges.

Angela Wesley:

Oh, absolutely.

Ian Record:

And given that it took you seven years, I’m sure there were lots of challenges, a lot of bumps in the road along the way. Can you talk about some of the biggest challenges that you faced in the reform process and how you worked to overcome those?

Angela Wesley:

Well, I think the whole...in terms of our community, I think what I’ve just been talking about in terms of the understanding or lack of understanding of the reality of our situation was probably the biggest hurdle that we had to overcome in the development process. We did end up with a high approval rate of our constitution and of our treaty, and I think it was just our people agreeing that we needed to take this leap of faith, that this was our chance to try to do something for ourselves and to do it our way. So I think that that was a big leap of faith.

Ian Record:

That sounds to me like that was an initial challenge of getting the people to recognize the reality of their situation, of just how pervasive the Indian Act how it affected them in so many ways that they may not have been aware of. But how about when you got really into the process full-bore, you got beyond that initial education, were there some other obstacles you encountered, external factors, internal factors that threatened to derail the process?

Angela Wesley:

You know, politics will always sort of pop up and matters become more urgent as time goes on, but I think that by and large, given the process that we went through, I think we were able to overcome any kind of hurdles. I think that the committee that was put in place and the leadership that we had in place was able to work together to understand that we were there to support each other and that made a lot of difference, I think, to how we approached when we were getting towards the end when it’s sort of crunch time and you’re going to start looking at going into a vote. There was some apprehension on the part of our leadership and our council maybe that, ‘Where is this going to go?’ They were sort of feeling like any arrows that were going to come were going to come towards them and we said to them, ‘Well, we’re the ones as a committee that should be taking some responsibility, and feel comfort in the fact that we’re happy to stand up in front of our people and explain why the constitution is the way it is,’ and it is entirely because of what it was that people wanted in our government in the future together with trying to build a system of good governance. So I think we overcame those.

The challenges I guess that we’re looking at now, we’re two years into being self-government or self-governing and it’s hard. We didn’t expect it was going to be easy. This I think now is when we’re starting to face the challenges, when we realize what it means to be fair, to treat people equally. When those things that our people told us that they wanted, it now takes much longer to make a decision because you have to go through, you have to be transparent, you have to treat people equally. There aren’t exceptions. If there’s an exception for one [person], you’ve got to think of how that’s going to happen and play out for the rest of the citizens as well. So what all sounds really good and is really good takes a different process and takes a different way to be able to move forward. So I think we’re having those kind of challenges right now.

I’m seeing I’m not working directly in my nation right now, but I’m still always very connected. I’m working with our economic development side now actually, so sort of shifted over into that. But you see our leadership struggling. They want to do things right. They want to follow our laws. And I think if there’s things that can be learned, it’s to really think about what this is going to mean as you’re drafting your laws, because I think in some places we found that we’re almost overly accountable and what we don’t want to do is to constrain ourselves with our own laws. But the beauty of being self-governing is that we can change those things if and when we need to. And recognizing that I think is a big part of our learning curve.

So being self-governing doesn’t mean that everything is working perfectly for us right now -- far from it -- and when will we ever be doing things perfectly? No government ever runs perfectly. But we certainly feel better, I don’t think that there’s a person in our nation that thinks that we made the wrong decision in taking on self-government and doing it for ourselves. It’s hard, it’s going to be difficult for us as we continue to move on but we’re getting better at it every day.

Ian Record:

So it sounds to me given that you’re just about two years now into your new governance reality, if you will, that your nation is still working to grow into its new constitutional skin, its new governance skin, it’s going through those growing pains of actually transforming that document on paper into practice.

Angela Wesley:

Oh, definitely.

Ian Record:

And this is something we hear from a lot of other folks, we’ve worked with a number of tribes who are now three, six, ten years into their new constitution and system of governance and they describe this same sort of dynamic taking place, where it’s one thing to have a new constitution and it’s quite another to actually live that in practice. And I would imagine for you as with other some of these other nations, you’re really the larger task really is to transform the political culture that has been in place in your community for so long, the Indian Act culture. In the U.S., for many tribes it’s the Indian Reorganization Act political culture, where suddenly you can no longer go to the council for absolutely everything that ails you, every problem you have. Now there’s processes in place that you have to follow. Can you maybe shed a little more insight into how that’s unfolding in your community, and I would imagine it entails an ongoing education challenge does it not?

Angela Wesley:

It is. It’s definitely a learning curve. Under the Indian Act, as we’re hearing in the courses through NNI and the kind of sessions that we’re in today, you need to put up the mirror sometimes and see how it is that you’re operating. Councils are expected to do everything. That’s the history of most First Nations in Canada and I assume in the U.S., and transforming at the leadership level into being visionaries and creating the environment to succeed is a really difficult thing to do, because citizens still expect you to go and take care of everything, all of the things that are going on in the community. So it’s difficult for citizens because they can’t do that anymore, and it’s difficult for leadership to try to let that go and to put the administrative systems in place that allow the questions to be answered and that allow give citizens a place to go to get their questions answered instead of to the political side. So it is, it’s a transition; it’s a huge transformation. It’s a new way of doing business and operating our government. So it’s I give a lot of credit to our leadership in trying to get through that and trying to remind themselves every day that they need to show citizens where they need to go to get their questions answered as opposed to coming to them, because that’s the critical part is that you can’t leave our citizens hanging, they’ve got to have somewhere that they can go and that’s the council’s role.

Ian Record:

And I would imagine this clarification, redefinition and then ongoing clarification of the new roles within your new system is absolutely critical, because as you’ve laid out, your governance, your new governance system is expected to achieve far more ambitious things than the previous system was under the Indian Act. You’re tasking your governance system and the leaders who lead that system with creating this brighter future of your own design. And so I think this point that you brought up is absolutely crucial, where you’ve got to make sure that you create the space for your leadership to be visionary and to actually figure out, how do we implement the vision that we’ve created for ourselves for our own future?

Angela Wesley:

Yes, definitely. And being able to feel comfort in the organization that we set up is the other big part of it as well. You can put your constitution in place, but unless you’ve got an effective administration as well to be able to take care of that we had to do a lot of reorganizing at our administrative level as well. We had a typical First Nation operation or band council operation or band administration, where we had our band manager who had everybody in the organization reporting to them. So that person as well needed to be able to focus on making sure that the council’s wishes and directions are undertaken and that’s what their role is as well. So there’s a shift in roles all throughout the organization. People have to learn new things. People who are really good at managing resources now also have to learn how to manage people. So it’s a shift at all levels within the government and that’s going to take time, and I think we need to go easy on ourselves a little bit in these early years and just realize that we need to relearn a lot of things and we need to learn how to do business effectively and efficiently for the benefit of our citizens.

Ian Record:

So a couple things out of that. One is that I think what you’re referring to is what we’ve heard from other folks from Native nations who’ve been involved in reform efforts is you’ve got to in many instances dial back expectations, that just because you have a new constitution doesn’t mean everyone’s problems are going to be solved overnight. There is going to be a learning curve, we’re going to make some false steps, we’re going to do two steps forward, one step back kind of thing, but the idea is that we’re in charge now and if we find that something in the new constitution isn’t working, as you mentioned, that we have the power to change it.

Angela Wesley:

And it’s not  in our case it’s not only the constitution, it’s the treaty as well, which both came in place at the same time. Probably one of the biggest lessons learned is to have not only that reorganizational plan in place to get your government ready, but also to start getting the economic side and getting that plan in place as well and start to make sure that there’s even small steps towards making changes that people will see some of the early things that we’re able to change that made a difference to our people. As we changed things like our education policies, we weren’t able to fund trades before and now we have the flexibility to be able to do that. So we’ve made little changes like that that make a difference to the people and to plan to do things like that to start to address some things that you can point to to say to your people, ‘Yes, things are working differently now. We are making small steps and hopefully as we continue to grow and build our economy, we’ll have lots of successes that we can look at and that’s going to happen over time.’

Ian Record:

The other thing I wanted to bring up from your previous response is you mentioned that the band manager, their reality has changed because of this new governance system, and I think that that’s often lost on folks is that this new constitution, this new system of government, it will definitely change the role of leadership or clarify perhaps the role of leaders and it will transform it will necessarily transform the expectations citizens need to have of their government, but really what you’re saying is that it’s going to change reality for everyone that is either part of the nation, works for the nation, or interacts with the nation. And can you talk a little bit about how I guess compare and contrast the new governance reality at Huu-ay-aht with the old governance reality? Say I came and visited the community under the Indian Act system and I had to work with the band government on something and now I’m getting ready to come back, I call you on the phone and say, ‘What should I expect, how are things going to be different for me if I have to come and work with the nation on this particular issue?’

Angela Wesley:

I think there’s a lot of fundamental differences, and we’re getting used to working within a new system as well. Having a treaty, having the constitution to go along with it and having a whole new set of laws, things have to be done differently. It’s not as easy now as going up and calling all the council members together and sit down and, ‘We have this new initiative we want you to look at.’ There’s a lot of things that need to go into it before it gets to that council level so the way of doing business. Do you need a permit to be able to go out and do certain things on the land? Do you need to be talking with our manager of natural resources to get all of those kind of things in place? Nothing goes before our council now without a full briefing note and some options that are provided to them so that they’re making decisions based on full information. One of the things that’s in our Government Act is a requirement for the way decisions are made and it’s actually written into our legislation of what needs to be considered at the council level in making a decision particular, well about anything, but particularly in relation to things that require money. Have you got all of the information that you need in order to make the decision? Have you looked at what the impact is on other programs? Where is the funding going to come from? Are there other options here? Is there a need to consult the community on this? What kind of impacts there’s a whole list of those things that are in the laws. So it’s our law that requires those things get done and that means a much more thorough process is required. So things are different, things take longer and hopefully we can refine that as things go along, but it’s probably better to walk on the side of caution a little bit first, at the same time being able to move forward economically and be able to make those changes in our nation.

Ian Record:

So I mentioned in the introduction that you have been intricately involved in your nation’s development of a whole new suite of foundational laws. You get the new treaty in place; you get the new constitution in place. Where did you guys focus your lawmaking energy at the beginning? What to you was, ‘We’ve got to address these issues right now. There’s nothing on the books that helps us deal with X, Y and Z.'

Angela Wesley:

What we did in approaching our lawmaking was to look at the real critical areas. We had gone through a process that I described of creating trust in from our citizens that we were going to do things right. So the first laws that we put in place were, we called them 'laws that govern our government,' because people were a little afraid. What are these new laws going to be and are we going to be expected to have all these new laws in place that we need to know. We thought it was really important that we put in place laws that show our people that our government needs to be accountable. So we have things like a Government Act, a Code of Conduct and Conflict of Interest, Election Act, Citizenship Act, all of those kind of really foundational pieces. We didn’t start touching the bigger areas that we now have lawmaking authorities under like adoption, child welfare, education, culture and language. We’ve got lawmaking in a lot of areas, but we decided first that we need to continue to build the trust of our government and allow our government some time to settle in to governing well. So we really put laws, a lot of laws in place that talk about how our government operates and how they’re to be accountable back to the people.

Ian Record:

So basically what it sounds like you’re saying is you worked to enhance the lawmaking engine to then make laws in the areas where you had newfound or newly affirmed powers.

Angela Wesley:

Yes. Yes. Yes and to make sure that there were ways in place that citizens could have an input, that they would be able to always have a say in government, making sure that our Government Act specified for example what the rules were around having people’s assemblies where people would have their voice, what the rules would be around providing financial accountability back to the people. So these were our laws that we promised people when they said, ‘How can we be sure council isn’t going to run off with all the money that we get under treaty?’ Because the constitution says they can’t and because there’s a law that says what they need to do and how they need to report back to the people. So we’re making sure that those checks and balances were really firmly in place before we start venturing off into other areas. Other areas that were really important to us in lawmaking was protection of our lands. So we have a few laws that deal with lands and resources. Areas that still allow our people to exercise our rights, harvesting rights and that kind of thing, so we made sure laws and permitting process and that were in place so that on effective date people wouldn’t say, ‘Well, how am I going to go and hunt now? Where does all of this happen?’ So we worked really hard to make sure there was no disruption in those kind of activities as well.

Ian Record:

So I have a final wrap-up question for you and that deals with lessons. You guys were involved in a process that lasted several years, you’ve managed to come through the light at the end of the tunnel and you have a new governance system in place. What do you feel that other First Nations in Canada, other Native nations in the United States can learn from the Huu-ay-aht experience?

Angela Wesley:

Well, that’s kind of difficult to say. You never really want to say what we’ve done that other people should do. We’ve done what we think is best for us. We’re happy to share our story and to see if what we’re doing can be of any assistance to others. We are grateful to those who came before us as well, there’s now 10 First Nations in British Columbia that are no longer subject to the Indian Act. We learned from them. We learned from the Nisga’a, we learned from Tsawwassen, we learned from other nations that are self-governing under self-government agreements as opposed to treaties. So I don’t know how to answer that except for to say it’s really important to bring the people along because if they don’t understand the change that’s coming up, nothing really changes for them. It’s just a shift in power from one to another and they won’t see the difference unless they’re involved in that. So I think that’s probably the biggest thing that I feel proud of that we did in our nation is we really did our best to bring the people along.

Ian Record:

Make sure they’re on board the nation rebuilding train before it leaves the station.

Angela Wesley:

Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. So it was a healthy experience for us. We’ll talk to a lot of our citizens who aren’t happy with the way things are going, I’m positive of it, but that will never go away either. But I think what we’ve learned through the process and what our citizens have learned is to use our voices and to try to be positive in terms of saying how things can be better. If it’s not working, let’s not just complain about it, because we can fix this if we want to. So I think that’s something that we’ve learned and that we’ll continue to learn as we become more comfortable in governing ourselves once again.

Ian Record:

Well, Angela, I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts, experiences and wisdom with us and good luck to you and your nation on your new governance journey.

Angela Wesley:

Thank you.

Ian Record:

That’s all the time we have on today’s program of Leading Native Nations. To learn more about Leading Native Nations and the Native Nations Institute, please visit the Native Nations Institute’s website at nni.arizona.edu. Thank you for joining us. Copyright 2013. Arizona Board of Regents.

Sophie Pierre: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Former Ktunaxa Nation Chief Sophie Pierre discusses the Ktunaxa Nation's nation-building struggle, and offers her thoughts on what sustainable leadership is and what it requires of leaders.

People
Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Pierre, Sophie. "What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office." Emerging Leaders Seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. March 25, 2008. Presentation.

"Thank you very much. [Ktunaxa language]. I bring you greetings, my colleague and I. Gwen Phillips is here with me. Gwen is the person within our nation that is working with us on governance and so I thought that it was right that she be here at this gathering. I bring you greetings from the Ktunaxa Nation and if it's okay I'm going to stand. When I'm addressing you I feel like I should be standing. I want to first of all acknowledge the great Tohono O'odham Nation and thank them for allowing me to be here today in your traditional territory. I want to take a few moments and just introduce who I am, who Gwen is and who our people are. We're in the Rocky Mountain trench in the southeast corner of British Columbia, in northern Montana and Idaho. Our traditional territory runs along, from the big bend of the Columbia River at a place called [Ktunaxa language] all the way along what's today the Arrow Lakes in British Columbia, places like [Ktunaxa landmark] all the way down to Missoula, Montana, that's [Ktunaxa landmark] and along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. It was mentioned earlier when Manley and Stephen were speaking that they were talking about the Kootenai Flathead Reservation and again it was a bringing together of peoples and of them learning how to work together. Those are the Kootenai people, those are part of the same people that we are. We speak the same language; we have the same culture, the same traditions.

My own personal experience, I was first elected in 1978 and I was pretty young. It's a good thing -- I thought I knew it all, had a lot of energy and it's been an incredible ride. For those of you young people that have just been, that are just coming on council, one thing I have to tell you is that 30 years -- it goes like that. Time passes so quickly. When I first started, when I was in my late 20s, I just figured that time went on forever and I had lots of time to do what I wanted to do. Well, of course time waits for no one. Time moves along very quickly. The experiences that have been described so far are very similar to what we have in Canada, in British Columbia, what we have in my own backyard, where we have family difficulties and leadership challenges, but it's been kind of an interesting anomaly in my own community. My community is called [Ktunaxa language]. It also in the book says St. Mary's Indian Reserve, IR #1. In my community, I'm an only child and in all the 30 years that I've been on council, when my mother was still alive, I always said, "˜I think I have one vote I can count on.' I was never quite sure because my mother, she was one of my biggest critics and she was also of course my greatest teacher and my greatest support. But we didn't have that particular dynamic and I think that that really does make a difference when you're not, you don't have those kind of almost imposed on commitments that you have to make just to one family as opposed to all of your people. And it has been able to help us in thinking on a nation basis because in Canada we have our separate Indian reserves that were set up, but we still belong to a nation. And that's why I shared with you where I come from because that is our nation territory. And as a nation of people, if you can move yourself from that mindset of family within one reservation and think of yourself in terms in of your nationhood, that is really what I feel that that's where Indian nations, that's how we are going to rebuild our nations and that's where our strength comes from is from our nations.

I was first elected in the late 70s and through the 80s. That was a time of great change and those of you that are my age and older, you know what I'm talking about. There was change that was happening here in the United States as there was across Canada. I was involved in lots of the sit-ins that we had, getting rid of Indian Affairs, well at least physically. We never really got rid of them totally in terms of the impact that they have on our lives, but at least getting rid of those offices that were everywhere, getting rid of the Indian agent. When I first started, when I first graduated from high school and I started working for my band, for my reservation, we still had an Indian agent. The Indian agent came around with the documents and had our people sign them. That's what I witnessed and I knew that was wrong so we went, so started from that to today where we're not totally there, but we're a long ways ahead from where we were. In my first few years of office I was just like everybody else. I chased all those grants and chased the programs because our communities needed it. We were like tall grass [NNI's "Tall Grass" executive education case]. We had unemployment, housing, like all those social ills and so we chased those programs -- not just myself but the other chiefs and councils within our nation. We chased all those programs. And we found ourselves bumping into each other fighting for that same money realizing that we were expending a tremendous amount of energy, but we weren't looking at our own, what was important for us as Ktunaxa people, what we needed.

Around 1991-92, two things happened that started to help us change our course. First of all, in the province of British Columbia, we entered what is called the modern-day treaty process. Now that's been a curse and a blessing in a way. It certainly brought about some changes, not all of them good. But luckily we have leadership within our nation that saw this as an opportunity for nation rebuilding and we have taken that, we have turned the treaty process around to meet our needs. We have insured that all of the negotiations that go on, they are what we call 'citizen-led.' Now that's made it a very, very slow process in terms of where some of the other nations are. We've had two nations just in the last year that have actually signed their implementation plan or they've signed their treaty with the provincial and federal governments and now they're in implementation and they're having difficulty. And the reason is because it's not been a citizen-driven process. We still have negotiating tables where there are lawyers and consultants that are sitting at those tables instead of our own people and that we know is wrong and that's something that we insured -- that we would not fall into that. So we have this treaty process. What the treaty process has enabled us to do, has brought to us, is financial resources and that's what really needed because we are on the Canadian side, four Indian reservations with virtually...we don't have two nickels to rub together, we don't have our own source [of] revenues. So we're financially, we don't have a whole lot of resources, but in other ways we have lots of resources. So we're using the treaty process, we're using the money that comes through the treaty process and we have been for the last 17 years, we've been using that to rebuild our nation.

The other thing that happened is that we have a former Indian school; I think they were called industrial schools down here. We called them residential schools. But they're the schools, those big, old buildings where they gathered up our kids from all over and they put them into these buildings for, like in our case, 10 months of the year you never got to see your parents. And their whole purpose was to take the Indian out of the Indian child. But we have this big, old residential school sitting just right next to my reservation. It's called St. Eugene. Well, about 1984 one of our elders had given us a challenge. Mary Paul was at a meeting with us and there was a lot of complaining going on in the room about just how terribly burdened we were. Woe is us. We lost our language and our culture and everybody was drinking and drugging and all the usual litany of woes that we have in our community. And Mary Paul stood up and she told us, "˜If you think...' and she said this in Ktunaxa so this is paraphrasing. "˜If you think that you lost so much in that building,' and she pointed across the road because it was just right there. She said, "˜If you think you've lost so much in that building, you haven't lost it, it's still there, go back and get it. Only if you refuse to pick it up again have you lost it.' Well, we didn't really know what she meant but we thought, "˜Oh, she's an elder, we've got to listen to her.' So we started thinking about it and we realized, yeah, we have a choice. We have a choice. We can continue, continue to go down that self-pitying kind of road, blaming everybody else for our problems or we can take control of it. We chose to take control of it.

To make a long story short -- because I like my long story about St. Eugene [because] I'm so proud of it -- but to make a long story short, today that former residential school is a resort. It's a five-star resort, 125-room hotel, a PGA-type golf course and of course a small casino. But that's where...so that was the other thing that was happening. So we have these two things burgeoning at the same time and one really helped support the other. So today we have this business and I am a walking billboard for St. Eugene. I'm always wearing our logo and I have this whole other presentation that I do about 15 lessons learned in getting into economic development because of the struggles that we had to go through. You can imagine going and trying to convince investors and bankers that you want to take a former Indian residential school...because at that point all these court challenges were coming forward and everybody was saying, "˜Residential school? Get away from me, we don't want to talk about residential schools.' If you can imagine taking that and turning it into the resort that we have today and -- just as an aside, we have a little TV clip that was done by Global Television and we're going to show it during the coffee break this afternoon if you're at all interested -- I think you'll find the story interesting.

Right now just a final word on St. Eugene. It was about partnerships, because Anthony [Pico] here mentioned that you're in partnerships with the Oneida on your developments. Well, we found that that's one of the strengths that we have with St. Eugene is that we have a partnership with the Sampson Cree Nation out of Alberta and the M'Njikaning First Nation out of Ontario. They have the Rama Casino just north of Toronto in their community. So they're our partners. And I think that that again is one of the strengths that we need to develop is how we invest in each other and work together in partnerships. We used the treaty process to rebuild the nation and as we're doing that we realize that what we really were talking about was enhancing sustainable leadership.

And I think that -- if this works, okay -- in dealing with sustainable leadership, first and foremost, leadership comes with inherent responsibilities. Our creation story sets out a relationship of the human beings to the land and to all of creation. And it's not, it's similar to all of the creation stories I'm sure that come from all the various nations in this room. [Ktunaxa language] is our word for natural law, which we received of course from the Creator and it's our mandate for stewardship and our responsibility to govern according to set principles from the Creator. As Ktunaxa people, we were taught to be respectful of leaders and those selected to lead were nurtured right from childhood. And other skilled individuals, their skills were enhanced and they became experts in their own field like the deer chief or the war chief. And of course there's always a high regard for spiritual leaders. Many societal activities were done by both male and female societies. Now the roles of the leaders changed and as those roles changed we started to see the breakdown of the nations. So what caused some of these changes?
There are historical impacts. These are just a few. Some of these are similar to the experiences that you had and some of these are particular to Canada. Well, I think that in reality all of them are similar instances because when I talk about laws in Canada, there are similar laws here in the United States that affected you also. We had things like small pox. The establishment of the 49th Parallel, that had a tremendous impact on the Ktunaxa people because here all of a sudden we are no longer on family, one nation. Now we have these outsiders telling us that we can't move back and forth. One of our communities is right on the 49th Parallel and when that reservation was being created that chief stood up and said, "˜What are you...why are you dividing my house in two? You're telling me that I have to live in my bedroom and I can't go into my kitchen,' was the analogy that he used. Because his particular group of families were actually moved from Montana, moved north and told that they're now Canadians and there's this 49th Parallel and that we can't go across this anymore. We have a way of dealing with that now and that's for another time.

Things like the Indian Act came in and it was mentioned earlier that those, there are similarities here in the United States. In Canada we had laws that prohibited our people from cultural practices. And if that wasn't enough, there was also laws that prohibited Indian people from hiring lawyers to protect our rights. Our reservation boundaries were formed in 1887 and residential schools were established in 1893 and there's a whole list of other things that were happening. One of the things that we don't have on there but that is very important in terms of our development was that in 1991 we did a full psych analysis of our entire school-age population and we found that 40 percent of our school-age children were suffering from some form of FAS/FAE [Fetal Alcohol Syndrome/Fetal Alcohol Effects] and we haven't heard very much about that, we don't hear enough about it. We need to be aware of that, of the impact that that has on our people.

With all of those things coming at us, we're really talking about trying to lead through chaos. The traditional roles of leaders have been replaced by government, particularly the traditional roles of men. That's within our nation, we know that's within nations in Canada, and I would imagine it's the same here. Most of our First Nations, we have tremendous experience in administering government programs, everybody else's agenda except our own. [I have to move a little faster Ian just told me.] At any given time, First Nations in Canada, we are managing programs for 20 different agencies all at the same time. So it's like 20 different balls in the air. You're so busy keeping those balls up in the air you forget about the real purpose of why you applied for that ball in the first place. And then the employment challenges within our communities were forcing our leaders to become, like the chief is the band manager or the other council members, the council member would be the band accountant because of employment challenges within our communities. So that too often our leaders, they're not governing, they're only administering, they are directing and they're managing programs. And in fact what they're really doing is they're managing crises, from ones crises to the next. We said that what happens is that we have taken on this challenge of looking at our problems, trying to solve our problems and that's the wrong way to go. You don't look at...as soon as you start just looking at your problems you get more problems. You solve one problem and it's created ten more. You solve those ten; all of a sudden, you've got 30 more. Problems generate their own. They're like rabbits. So quit concentrating on problems and start looking at, 'What are the good things that are in your community, what are the strengths in your people?' So find ways to enhance those strengths.

What we realized is that leaders need to be retrained to better understand the leadership role and we gained that to regain what it was really that leaders are all about. With us, we realized leadership; it's effectively guiding the people towards a common vision. And that was really what we needed to work on and this is where the treaty process assisted us with this, gave us the time and the resources to do this because it does take a lot of time and it can be expensive. This is our common vision of the Ktunaxa Nation: strong, healthy citizens and communities speaking our language and celebrating who we are and our history in our ancestral homelands, working together, managing our lands and resources as a self-sufficient, self-governing nation. It took us over two years of going to each household, working with all of our members, all of our citizens to come up with that as our vision. [I've just skipped through because I know that I have to finish off. Ian has just given up on me. He went and sat down. He's been waving his five-minute flag.]

First of all, sustainable leadership creates and preserves sustainable learning. Hereditary leadership is...that's what we have in some of our nations. We still practice that. Others we're in this election or appointing or whatever but what we're talking about is renewing leadership skills, always renewing them. [This would cooperate with us. So I apologize for this. You're going to have to try and find, well actually, I can tell you where it is then.] Traditional or sustainable leadership secures success over time. [So we have that. Okay, I'm having difficulty, I think I'm just; don't worry about the picture up there.] Traditional leaders are advisors until they pass on and we know that and it's been mentioned also by my friend here that going back to the teachings of our elders. We're not the first leaders, and I think that that's really the thing that we have to remember, that we are only following in a long line of leaders before us. Sustainable leadership sustains the leadership of others. You're only as strong as everybody else that you have working around you. Delegation builds trust and potency. Sustainable leadership addresses issues of social justice including a broad interest in equities. We talk about the 'haves' and the 'have mores.' We don't talk about the 'haves' and the 'have not's.' In our nation, it's every has and some people because of their own efforts will have more. And I think again it's a different way of looking at things.

Sustainable leadership develops rather than depletes human and material resources. We have that mandate of stewardship that all things are related. We must remember that. And sustainable leadership practices that. Sustainable leadership develops environmental diversity and capacity so that we're flexible and adaptable. This is, on the top corner, the older lady with the glasses -- that's a picture of my mother -- and talk about being flexible and adaptable. She went through an incredible time of change and she was able to maintain, even though at the time that she was young other Indian women were marrying non-Indians because it was considered a way of uplifting yourself. She never ever did that. She believed that we had to keep our culture and she ended up in the last years of her life being one of our most important teachers. Sustainable leadership undertakes activist engagement in the environment. And one of those that I'm talking about is that whole thing around FAS/FAE. It was very, very difficult to look at ourselves and see what we had done to our children because of the drinking and the drugging that's going on in our communities. It's still difficult today, but we do look at that challenge directly and that's what sustainable leadership is about, is that you take on those challenges. You don't just take on the easy stuff or the good stuff, you face those challenges. Another big one that we all know is in our communities we have to deal with, sexual abuse and where that came from. So it's those kinds of challenges. Thank you very much."

Native Nation Building TV: "Constitutions and Constitutional Reform"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Guests Joseph P. Kalt and Sophie Pierre explore the evidence that strong Native nations require strong foundations, which necessarily require the development of effective, internally created constitutions (whether written or unwritten). It examines the impacts a constitution has on the people it represents, successful reform processes among Native nations, and common features of constitutional-reform efforts.

Native Nations
Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Constitutions and Constitutional Reform" (Episode 2). Native Nation Building television/radio series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy and the UA Channel, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2006. Television program.

Mary Kim Titla: "Welcome to Native Nation Building. I'm your host Mary Kim Titla. Contemporary Native nations face many daunting challenges including building effective governments, developing strong economies, solving difficult social problems and balancing cultural integrity and change. Native Nation Building explores these complex challenges and the ways Native nations are working to overcome them as they seek to make community and economic development a reality. Don't miss Native Nation Building next."

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[music]

Mary Kim Titla: "As Native Nations work to strengthen their governments and seize control of their own futures, the subject of constitutions has moved front and center in the debate about how to best achieve those goals. Today's program explores constitutions, the key role they play in effective governance by Native Nations in the U.S. and Canada, and the push by many Nations to reform their constitutions. Here today to discuss constitutions and constitutional reform are Chief Sophie Pierre and Dr. Joseph Kalt. Sophie Pierre has served as Chief of the St. Mary's Indian Band of the Ktunaxa Nation in British Columbia for the past 24 years. She also serves as President of the St. Eugene Mission Resort Holdings, and was formerly the Co-Chair of the First Nations Summit. Dr. Kalt is a Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he also serves as Co-Director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Joe and Sophie, welcome."

Joseph Kalt: "Thank you."

Sophie Pierre: "Thank you."

Mary Kim Titla: "Thanks for being with us today. We're going to jump right into the first question and talk about constitutions and how they play a role in Native nation building, particularly with respect to effective governments and community and economic development. Joe, you want to tackle that first?"

Joseph Kalt: "Sure. I think we're in this point in history in which tribes and First Nations in Canada are struggling to assert their rights of self-determination and self-government. They turn out to be like other nations in the world. You can assert those rights, you can get those rights but if you can't exercise them effectively, you're going to fall flat on your face like any other nation in the world. And so the tribes and First Nations in North America are struggling right now to rebuild institutions of their own design and they do it by starting with the basic structure of the way they're going to govern themselves, their constitution."

Mary Kim Titla: "Sophie, would you like to add to that? What's happening in your community?"

Sophie Pierre: "In British Columbia, we're doing something that's just a little bit different because we're involved in treaty making. In the year 2005 we're involved in treaty making. This is something that happened 200 years ago started here in the United States and 100 years ago in Canada but as the federal government moved across the country, by the time they got to British Columbia decided that treaties weren't necessary, so now in 2005 we're in treaty making. But we're looking at it as nation rebuilding, because we were very strong, established Nations at one point and we now need to rebuild that. And this particular process -- the treaty process --makes it possible for us to actually have something that I first heard coined by Dr. Kalt and by Dr. [Stephen] Cornell, which is to put the self back into self-government, 'cause we're looking at self-government but through a constitutional reform, the constitutional process, you identify that self and I think that that's why it's so important."

Mary Kim Titla: "Very important. Now, I personally am familiar with what is happening on my community, the San Carlos Apache Tribe, and this seems to be a movement really across the U.S. and it sounds like Canada. Can you talk about why that's happening?"

Joseph Kalt: "I think in both the U.S. and Canada, we're at a point in history where tribes have asserted their rights, they've developed the capabilities internally to run their affairs and they're starting to find that systems of government -- San Carlos Apache, 1930s, the [President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt administration -- these are systems of government that really didn't fit the tribes of Canada and the United States. And so now people are saying, 'Hey, we've got to find a system that fits ourselves.' And it's like every nation in the world, you've got to find a system that works for yourself, and I think we're at a point in history where the First Nations and the tribes are saying, 'It's time to change the basic structures so they work for us.'"

Mary Kim Titla: "And a lot of tribal governments I'm sure are going back into their own oral histories and that comes into play in reforming their constitutions. Is that what's happening in your community?"

Sophie Pierre: "Absolutely. And what it does, when you look at and you start bringing forward some of the traditions, then it really creates that understanding of why we're doing what we're doing and it develops the ownership which everyone -- I think that we all understand that if you don't have that ownership coming from the nation, then all the paper in the world and all the advice that you put together in the world, it's not going to work in a community if there isn't that ownership. And that's really where it starts from is when you feel that it's yours."

Mary Kim Titla: "How has this process worked in your communities? Is it working out well? I'm sure there were challenges."

Sophie Pierre: "Oh, there's always challenges. There's always challenges. There's a challenge for the whole treaty process. We started the treaty process about 12 years ago and it's very slow. I think that we expected that we would be able to get through and actually have some signed treaties today in Canada and in British Columbia. For the treaty process, we started with the First Nations Summit. We don't yet have a signed treaty, but I think that that's okay too with us with the way that we're doing it, 'cause we're spending a lot of time and a lot of effort in ensuring that the citizens really understand what we're doing and why we're doing it, 'cause some day we're going to have to ratify this and if the people aren't along with you, you could have done a whole lot of work and spent a whole lot of money and not be any further ahead, and we don't want to be in that position."

Mary Kim Titla: "And I know it's a tedious process and you have these public hearings and public meetings and you have these long documents to read but it's really important for people to be involved and to have a say really. I'm sure that you've been through that."

Sophie Pierre: "Yes."

Joseph Kalt: "It's a long process, because there's a process of public education that goes on. Most of us in our lives, we don't walk around every day thinking about the constitution of our nation, and so I think it's a long process that gets people to understand why you're doing it, why are you undertaking this really revolutionary step to change how you're going to run yourselves, and then you have to go through, well, what are you going to do. If you're throwing the old out, you've got to figure out what the new is and that takes time. So there's a long process of public education, and I think sometimes we work at the Native Nations Institute and at the Harvard Project with tribes and First Nations and people get impatient and they want to have it happen quickly. No, it takes years and years often because it's got to be in the people that they understand that they want this, they understand why they're doing it, what they're doing. So it's a long, long process."

Mary Kim Titla: "And how different is this process with the U.S. tribes and the First Nations in Canada, how different are the issues?"

Joseph Kalt: "Sophie, the treaty process is very different."

Sophie Pierre: "Yes, as I mentioned, the treaty process, but that's only going on in British Columbia. There are the self-governing legislation that is available for other First Nations in Canada, and so it's like a constitutional reform, where rather than being under the Indian Act in Canada that there's possibilities for new legislation on self-government, so we're taking that just one step further by actually having treaties with the government of Canada and the government of British Columbia. And that definitely is a long and tedious process."

Joseph Kalt: "And here in the United States many tribes either operate under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, Public Law 280 and so forth, and quite often here in the states it's not a treaty process, it's often tribes now getting out ahead of anywhere where the federal government might want them to be, changing the constitutions and then, in many cases, these constitutions in the United States have what are called a secretarial approval clause where the Secretary of Interior can approve or disapprove of constitutional reform. Through some recent efforts by the Cherokee Nation, for example, that precedent has now been broken and so tribes have I think potentially now greater freedom to step out and do what they're going to do. But it's not occurring in the kind of treaty process that British Columbia First Nations are going through."

Sophie Pierre: "We're really talking about different levels of government now or different branches of government, the names of the tribal leadership titles. We have now not only chairman but we have president, governor, lieutenant governors and so...chiefs. It's really changing to what really fits each tribe I suppose."

Joseph Kalt: "And I think so many of these historic governments that were really not adopted by the tribes. They were written by outsiders quite often. Well, now tribes are coming back and saying even what name we want to use, like you mentioned. You were 'Kootenai' for a long time."

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "That's right. We're also known as 'Kootenai,' but 'Kootenai' is an English word and our people, our nation decided to go back to our own name for ourselves which is 'Ktunaxa.'"

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "I tried very hard to say that properly."

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Yes, and you did very well."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "Thank you, I appreciate that. Well, even here in Arizona with Tohono O'odham and some of the others, they've gone back to their original names."

Joseph Kalt: color:#222222;background:white"> "And then people are also working -- it goes far beyond the names. As you say, they're working on, what structure do we want? Do we want a president that's directly elected by the people? Do we want the president selected by the tribal council? Do we want our tribal council to be elected at-large, do we want it to be elected by districts? Will we have an off-reservation district, 'cause so many citizens will be living off in here -- say in Arizona -- off in Phoenix or Tucson, so will you have an off-reservation district. So people are getting very inventive and starting to invent new systems and new structures that fit their particular situations."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "Can you talk about the efforts by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and how they've been involved in this process?"

Joseph Kalt: color:#222222;background:white"> "Yes. We've been running a program we call the Initiative on Constitutional Reform. About 15 tribes or so approached us because we're professors, we write nerdy papers. But they approached us and said that they wanted a forum because, as you pointed out when we started, this is like a movement right now. There are lots of tribes and First Nations doing this. So these 15 tribes came and said could we help organize a forum where they could talk to each other and learn from each other, because tribes are so different and yet they have some common issues: the citizenship, the structure, the issues of land control and jurisdiction. And so we've been running these programs that really allow tribes to sit down and the constitutional reformers can sit across the table and, 'Oh, you're doing that, we're trying it this way.' And it's a great way I think for tribes to be able to learn from each other."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "And network."

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Absolutely. And you find now that, once we heard about what was going on in the United States and we started having some of the influence of the Harvard Project coming into Canada, you found that there was just an immediate uptake. There was just a lot of excitement. Our own tribal council had Manley Begay and Stephen Cornell come and do a three-day workshop with us just to take us like right from the very beginning and the very basics and talk about why, what was it that we really wanted to do, how did we want to rebuild our nation and it was just an awesome time. But that particular exercise was just with the leadership and what we really need to do and we have to ensure it happens is that it gets out to as much...as much as possible throughout the whole Nation so that it gets into the schools, into the colleges and right into the elementary school, it gets into all the community meetings. This whole movement, it can't be just with the leadership. So it was a good way to start for us but we made sure that it moved forward from that."

Joseph Kalt: color:#222222;background:white"> "In this process, we often say that the leaders like Sophie, they have to become community educators. It's not going to be the university types who come in and reach into the community and I think often -- I don't know what you think -- I feel like I watch leaders shift their roles a little bit. They think they're supposed to be decision-makers, but at this stage of building and rebuilding nations, you're really an educator. You're not really making the decision, you're trying to educate a community so the community can make intelligent decisions that fit them. But it's that shift in role for a leader from decision-maker to educator."

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "That's right. And it's sometimes a little bit disconcerting, because you're elected chief so you kind of figure that you're supposed to be like this decision-maker, this all-around leader, but really to be a leader you have to...you're more, you have to be a servant of the people. That's how you become a leader. And so that sure puts you in that place where when you start bringing this information into the community meetings and you start getting to have to answer the really, really difficult questions or you ask those difficult questions that people don't really want to talk about. For example, citizenship and this whole thing about blood quantum, those are really, really tough questions and somebody has to ask them because we have to deal with those issues. And so sometimes being that leader asking those questions makes you really, really unpopular, but it has to be done."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "And I know that in California they're dealing with some of those issues right now with tribal enrollment and blood quantum and it's just become a really tough, tough thing to deal with because now you've got some tribal members who are no longer members of a tribe they thought they were for life, and all of a sudden they have no tribe that they belong to."

Joseph Kalt: color:#222222;background:white"> "And in the process ultimately, you have to get to the questions of the structure. How's your council going to be elected and who are the chief executive officers going to be and how are you going to handle your judicial and dispute resolution? But what we keep finding in our work with these 15 tribes we've been working with is this issue of citizenship. It's the self in self-government. Until that can get settled down, it's hard to move on to how are we going to elect our council and our chief and so forth, and so this issue of citizenship really for so many tribes and First Nations, it's the number-one issue and it's a very hard one to resolve. There's not one right answer. You look across North America and you see different answers: blood quantum, family relationships, adoption mechanisms, all kinds of different mechanisms. There isn't one right answer, and you've got to go look for your own."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "How did your community deal with that issue?"

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Well, we went back to our word, we have a word in our language, it's [Ktunaxa term] and it means 'root,' and we've got this picture of a plant that has the roots and when you talk about your relatives, the word for relative is [Ktunaxa term], so what it really means is if you can show your roots, you know where your roots are, you're Ktunaxa, you're born Ktunaxa, you're going to die Ktunaxa, but will you be able to show your roots. And it doesn't matter -- blood quantum doesn't matter in our case. What we're saying is, you show your [Ktunaxa term] and your Ktunaxa. So it's gone back to this whole thing of how we were as traditional people and using our language. Yes, using the language. The language is just so powerful with all of our nations, and I think that we all know that that's what distinguishes us amongst each other even as First Nations people of both North America and South America. It's our languages that differentiate us and so you have to use that and that's part of your traditions."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white">"And sometimes that's hard to translate into English terms really because I know that with... for instance, in the Navajo culture there's this ke'e which is -- it means a lot of things and basically 'family,' and so that's really interesting how you've dealt with that."

Joseph Kalt: color:#222222;background:white"> "But there's nothing that says you have to translate it. There are First Nations and tribes who are using their own language to write their own constitutions. There are many tribes, in fact there are Nations around the world that don't have written constitutions. Israel doesn't have a written constitution, for example, quite successful nations and I think we get caught up because this word constitution has that... it's like a high school civics text in Canada or the United States and it's very Anglo and western. But the notions of constitutions isn't an Anglo or western concept, it's just people governing themselves. And in going back to one's roots and one's language. For some tribes in the eastern United States and eastern Canada where so much of the language is completely gone, sure it's done in English and that's fine, that's their culture today. But each tribe has to find the way that works but it doesn't have to be translated, it doesn't even have to be written."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "And really there was just an understanding in Native communities about what everyone's role was and it wasn't written down. It was very much oral, so you're right. You talked about some of the obstacles already being dealing with citizenship and some other things. What are some common obstacles in constitutional reform?"

Joseph Kalt: color:#222222;background:white"> "Well, I think one of the obstacles -- and I'd appreciate your comments on this, Sophie -- one of the obstacles is I think so many First Nations and tribes go into constitutional reform thinking that there's kind of this golden moment where we'll all agree and everything will suddenly be perfect and the reality is that Native communities, they're human communities and [have] all the same problems. You have vested interest in the status quo, people who don't want to change because perhaps their job currently depends on the system or they're comfortable with it, and that's a major obstacle in this process of just some people are liking the status quo and don't see need for change or reason for change. So some of the obstacles I think are just to recognize that there are just going to be good old politics out there where you're going to have to worry about people with vested interests and so forth but that's where leadership again comes in."

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "And again I think too that understanding that there's not a perfect answer out there being the major thing, that the perfect answer, if there is such a thing, is going to come from within. So bringing in advisors is good and it gives you options, it gives you things to think about, but at the end of the day it has to come within, within the nation and I think that that's really a difficult part because we all kind of like to look around and say, okay, what's others done. Well, then that works over there, maybe something works for Navajo, let's bring it over to Ktunaxa and see if it works and sort of impose it. Well, no, that's not going to be that way."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "Yeah. You talk about conflict resolution and just this idea of agreeing to disagree I'm sure comes into play. There are, as I mentioned, this really starting at the grassroots level and getting a lot of people involved, getting the entire community involved. What did your community use that worked, that was grassroots?"

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "We started the treaty process like everybody else did where it was, as I mentioned was the leadership was going to be involved and we had a chief negotiator and we had called in the lawyers and the economists and other advisors to work with us and then it was about eight years ago that we realized, and based on some examples of what was happening around the province, that if we didn't have the citizens involved in this negotiation that we were really doing ourselves a disservice. All of the work that we're doing is on borrowed money, so at some point we have to bring this to a ratification and we have to settle the bill at the end of the day and we could be wasting a whole lot of time and whole lot of money if we don't bring the people along with us. So we realized that we needed to do that. So that's easier said than done, though. So we started out with -- we're just changing our whole way of governance within our nation. We're not going to have the elected people under the Indian Act the way that we have it now, and so we've gone back to the main families within each of our communities and the main families putting forward their spokespeople and then having the meetings with the families and sometimes that works better than having sort of a general meeting where all the families are in there and all the usual fighting and just little niggling that goes on all the time in a community. Well, it happens in families, too. That's not to say that family meetings are smooth or anything. There's lots of really interesting discussion."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "It just works better."

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Well, it's just another forum. So we do all of that. We do the family meetings, we do the community meetings, we do the nation meetings."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "Is that what you're also seeing?"

Joseph Kalt: color:#222222;background:white"> "We see different strategies. I've seen everything from family meeting-based mechanisms because the community meetings didn't work. Different tribes have different traditions and the notion that everybody gets in the same room, well, maybe instead you get around the elders in the family or the clan leaders. And I've seen situations at the other extreme where things were so tense politically that I know faction leaders would go out at 2:30 in the morning and wake up their opponents and try to talk one on one to get conversation going. And so sometimes this notion that somehow we're just going to all get together in the room and have a wonderful meeting of several thousand people, sometimes we have to face the reality that maybe there's a lot of political tension. So we've seen it families, community meetings and then down to the level sometimes where the leadership just has to privately talk among themselves for awhile to say, 'Look, we don't get along, but we need to start talking about this because if we don't reform things we're never going to really be able to effectively govern ourselves.' And so we see a wide range, and I think the correct impression to leave is that it's going to be different everywhere and there isn't like a little formula where on Tuesday we'll meet and on Wednesday we'll agree. It just doesn't work that smoothly."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "What about the role of attorneys in this process?"

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "They very definitely have a role, and that's to give advice, to give options and to answer questions, to help people think through things. But at the end of the day, it's not their decision to make. It's not they who are going to live the decision, so when it comes time for decisions, all attorneys out of the room unless you're a nation member, then you stay there and then you're there as a nation member -- not as an attorney -- to ratify this. But I think, yeah, there's a role for them but I think that they have to remember what that role is."

Joseph Kalt: color:#222222;background:white"> "I had a very smart tribal attorney say to me one time, 'Well, you know, attorneys shouldn't write constitutions. The law comes from the constitution, so the attorney comes after the constitution.' And I think that's very perceptive that what you're doing when you create a constitution, whether written or not, whether in English or another language, you're really saying, 'This is how we will make our laws. Once we've done that, yeah, we might need some attorneys.' I think where the attorneys do play a critical role is on those edges around, okay, what are the boundaries of jurisdiction and so forth that we are going to state and so forth. But the core issue as Sophie says is the attorneys don't make the constitution, the people make the constitution. And so the role of attorneys is important, but we see many problems created where...this isn't like negotiating a contract or something, here, hire an attorney and please give us back a constitution. It's not going to work."

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "But unfortunately some of the treaty discussions that we've had, that is how it's been looked at. It's been looked at like it's a contract, you get the attorneys to write it up, then when it goes back to the people to be ratified, everyone's saying, 'Where did this come from?' And there's just no way that they're going to accept it. So, yeah, it's a difficult process to go through, there's no doubt. But I think that we definitely, as we started looking it as nation rebuilding, then I think maybe it makes it a little bit easier for people to accept and to realize."

Joseph Kalt: color:#222222;background:white"> "I think part of this, and Sophie's remarks have touched on this, once you get into this, and as she says, this is a process of nation building and rebuilding, I've seen leadership -- it's kind of a freeing experience. 'Hey, wait a minute, we don't always have to ask the attorneys or we don't always have to ask an outside federal authority, maybe we want to run ourselves this way.' Figure that out and then give it to the attorneys to write the language perhaps, but the decision and the design -- it's a very freeing experience for leadership and for the citizens to say, 'Hey, we are actually going to design the way we run ourselves.' That's what self-government's all about."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "What about predictions for the future in terms of constitutional and government reform among Native nations?"

Joseph Kalt: color:#222222;background:white"> "Well, I think it's going to continue here in North America. While there's a movement and there's more and more tribes doing it, there are still hundreds of First Nations and bands and tribes that still have to face this issue. It's starting to take hold outside of North America even. I think the other piece is not only will this continue but we're seeing really inventive things being done that the whole world can learn from. The notion that there are only three branches of government. We're watching tribes create some version of a fourth branch, a kind of ethics branch, a council of elders or a council of ethics which just sits there and watches over the process as people govern themselves. Something that other nations, many other nations in the world might be able to learn from. So I think there's going to be inventiveness and an ongoing process of reform for quite a few years. This is a long process."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "But it's a positive one. It's something that needs to happen."

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Absolutely. It's very positive. I just came out of a nation meeting before coming here and we had, I don't know, about 250 people in the room and almost every person that came to the mic to speak was someone that was under the age of 30. So it really is, it's a good thing that's happening there."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "For the future. Thank you so much for being with us today. This is truly educational for me and enlightening and I really appreciate you both being here and talking about the process."

Joseph Kalt: color:#222222;background:white"> "My pleasure. Thank you."

Sophie Pierre: color:#222222;background:white"> "Thank you."

Mary Kim Titla: background:white"> "Again, we want to thank Sophie Pierre and Joseph Kalt for appearing on today's edition of Native Nation Building. Native Nation Building is a program of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. To learn more about Native Nation Building and the issues discussed on today's program, please visit the Native Nations Institute website at www.nni.arizona.edu/nativetv. Thank you for joining us and please tune in for the next edition of Native Nation Building."

Gwen Phillips: Reforming the Ktunaxa Nation Constitution: What We're Doing and Why

Author
Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Gwen Phillips, Director of Corporate Services and Governance Transition for the Ktunaxa Nation, discusses how Ktunaxa is using the British Columbia treaty process to reconceive and restructure its governance system from the ground up in order to revitalize Ktunaxa culture, language and core values and create a vibrant future for the Ktunaxa generations to come. 

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Phillips, Gwen. "Reforming the Ktunaxa Nation Constitution: What We're Doing and Why." Tribal Constitutions seminar. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. May 1, 2012. Presentation.

"[Ktunaxa language] Good morning everyone. My name is Gwen Phillips and I'm from the Ktunaxa Nation in the southeast corner of British Columbia, but we also extend into Montana and Idaho, and my grandmother was a Montana Ktunaxa or Kootenai as we're known down here. So I was asked to come and present on what we did with our constitutional reform, and we're actually doing a number of constitutional reforms. And you're going, ‘What?' Because we're involved in a number of different things, and so we'll get into a little bit of that as I move forward. But what we did and why we did it was sort of what we're here for today. [Singing] We don't own the land, the land owns us. We are just the keepers of a sacred trust. Sustained by the water, the land and the trees, our ancestral home for centuries. Yeah. We don't own the land, the land owns us. It's a concept that's not necessarily understood by those that we share the land with. So in our constitution making -- I was chuckling earlier that it should be reconstitution, a reconstituting because we've had constitutions in front of us -- and then I thought about the use of that word ‘reconstituted,' and then it brought me to orange juice immediately, and I wasn't quite sure about that, because we know it starts as an orange and then it turns into something and then they add, I think, it's water to turn it back to an orange, but I'm not quite sure if that's really what they're adding, and I'm not quite sure if it's really got the same nutritional value as an orange would at the end of it all. So I'm not sure about that use either. And we have to be really cautious as we use words, because words create worlds, we've come to see. And worlds are different all over the place. They're different for every one of us, the world that we come from in our immediate. So the constitutions that we create really have to be reflections of ourselves in our immediate place and space. [Ktunaxa language] Oops! Too quick with the clicker. [Ktunaxa language] This is not unfolding quite right. Anyway, there's another word on that page. It's [Ktunaxa language]. [Ktunaxa language], the word [Ktunaxa language] means something that is actually connected to the earth. The picture in the middle is some hoodoos, and in that particular region of our territory is where our creation story is said to have taken place. The very end of it, when the humans were brought to the earth. ‘We came from the dirt,' it is said, so [Ktunaxa language], the suffix of that or the root word of that one with the added suffix of [Ktunaxa language] means taking your life from the earth. [Ktunaxa language] means literally as me a human, my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren. So when you understand the connection of those phrases, those terms, it's immediate and it's huge. It's not saying necessarily that we own the land, that we take our lives from the land. [Ktunaxa language] -- also Ktunaxa words. The Ktunaxa language is one of the isolate languages in the world. It's not related to any other language. It's only spoken by my people. It breaks down into no further dialects. In Canada we have 11 aboriginal language families. My language is one of those 11, and it's the most critically endangered of all of those languages at this point in time. My land, my language, my people. If nothing more, our constitution has got to speak to, understand, and reflect those concepts back to ourselves.

Early relationships. Well, this is really important to us in British Columbia. For those who don't know, British Columbia is actually just in treaty negotiations right now. So when Canada was being born a way back when, and King George was laying down his Royal Proclamations in 1763, it was a very different circumstance we were experiencing in Canada than what was going on in the United States. In the United States, and I watched movies about Indian wars, it was kind of strange for us, because we had King George actually saying in his gentlemanly way, ‘Yes, we know this is your land, but we're coming to get it, so we'll take it for a bead and a feather.' Basically, there's treaties that have been established in Canada right from Royal Proclamation days forward. So in 1763 there were treaties established. Anybody here from those treaty nation areas around that neck of the woods in 1763? Guess where those treaty areas were? Right along the St. Lawrence Seaway. Why? Because they wanted access to those lands so that they could get in there and get the furs and the riches that were held inland. So King George laid off this beautiful statement back there in 1763, but none of us understood English back then, so we weren't quite sure what was going on. We really have what's called unextinguished title in British Columbia right now. It's kind of a strange place to be in, in that we know we have rights to govern, we know we've been subject to other people's interpretation of what those rights might be, but we are in a place where we're actually defining what they are through negotiations. It's interesting though, I heard somebody say about the assertion of their responsibility to govern over their people when they're not on their own territory. Well, of course we would. Why wouldn't we? The provincial government of British Columbia and the federal government of Canada seem to think that our jurisdiction only relates with Indians on their land, and if ya'll come on my land, I can tell you what to do, too. But as soon as I step off that land, I'm not an Indian anymore. I'm not Ktunaxa anymore. Well, that's just crazy for us. Crazy! And in fact, they followed that thinking along with policy and then they've created bureaucracy, and then da, da, da, da, da. So we have on and off reserve, status and non-status, aboriginal and not. We have this crazy place in Canada, it's unbelievable. So we're educating them about concepts around jurisdiction. The jurisdiction can take the forms of territorial jurisdiction as well as personal jurisdiction. We have a phenomena in Canada that we use a term ‘aboriginal people.' We have to use that term because we as Indigenous people, inherent right, First Nations people and the Inuit people up north, are what we call Indigenous people, and then we have this other group of aboriginal people called Métis people. Somebody was speaking French to me on the break. French people in meeting peoples that they met and in becoming Métis people are not subject to the same inherent right that we have. The reason I say that is because the concept upon which our inherent right is sort of figured out is about nations that existed prior to contact. So prior to contact, did we exist as a nation and occupy territory, etc.? And yeah, we did. And so in a funny, humorous way, when I'm teaching people about these subtleties I say, ‘What's the difference between the inherent right and the aboriginal right?' About nine months. Because we have that inherent right to govern which brings us both territorial and personal jurisdiction. Métis people do not have territorial jurisdiction. They have the personal jurisdiction, and so what we have been doing is trying to reconcile those understandings with the other governments, and trying to get them to see that, the government can delegate a certain perspective or a certain part of their responsibilities to all aboriginal people, but they can't delegate to us as Indigenous, inherent right people because they don't own something to delegate to us. So we're at this reconciliation place right now where we're trying to say, these are our rights, these are our interests, this is what we're wanting to do, and trying to reconcile it with them. And we have different concepts. Something so simple as, we should have the right under a democratic, democratic, democratic -- I love that term -- philosophy to select what we want for our government. But they're telling us, ‘No, you have to have an election.' And we're going, ‘But if our people want to select you because you're the best person, we can't do that?' ‘No, that's not a democratic process.' Isn't democracy supposed to be of the people, for the people, by the people or something like that? So if our people want something, they should be able to do that. So here we are at this treaty negotiation table taking ten years to actually come up with an understanding of what we're going to do as far as getting our people at the table to govern for us. And we still haven't got some resolution over certain concepts, because they can't get their head around some of these concepts, because they only use their head. In my language, the word ‘to think' means you use your heart. If it feels right with your heart. Doesn't mean about the head. So when I talk about governance, I liken it to the human body, the head being the govern, or the governance, in that you have eyes to see, ears to hear and listen, you have a nose to smell what don't smell right, and you only have one mouth. So that you should be doing twice as much listening, twice as much looking, and not quite as much talking, as the governors, as the leaders. Government on the other hand is like the body. It's the arms and the legs that do it, and they connect up where? On the trunk of ourselves where our heart is. So if we do good work in creation of governance theory, philosophy, concepts, instruments, then hopefully our government can do what it needs to do to get us to the place we want to be.

So constitutional reform for us has been a multiple [shivers] process, because as a nation we are not acknowledged by the government of Canada. They do not acknowledge in the Indian Act nations, even though King George in his Royal Proclamation did. The Canadian government recognizes Indian bands and an Indian band is a legally defined term in the Indian Act, and so that's the people they want to talk to, the Indian bands. That's not the Ktunaxa Nation. We are a nation as we govern. So again, we have to operate as a nation under non-profit Society [Act] legislation, which is about the bottom-basement governing authority you can have in all of the constructs of governance, other than an association. But we operate under this non-profit society construct and we have to have a Society Act constitution and by-laws. Try using the term ‘sovereign' in that level of instrument. Provincial government regulates that stuff and they don't want to see that word ‘sovereign' in there. ‘No, you're no different than the hockey club down the road.' That's how they look at us as a nation.

So we have this Society Act constitution that went through a whole bunch of reform and was adopted in 2008 as sort of an in-between place because we have other things we need to do. We need to celebrate and protect our identity. We need to incorporate our vision and our values. ‘Your what, you say?' ‘Our values.' We heard this morning about core values and how important they are. We want to re-establish an internal economy. Why? When I was the director of education for my nation, we did a full psych-ed assessment of our school-aged population, and we had over 40% fetal alcohol affected individuals. Forty percent. That's now our working-age population, and don't think that that is a high statistic, because in some of the more rural and remote communities, they have even higher indexes. What does that mean? Well, when we talk to the federal government they go, ‘Oh, my god, that's terrible.' And we go, ‘No. That's reality.' Is your cup half empty or is it half full? Change the size of the cup, people. You might even flow it over for awhile, more than you need, because you develop expectations based on what your reality is. So when we talk about an internal economy, I'm not talking about being wealthy like the big oil companies. I'm talking about being able to take care of ourselves again, because something in our vision speaks to that. We're also interested in revenue sharing. Before we asserted ourselves as a nation and they looked at an Indian band on a reserve, they said, ‘Whatever, you're a federal liability.' But as soon as we walk off the reserve, we're in their face. Then we're everybody's liability, and then it becomes in their interest to relate to us. And there's actually been federal policy passed around consultation and accommodation. Because of our ability and our right to govern, more so our responsibility, when the government is doing something major that will impact our inherent right, they have to consult with us and potentially accommodate our interests. And if they can't accommodate our interests, then we go into sharing some revenues and mitigation and all those other things.

We want to give our government purpose again, and more importantly we want to rebuild our citizens' trust. In the 20 years that I've been involved in constitutional reform and nation rebuilding, that's the thing that comes up and bites me every time. ‘We don't trust, we don't trust.' Most of us in Indian Country don't even trust ourselves anymore, let alone the neighbor or the guy down the road. ‘We're going to give them our life? No.' So that to us is key. How do we rebuild trust? And I know I'm not supposed to talk about process, but sometimes process is more important than product, and that's all I'm going to say about process. But the environment we're in is not a lovely place to be. Now if I could just go and think and dream and develop constitutions that would be lovely. But you know what it's like working in Indian Country, don't you? It's like the tennis-ball launcher has been madly turned on, and there you are in the morning with a broken hockey stick trying to do something. It's crazy. They throw more at us and more at us and more at us. So right now I feel privileged, or maybe it's not privileged, maybe it's the dream that turned into the nightmare, to be part of the national government's exercise to look at all of the authorities that the federal government has in place that deal with Indians. They're trying to reduce those authorities cause we're in a fiscal-restraint process. So the axe is swinging in Ottawa and I went, ‘Please give me the handle of that axe.' So I'm the only Indian involved in this big old committee that's doing this work, because I want to make sure if the axe is swinging it ain't gonna hit the jugular vein. And I've actually got them already within three weeks to see the light about on reserve, off reserve, extra bureaucracy, extra costs. Aah! ‘Yeah, you can save me some money?' ‘Yeah, we can save you some money, and we will.'

And somebody said something about root causes. Well, that's what we're really trying to do, because we see a vision, and that song that I started singing is our vision song. Strong, healthy citizens in communities speaking our languages and celebrating who we are and our history and our ancestral homelands, working together, managing our lands and resources as self-sufficient, self-governing nation. Key, key – self-sufficiency. It does not say wealthy. And every time I ask my people about money cause they always want economic development to bring in money. I say, ‘Why?' ‘Cause we need things.' ‘Well, tell me what you need.' ‘Well, we need money.' ‘No, no, no, no. Next time I come I'm going to dump a big pile of money in the foyer of the Band office. What you going to spend it on?' Aah! ‘We don't know.'

I watched about 20 school children's vision statement -- pictures, art -- one time and I got sick to my stomach, because every child's vision statement said, I see a future where there's no more fighting, I see a future where there's no more drinking, I see a future where there's no more, no more future. Really, what they saw was an eradication of ugly things, and that's not good enough for us. We want a picture of good things. We want to know what's good about ourselves. So as we put that vision statement in front of us we said, ‘Holy cow, if that's where we're trying to go, and that's the car we're driving via our constitution and regulations, etc., we ain't never gonna get there.' So we had to say, ‘Okay, we need a new vehicle. What is it going to be, a Ferrari, a four-wheel drive? No, let's just get the horse and buggy, cause that worked the best in our territory.' We want to rebuild our nation, but what is a nation? Can you smell, touch, taste a nation? No. You feel it in your heart, that place where you think from. But what is a nation? It's a whole bunch of communities, and in our case we've got five in Canada, one in Montana, and one in Idaho. So a nation is a whole bunch of individual semi-sovereign entities. But what is a community? Well, in our understandings, it was an extended family group living in a particular locale. When it got too big to be supported in that locale, they broke apart and another band was formed. So we have a whole bunch of families. And by the way, our governance structures included family. But the only real change agent in any of this is about the individual citizen. You can't change the family unless you change the people in it. You can't change the community unless you change the people in the families that live there. So our whole nation rebuilding is about rebuilding our nation one person at a time. And why are we doing that? On a basis of values and principles, traditional values and principles. Not rights and freedoms. Not rights and freedoms, but responsibilities and privileges. And so strong, healthy citizens speaking our language and celebrating who we are -- it's all part of our reorganization, our structures. So that vision statement turned into regulation and instruments and restructure within our nation, the way we do business.

So we have sitting councils in those four areas and we have an executive body that ensures that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing to ensure that we can fulfill our responsibilities and continue to access our privileges. Not rights and freedoms -- responsibilities and privileges, people. The only right I have in the morning is opening my eyes, and everything else after that is a responsibility to achieve a privilege.

So we've taken a strategic approach. Hey, hey, I've heard this term before. Building strong healthy people, not just getting rid of problems. Not just getting rid of problems. Don't focus on problems, focus on the good things you have. Implementing value-based governance, not just adopting the status quo. Balancing interest across the sectors. In our communities, we get lots of money for social programs and none for language. So we've got to make sure that we're the ones that are divvying out the dollars, not them. That we have ecosystem-based land use planning, not just resource development. That we manage an economy, and not just economic development. That's the only way you can ensure that your own people are alive and well and working and engaged and that you can [achieve] your vision statement. Clarifying relations to the people and the land. Again, not just looking at the absence of negatives. What we want is a presence of positives.

And so where are we? We've developed our vision, and that was a two-year exercise. So when somebody says, ‘It might take two or three years to do your constitution.' Hey, it might take two or three generations, and it might be the good one that you have that'll last for the next 20, 30, 50 generations. Vision, values, guiding principles. Done, done, done. That's ten years work, ten years work. But those things became alive as soon as they were done. It just didn't stop and wait for it. They've been permeating every aspect of what we have, because we're not just buying a new car, we're trying the car, putting on different wheels, we're trying a new... We're trying it out as we're driving it, because we want something that's going to work for us.

So this is where we are right now, defining standards for ourselves again across the board. What are our own standards, and that informs our law, and then we'll know what institutions we need. And I'll tell you right now, we've already said that one of the major institutional changes that has to happen is within the education system, because if we're dealing with all of this ill health, then why are we not using the human capital-building machine to address those issues. And I included along the side a few little concepts that we heard somewhere. Cultural fit, de facto sovereignty, strategic approach. I recognize those things from somewhere.

So our constitution, yes, it's been reformed a couple of times, we're working on a self-government constitution right now, which is really interesting. We have gone through I guess the process of putting ourself back into the picture. Now we have to get to the point where we actually can cut the strings from those other guys, because we're not quite there yet. But what we're saying is that we will have the responsibility for things like preserving, promoting and protecting our cultural heritage, language, identity; protecting and preserving ecological and environmental integrity of the lands, etc., etc., etc. But, as we do this, we acknowledge there's a lot of resources that [are] required, strategic investments. So we've gone away from using terms like ‘development' and using terms like ‘investment,' so we expect to see something coming back. And we're looking at things as independent variables. The government likes to talk in terms of capacity building, but they don't want to give us tools, they don't want us to have document management systems and things that they have that allow them to function effectively. So we're doing this work, we're actually sitting down and defining the full complete picture of what we'll need all across the board to govern effectively, right from competency to capacity, tools and instruments all the way along, because we have a vision and we want to achieve that vision. [Ktunaxa language]"

Our Journey - Our Choice - Our Future: Maa-nulth Treaty Legacy

Producer
New Journey Productions
Year

On April 1, 2011, the Maa-nulth First Nations completed what has been a long journey to self-determination. It was an historic day for all, and a day of celebration for the Huu-ay-aht, Ka:’yu:’k't’h/Che:k’tles7et’h, Toquaht, Uchucklesaht, and Ucluelet people. New Journey Productions worked with the Maa-nulth First Nations to create this “welcoming video” for the celebrations.

Resource Type
Citation

New Journey Productions. "Our Journey - Our Choice - Our Future." Qualicum Beach, British Columbia, Canada. 2011. Film. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQeCOugKlJg, accessed September 19, 2016).

Valuing Tradition: Governance, Cultural Match, and the BC Treaty Process

Year

Self-governance negotiations are an integral part of British Columbia’s modern day treaty process. At some treaty tables, impasses have resulted from differences on how to include traditional First Nations governance within treaty. Although some First Nations are determined to pursue traditional structures, inflexible negotiation mandates and fundamentally different understandings of good governance have been barriers to achieving this end. Emphasizing the value of culturally matched governance as integral to effective governance and genuine self-determination, this capstone uses a literature review, case studies, and stakeholder interviews to analyse why some First Nations place a priority on traditional governance and what the benefits of these structures are. The capstone analyzes obstacles preventing inclusion of these traditional structures in treaty and identifies opportunities for alleviating the barriers to their adoption. Policy options are identified and evaluated based on a multiple-criteria analysis, and a recommendation is made on next steps for addressing this policy issue.

Resource Type
Citation

Hoffman, Kaitlin S. Valuing Tradition: Governance, Cultural Match, and the BC Treaty Process. School of Public Policy. Simon Fraser University. Burnaby, British Columbia. Canada. April 10, 2014. Master's Thesis. (http://summit.sfu.ca/item/14012, accessed May 23, 2014) 

Colonial Fracture And Community Cohesion: Governance In The Stó:Lõ Community Of Shxw'õwhámél

Year

This paper has three goals: 1) To briefly outline the process through which Shxw’õwhámél came to adopt the Siyá:m System in 1994; 2) to highlight certain concerns about the limitations of that system as articulated by community members in 2006; and 3) to provide a detailed discussion of those historical government and missionary actions that served to isolate and curtail inter-village family relationships.

The two former issues provided a context for the later, which in turn is a direct response to requests by members of the Shxw’õwhámél community for information to help contextualize and explain the historical process by which families living on one Stó:lõ reserve became disassociated and disconnected from relatives living on another.

Put another way, the paper’s overall aim is to provide Shxw’õwhámél people with information they can consider as they work to determine what has limited the effectiveness of their Siyá:m System and what they might do to improve the situation as they work to reassert even greater self-governance responsibilities and authority.  

A fourth objective is to situate the Shxw’õwhámél experience within a larger context so that the implications of their story might be made of relevance to First Nations elsewhere who are likewise struggling to re-activate self-governance within the caldron of Canadian colonial society.

Resource Type
Citation

Carlson, Keith Thor. "Colonial Fracture And Community Cohesion: Governance In The Stó:Lõ Community Of Shxw’õwhámél." A Research Paper for the National Centre for First Nations Governance. The National Centre for First Nations Governance. Canada. July 2007. Paper.