New Brunswick Aboriginal Affairs Minister Arlene Dunn and Premier Blaine Higgs communicate with the media as a part of Nationwide Indigenous Peoples Day in Fredericton on June 21, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Stephen MacGillivray
New Brunswick is embroiled in yet one more combat with native First Nations whose territories New Brunswick was constituted on — and it’s not stunning.
The province’s legislated follow of stealing Indigenous land predates Confederation. Its colonial id is essentially constructed on the identical rules of exclusion, exploitation, domination and dispossession practised by the New Brunswick authorities in the present day.
In some respect, this makes land acknowledgements much more vital, as a result of they communicate to the core of the provincial-Indigenous relationship: land.
Within the Atlantic provinces and the Gaspé, land is ruled (in probably the most beneficiant definition of that phrase) by the collection of 18th-century Peace and Friendship Treaties signed between the British Crown and the Wabanaki Confederacy nations. These treaties didn’t cede territory or title to the Crown.
This can be a incontrovertible fact that has been said by the Authorities of Canada and the New Brunswick Court docket of Attraction — a vital and vital reality that precedes any reconciliation. A authorities that refuses to acknowledge this could not have the legitimacy to control.
Land acknowledgements and what’s taking place in N.B.
Of their most expansive interpretation, land acknowledgements are small reminders for settlers that treaties reside paperwork and we have now, as treaty folks and companions, obligations to breathe life into these paperwork and renew these commitments.
Land acknowledgements could possibly be action-oriented calls to service, however the actuality is that they’re typically little greater than symbolic gestures.
A statue of George Vancouver in Vancouver, B.C., is roofed by an indication that reads ‘Sure we’re on stolen unceded Indigenous land.’
(Shutterstock)
Surprisingly (and seemingly out of nowhere), on Oct. 14, 2021, New Brunswick’s Lawyer Basic Ted Flemming forbade using land acknowledgements that acknowledged the unceded and unsurrendered territories of the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’gmaq by authorities workers throughout the whole public service.
The federal government argues it has “no selection” however to defend itself after the Wolastoqey Nation filed its authorized declare asserting Indigenous title over 60 per cent of the provincial territorial landmass. Logically, this defence included the ban of symbolic gestures.
Main by “instance,” Flemming said that he has not made such a land acknowledgement since October 2020. Aboriginal Affairs minister Arlene Dunn has been silent on the matter, avoiding media requests and deferring to Flemming on the query.
Crown-Indigenous relations in N.B.
It has been a difficult 18 months or so for the provincial-Indigenous relationship in New Brunswick. Since assuming workplace in September 2020, Dunn has managed to deem herself unwelcome in Indigenous communities throughout the province. She has known as for understanding, stating that “they may see that my actions are going to talk louder than phrases.”
Her actions embody publicly undermining requires the federal government to conduct a public inquiry into systemic racism towards Indigenous Peoples, which prompted chiefs to demand her resignation. She then proposed the All Nations/All Events Working Group on Fact and Reconciliation, which collapsed after Indigenous management withdrew their help of her and her proposed work.
New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs, left, and Aboriginal Affairs Minister Arlene Dunn, proper, communicate with Chief Alan Polchies Jr., of St. Mary’s First Nation after elevating flags in entrance of the legislature as a part of 2021 Nationwide Indigenous Peoples Day in Fredericton.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Stephen MacGillivray
Extra lately, Dunn appeared earlier than the Senate of Canada to articulate her authorities’s rejection of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ rules on free, prior and knowledgeable consent.
Unsurprisingly, the provincial-Indigenous relationship in New Brunswick is barely alive. In June, that was additional solidified when Madawaska chief Patricia Bernard eliminated the Canadian and New Brunswick flags from her group saying:
“At the moment we don’t actually have any type of relationship with the federal authorities besides their constitutional accountability to us, and no relationship with the provincial authorities.”
The nation-to-nation relationship have to be useless in N.B.
The land acknowledgements ban is a deathblow to the idea of nation-to-nation in New Brunswick.
It represents an insidious actuality: that the legal professional normal, premier and Aboriginal Affairs minister have satisfied a seemingly unwilling cupboard to reject the fundamental foundational precept of the Peace and Friendship Treaties — that these lands are unceded and unsurrendered.
By rejecting this precept, New Brunswick additionally rejects the sovereignty of the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’gmaq, thus sustaining a decade-old acceptance of the doctrine of discovery as authorities coverage.
The Royal Fee on Aboriginal Peoples affirmed that acknowledging Indigenous sovereignty is a precondition for reconciliation — I’ve written about this too.
If senior ministers of the Crown in New Brunswick answerable for Indigenous relations can’t settle for or acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty, then certainly nation-to-nation have to be useless.
Unceded and unsurrendered
The truth that land acknowledgements unsettle the New Brunswick authorities to the purpose that the justice ministry is cracking down on their use doesn’t communicate extremely of the province’s authorized case towards the Wolastoqey Nation. Clearly, New Brunswick is reluctant to relinquish its declare to absolute and unique sovereignty over this territory.
But theirs is strictly that: a declare. That the energy of the declare rests on civil servants avoiding using the phrases “unceded” and “unsurrendered” signifies that even the province acknowledges its ludicrousness.
Litigation is a really tangible consequence of the 200 years of land theft sanctioned by the New Brunswick legislature. We don’t want a land acknowledgement to verify this when we have now legal guidelines that spell it out.
Individuals maintain indicators recognizing Indigenous sovereignty over the land.
(Shutterstock)
Land acknowledge, don’t land acknowledge
This farce reveals a tragic state of affairs in New Brunswick: this authorities doesn’t know what it’s reconciling and as a substitute of getting the humility to be taught, it has opted to kill nation-to-nation.
The collection of half measured, watered-down legislative motions and childishness of the previous 18 months stresses that we’re being led by unserious, unqualified folks relating to realizing reconciliation.
The Division of Aboriginal Affairs, which not solely toes the get together line on terra nullius however units it, is led by a minister who claims to her colleagues that she is engaged on a plan to raised the connection with First Nations. This can be a plan she conceived with out the data of First Nations to enhance a relationship that she has, at each alternative, demonstrated she doesn’t perceive.
Land acknowledge, don’t land acknowledge. However a brand new method to the connection, rooted in justice, fairness and good religion, grounded by the shared acknowledgement of the rules of the Peace and Friendship Treaties and maybe even led by new faces is required.
Robert Tay-Burroughs's analysis is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Analysis Council and the Leonard and Kathleen O'Brien Humanitarian Belief by means of the O'Brien Basis.
