THE CANADIAN PRESS/Stephen MacGillivray
New Brunswick is embroiled in one more battle with native First Nations whose territories New Brunswick was constituted on — and it’s not shocking.
The province’s legislated apply of stealing Indigenous land predates Confederation. Its colonial id is essentially constructed on the identical ideas of exclusion, exploitation, domination and dispossession practised by the New Brunswick authorities immediately.
In some respect, this makes land acknowledgements much more essential, as a result of they converse to the core of the provincial-Indigenous relationship: land.
Within the Maritime 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.
It is a incontrovertible fact that has been said by the Authorities of Canada and the New Brunswick Courtroom of Enchantment — a crucial and essential fact that precedes any reconciliation. A authorities that refuses to acknowledge this could not have the legitimacy to manipulate.
Land acknowledgements and what’s taking place in N.B.
Of their most expansive interpretation, land acknowledgements are small reminders for settlers that treaties live paperwork and we’ve got, as treaty folks and companions, tasks to breathe life into these paperwork and renew these commitments.
Land acknowledgements might be action-oriented calls to service, however the actuality is that they’re usually little greater than symbolic gestures.
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Surprisingly (and seemingly out of nowhere), on Oct. 14, New Brunswick’s Legal professional Normal Ted Flemming forbade the usage of land acknowledgements that acknowledged the unceded and unsurrendered territories of the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’gmaq by authorities workers throughout your entire public service.
The federal government argues it has “no alternative” 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’ll see that my actions are going to talk louder than phrases.”
Her actions embrace 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 Reality and Reconciliation, which collapsed after Indigenous management withdrew their help of her and her proposed work.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Stephen MacGillivray
Extra just 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’ ideas 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 present 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 should be useless in N.B.
The land acknowledgements ban is a demise blow to the idea of nation-to-nation in New Brunswick.
It represents an insidious actuality: that the lawyer basic, premier and aboriginal affairs minister have satisfied a seemingly unwilling cupboard to reject the essential 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 liable for Indigenous relations can not settle for or acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty, then certainly nation-to-nation should 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 converse 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 precisely that: a declare. That the energy of the declare rests on civil servants avoiding the usage of 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 substantiate this when we’ve got legal guidelines that spell it out.
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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 study, 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 in the case of realizing reconciliation.
The Division of Aboriginal Affairs, which not solely toes the celebration 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. It is a plan she conceived with out the information 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 ideas of the Peace and Friendship Treaties and even perhaps 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 way of the O'Brien Basis.