Delgamuukw v. British Columbia

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Delgamuukw v. British Columbia [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1010, also known as Delgamuukw vs. the Queen is a famous leading decision of the Supreme Court of Canada where the Court made its most definitive statement on the nature of aboriginal title in Canada.

The proceedings were started in 1984 by the Gitxsan Nation and the Wet'suwet'en Nation. They bypassed the slow Federal Land Claims process in which the British Columbia Provincial Government would not participate.

They claimed ownership and legal jurisdiction over 133 individual hereditary territories, a total of 58,000 square kilometres of northwestern British Columbia, an area larger than the province of Nova Scotia.

The Gitksan and Witsuwit'en used their oral histories as principal evidence in the case.

The Province insisted that all First Nations land rights in British Columbia were extinguished by the colonial government before it became part of Canada in 1871. Moreover, Chief Justice Allan McEachern ruled that aboriginal rights in general existed at the "pleasure of the crown" and could thus be extinguished "whenever the intention of the Crown to do so is clear and plain." (In the Court of Appeal, the Province changed its position to argue that aboriginal land rights had not been extinguished.) In his explanation for the ruling, McEachern conceded that he was unwilling to seriously consider evidence from oral history, arguing that prior to colonization, aboriginal lives had been "nasty, brutish, and short".

The Supreme Court made no decision on the land dispute, insisting that another trial was necessary. For the first time, however, the Court directly addressed the issue of Aboriginal title.

Aboriginal title is different from land usage rights, as it acknowledges Indigenous ownership of the land and the right to use in ways it had not been used traditionally. On the other hand, it is different from common land ownership, in that it is a Constitutional communal right deeply linked to Indigenous culture. Land governed by Aboriginal title can only be sold to the Federal Government, not to private buyers. The ruling also made important statements about the legitimacy of Indigenous oral history ruling that oral histories were just as important as written testimony.

The Delgamuukw court case has important implications for the history of Canada and for the idea of history itself. In this case the court gave greater weight to oral history than to written evidence. Of oral histories the court said "they are tangential to the ultimate purpose of the fact-finding process at trial -- the determination of the historical truth."

In A Fair Country, John Ralston Saul writes about the broader significance of the court's recognition of oral evidence as carrying as much or greater weight as written evidence, on Canadian society.
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Declaration of the Tahltan Tribe (1910)

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We, the undersigned members of the Tahltan tribe, speaking for ourselves, and our entire tribe, hereby make known to all whom it may concern, that we have heard of the Indian Rights movement among the Indian tribes of the Coast, and of the southern interior of B.C. Also we have read the declaration make by the chiefs of of the southern interior tribes at Spences Bridge of the 16th July last, and we hereby declare our complete agreement with the demands of the same, and with the position taken by the said chiefs, and their people on all the questions stated in the said Declaration, and we furthermore make known that it is our desire and intention to join with them in the fight for our mutual rights, and that we will assist in the furtherance of this object in every way we can, until such time as all these matters of moment to us are finally unsettled. We further declare as follow:

Firstly- We claim the sovereign right to all the country of our tribe - this country of ours which we have held intact from the encroachments of other tribes, from time immemorial, at the cost of our own blood. We have done this because our lives depended on our country. To lose it meant we would lose our means of living, and therefore our lives. We are still as heretofore, dependant for our living on our country, and we do not intend to give away the title to any part of same without adequate compensation. We deny the B.C. government has any title or right of ownership in our country. We have never treated with them nor given them any such title. (We have only lately learned the B.C. government make this claim, and that it has for long considered as it property all the territories of the Indian tribes of B.C.)

Secondly - We desire that a part of our country, consisting of one or more large areas (to be selected by us), be retained by us for our own use, said lands, and all thereon to be acknowledged by the government as our absolute property. The rest of our tribal land we are willing to relinquish to the B.C. government for adequate compensation.

Thirdly - We wish it known that a small portion of our lands at the mouth of the Tahltan River, was set apart a few years ago by Mr. Vowell as an Indian reservation. These few acres are the only reservation made for our tribe. We may state we never applied for the reservation of this piece of land, and we had no knowledge why the government set it apart for us, nor do we know exactly yet.

Fourthly - We desire that all questions regarding our lands, hunting, fishing etc., and every matter concerning our welfare, be settled by treaty between us and the Dominion and B.C. government.

Fifthly - We are of the opinion it will be better for ourselves, also better for the governments and all concerned, if these treaties are made with us at a very early date, so all friction, and misunderstanding between us and the whites may be avoided, for we hear lately much talk of white settlement in this region, and the building of railways, etc., in the near future.

Signed at Telegraph Creek, B.C., this eighteenth day of October, Nineteen hundred and ten, by:

NANOK, Chief of the Tahltans,

NASTULTA, alias Little Jackson,

GEORGE ASSADZA, KENETI, alias Big Jackson

And eighty other members of the tribe.

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Hunting and History in Northern B.C

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‘But We Are Still Native People’: Talking about Hunting and History in Northern Athapaskan Village

by Thomas McIlwraith Ph.D

Abstract:

My dissertation is a study of hunting in the northern Athapaskan village of Iskut, British Columbia, Canada. Hunting serves as a cultural system uniting Iskut people in a place where ethnic identity is not as easy to identify as outsiders might expect. Moreover, non-natives sometimes suggest that Iskut hunting activities reflect cultural and economic poverty. Still, interest in Iskut knowledge about animals and the land persists in and outside of Iskut. Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is in demand in bureaucratic settings, for example, but Iskut knowledge about food and animals resists easy interpretation. I turn to the ‘ethnography of speaking’ as a way of learning about hunting and of moving beyond the fact-finding often associated with bureaucratic TEK projects. I attend to hunting stories and group history to understand why Iskut people talk about hunting with such passion. Studying talk of hunting and its etiquette reveals a wide range of lived experiences and practices at Iskut Village. It shows how Iskut people draw their history into contemporary resource conflicts. And, it illustrates a cultural system in a place where different family histories exist.

Read More (PDF): Here
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Elders Oral Survey

Elders survey traditional Cultural Property along the Hok'azi (Klappan) river on Tahltan Territory.