Conservative Leader Rustad offers a pointed challenge to Indigenous rights in BC

Truth and Reconciliation Day is a statutory holiday reserved to acknowledge Indigenous survivors of Canadian residential schools and to honour those who never made it home. Conservative Leader John Runstad chose that day, specifically, to announce that he would repeal the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in BC if he is elected premier on Oct. 19. To many, the announcement was both pointed and painful. To Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, it was “astonishingly reprehensible.”

UNDRIP was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. Along with the United States, New Zealand and Australia, Canada originally voted against it. In 2016, Canada announced to the UN it would adopt and implement the Declaration through Section 35 of the Constitution. In a provincial context, it was adopted by BC in a rare unanimous vote in the legislature in October 2019.

In this domestic context, UNDRIP is an instrument by which Indigenous Peoples can pursue their full rights, and a guide to shape the programs and policies of BC lawmakers. Some Indigenous leaders in BC saw Rustad’s move as an attempt to repeal reconciliation altogether, or at the very least, set it back decades.

In its public response to his statement, the First Nations Leadership Council (FNLC) said it is “astounded that Mr. Rustad chose to announce his continued crusade to repeal the Declaration Act on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, of all days. This ‘plan’ will set us back decades and will continue to pit First Nations against other British Columbians. This is not leadership.”

The Conservatives have engaged in fearmongering and misinformation campaigns that would suggest that somehow inherent Indigenous rights to land and title would impinge on non-Indigenous access to and free enjoyment of Crown Lands in the province.

Fearmongering and misinformation

For the Conservatives, the historic GayGahlda Kwah hlahl dáyaa Agreement with the Haida Nation seems to represent its touchy inflection point. In a post he made on X the day after the BC legislature’s historic consent to the Agreement (Nang K’uula-Nnag K’úulaas) recognizing the Haida Nation’s inherent rights of governance and self-determination in Haida Gwaii, Rustad stoked fear and spread misinformation around the concept of Land Back, suggesting the province and/or private citizens would have to pay trillions of dollars in compensation whenever aboriginal titles to ownership were “found” under current private property owners.

That decision put even the conservative Fraser Institute on the attack for the agreement process’s lack of transparency and public consultation, ignoring the fact that such an agreement with BC did not actually require general public consultation—precisely because of UNDRIP.

In plain speak, they are trying to convince BC residents that, at any moment, they could lose their homes and property to an Indigenous land claim made possible by UNDRIP.

The fearmongering continued last February when the NDP government announced changes to the BC Land Act that would facilitate agreements with Indigenous governing bodies to share in decision-making about public (Crown) land use.

In response, the Conservatives put out this statement: “We do not support the Eby NDP’s sweeping changes to BC's Land Act. It is an assault on your private property rights and our shared rights to use Crown Land.”

The Conservatives went on to repudiate the concept of the return of traditional lands. “Returning lands needs to be based on economic reconciliation, which is not about transferring potential from one group to another—but rather adding the potential for all British Columbians,” as if the basis of BC's nearly two-century-old colonial economy had not been the transference of goods and (extracted) resources, most often without the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of Indigenous communities.

The timing stands out

Saturday’s statement from Rustad’s Conservatives which read as if Indigenous communities were poised to cut non-Indigenous people off from recreational access to water and land was made as 11K people gathered, in the spirit of reconciliation, at the South Island Powwow in Victoria and others took part in other Orange Shirt Day events and ceremonies across the CRD.  “Conservatives will defend your rights to outdoor recreation—and your water access, as well as BC’s mining, forestry, agriculture sectors and every other land use right,” it said.

Under the guise of what Rustad is calling “economic reconciliation” his announcement of “advancing Indigenous economic and social progress” by repealing UNDRIP is also an appeal to voters of fiscal opportunism in the form of a promise of a limitless employment boom across major extractive sectors: mining, fishing, forestry, and oil and gas. To this end, he said, UNDRIP is a bad fit in the BC context, based on the fact that there are more than 200 unique First Nations that do not hold treaties (meaning they are unceded) with provincial or federal governments and could, ostensibly achieve the same sovereignty granted to the Haida Nation.

Except that precedent simply does not exist.

Even the landmark Delgamuukw v. British Columbia (1997) case which established Aboriginal Title did not deliver land sovereignty for the Wet'suwet'en and the Gitxsan people. In fact, the Liberal provincial government and the current NDP government have consistently taken advantage of, before and since that historic ruling, the lack of economic opportunity in Indigenous communities to secure support for forestry, mining, and pipeline projects they wanted built, often pitting hereditary leadership against elected band councils and causing deep social rifts in communities.

The recent Coastal Gas Links debacle on Wet'suwet'en territory and the subject of the film Yintah, is being played out again as the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline enters its initial construction phase against the wishes of many Gitanyow (Gitxsan) hereditary chiefs. The two communities have painfully divided, pitting those wanting to protect the land against those simply wanting the kinds of jobs and training opportunities that for decades have eluded them on their territories.

First Nations find the timing 'quite frankly, racist'

The FNLC said it is “extremely concerned by John Rustad’s ongoing efforts to pit British Columbians against each other.” And they’re not alone in questioning the timing.

In an interview, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs said: “We find it to be very counterproductive, very negative and quite frankly, racist to make such an announcement, such an ambiguous announcement on Reconciliation Day. The acceleration of industrialized destruction of our homelands, our territories, is nothing to cheer about,” he said. “It's not economic reconciliation. It's economic exploitation.”

“The work that went into passing the declaration," he said, "would be obliterated and we go back to conflict and confrontation.”