Nuanced. - 77. Darwin Hanna: First Nations Economic Development

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

Aaron sits down with Darwin Hanna to discuss First Nations Economic Development. The two dive into the the process for Indigenous communities to develop their own economies, the challenges they face, and the legal tools they can utilize. Darwin Hanna is a a member of the Nlaka’pmux Nation from the community of Lytton. He is an author, lawyer, adjunct professor with Peter A. Allard School of Law, and director with the piyeʔwiʔx kt Language Foundation Society. Darwin Hanna is a founding partner of Callison & Hanna, which focuses on Aboriginal Law. For the past 21 years, he has been an Adjunct Professor at the Allard School of Law at UBC and has taught First Nations and Economic Development.  He is the author of Legal Issues on Indigenous Economic Development published by LexisNexis. He is a member of the working group of officials to explore how UNDRIP will be implemented in the NWT.Learn more about Callison & Hanna: https://www.chlaw.ca/Buy his book on First Nations Economic Development: https://store.lexisnexis.ca/en/categories/product/legal-issues-on-indigenous-economic-development-skusku-cad-6596/detailsSend us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

This episode is sponsored by the Real Estate Foundation of BC. REFBC is a philanthropic organization that supports sustainable, equitable, and socially just relationships with land and water. Learn more about the foundation's grants and initiatives at REFBC.com. inchwashed, Slu Nukai Kinn, Antalekamakin. Good morning, Aaron, my friend. My name is Cheshneya. That's my Antingamak Chin name. My English name is Darwin Hanna.

I'm from Nakaya, which is on the west side of Lytton, and I'm a member of the Antalakamak Nation. Can you tell us what that means, what it means to be from your community, your experiences growing up? Yes. So being a member of the anthony comic, you know, very proud people are people, you know, of large family and it's a very seasonal way of life for family and community and our nation, you know, fishery is one of the mainstays, but there's also a lot of daily use of, you know, the plants and different herbs and so on. and there's a lot of gatherings and a lot of things,

a lot of learning and things are very active in the community. But, you know, it's always a lifelong learning. So for me, like learning about our language, it's an ongoing initiative and learning about the culture. It's always, you know, ongoing. So although I'm, you know, getting on in age, it's still, you know, ongoing learning. And so, yes, it's just,

Did you grow up on reserve? No, I didn't grow up in the community. So the place for my family's family is called a Nicaia Serri Place has a different name in our territory. And so when my grandparents talked about the different places, they actually never referred to like a reserve. It's always like a place name. So in our nation we have many place names that are in Ticahmic. And so I grew up in Maple Ridge, which is in the suburbs.

And so my grandparents moved down to Langley after they retired. And so I spent a lot of time with my grandparents over the, you know, when they were alive. And I learned live about the community. And I had their opportunity to, you know, over the years, you know, attend a lot of funerals and weddings and different community events. and then during my undergrad, I had the opportunity to do a co-op program from my travel council as in my undergrad

and also did some other work in the community and probably half my work right now is in the community. So I do love travel back and forth. And yeah, so just one of those things. You know, so although I live in, Vancouver right now with my wife. So we're always, you know, traveling lots for work and for family and different different events. You wrote a book about your community, if I'm not mistaken. Can you tell us about that? Yes, the book is called Our Tellings. And that was

published back in the year 1995 by EBC Press. And so this is a project I worked on during my undergrad. when I was also living in the community. And so it was a collection of stories. I worked with an elder. Her name is Mimi Henry. And she was a language specialist. And so we interviewed different elders in the language and had the stories translated.

Some of the stories were in English. And so the book was based upon certain creation stories of Shinkia, Coyote, and other animals. during the pre-creation time period, which is known as Shprotect Time Before Humans. But the, with these creation stories of coyotes about his doings and different, you know, bad deeds and so on, and about how our nation was created.

And then we also have different historic stories of the first encounter of Simon Fraser, stories about the setting side of the reserves and the conflict of the gold rush of the meeting between our head chief, Feshiretlandlum, and James Douglas and the conflict back at that time and more of things that happened more historically and also including, you know,

the impacts of the residential school in Lutton, Dakota, or name. St. George's and really about our way of life and so the book was provided to the band schools and it was just republished. I know that the book is still utilized by the Stein Valley Infantic School in Lutton and it took us around four years to have it republished by UBC Press, and so we will be providing more books to the bad schools shortly. What was that like? Was it meaningful to be able to start to understand the roots of your community, what they kind of endured? Was it challenging to hear about probably individuals like Joseph Trutch, bad actors in history?

What was the experience to kind of gather that information and develop a deep understanding of it? Right. I think it's learning about the impacts of colonization because we were, we are, you know, one nation, one territory, and through different colonial acts from the first encounters of non-Native people today, we still have ongoing colonization in that, you know, we have a deep connection to our land, our territory. and yet to this day the crowns so does not recognize our original title does not recognize our rights fully and so just looking at how the Indian Act has caused

conflict for our nation and so we have to move away from the Indian Act eventually it just takes time and we're sort of going through a healing process because St. George's was a very nasty residential school on the way up, as is reflecting upon

going into the old barn that was utilized for the school in the attic, there's a writing on the wall from my uncle and said the school is just like jail. So he had written that

as a student at the school. And so I'm studying, you know, criminology in my undergrad and having the occasion to visit different at jails and institutions. The residential school is no different than a jail

for many of our community members who had to attend. And so it's just, you know, dealing with that legacy. And really it's about, you know, power and control whereby the crown has a lot of power, a lot of control. And I was looking at, you know, like Trans Mountain was built in the 1950s through our church material territory that was built without our input without our consent and without our benefit. And now they're, you know, doubling the pipeline.

And so although there are some agreements, the Crown has not addressed the issue of the impact of that historic pipeline through our territory. And so when that pipeline was built in the 1950s, we had Indian agents in our community. our members were forced to attend a residential school against her will and I know that for my grandmother she lived in a remote area and actually had the RCP attend

my great-grandfather's house to make sure she attended school and so you have the use of the police to ensure that our members attend at school and so we're dealing with all this colonial legacy. So that's one of the things about learning is that you learn through family, family history and through community history about the ongoing impacts of colonization. How do you think about it? Do you think of indigenous communities as incredibly resilient,

as strong as capable of overcoming great adversity? Does this frustrate you with National Truth and Reconciliation Day coming up? How do you think we best think about that day? Yeah, I think with, you know, for families and, you know, communities and nations, you know, we are survivors, you know, we are resilient in that we continue on and we press forward. We're going to have, you know, better tomorrow for our children and for the next generation. And so we try to address these historic wrongs that they're still there to this day. And so when I look at, you know, our, you know, our... elders or great-grandparents, they fought to have these issues resolved, and they're still

fighting to this day to advocate for the recognition of our title, advocate for the recognition of our rights, to deal of the ability for our people to control education, to be involved in the management of the land, to be involved in all the governance. And so we're talking to orange shirt day is that it's about reflect upon the history honoring our way of life, honoring our elders, honoring our people, and also planning for a better tomorrow. So it's about sharing

our way of life, sharing our knowledge, but at the same time advocating for a better tomorrow through inclusion and having, you know, know, better arrangements with the crown. So at the last event, at the last National Truth and Reconciliation Day, Justin Trudeau went to Tafino. He, I think he was surfing, spending time with his family. Should we take something from that?

Are we straw manning him based on one day? How do we think about what he was doing that day? How do we think about what Canadians should be doing on that day? Right. I think it's, you know, every Canadian, Canadian has a role to, you know, listen, to learn and to participate in any community event. And so, you know, I know that with any leader, they're always busy and sometimes need time for rest. But nonetheless, Orrin Short Day is an important day for, you know, Canada.

and it is, you know, a day to reflect upon the past, to learn from the past to be able to better tomorrow. And so it's really, it's not a day to really, you know, take the day off and relax. It's about to have, you know, active learning and active understanding to, you know, plan for, you know, a better inclusive tomorrow. Right. I wonder if he would say something like, well, we're doing work on the other 364 days a year.

We're making a lot of progress. We're trying to sign agreements with communities. Is that true? I just imagine him saying something along those lines in response. Right. So his government has made good progress on many of the different files, but still there's more progress to be made. So every day is a day to address the outstanding issues And there are many, many outstanding issues

And so it's, you know, for me it's I'm not involved politically, but you know, Every person has a role to, you know, take steps to advance the outstanding issues to achieve reconciliation And so, because he's the national leader, you know, it provides a mixed message if he's taking a day off and not honoring and reflecting upon the past and trying to provide a positive message to provide for a bear tomorrow. Yeah, I like that analysis. When did you become interested in law? You did criminology as your undergrad and then you go on to law.

We have similar educational backgrounds, and I found for me the development of my criminology degree really taught me how to disagree with people in a healthy way, how to have tough conversations about human trafficking, the incarceration rates of indigenous people, tough kind of issues that maybe we want to not think about, maybe we want to think about what we're doing that weekend. So having these issues, challenges brought to the forefront meant a lot to me and then to go on to law school to see the world through a new lens. What was that sort of journey like for you? When did you decide law school was something you wanted to do? Right. I think that the choice of law school was sort of happened over a course of years

and that growing up was always a bit of the underdog and then there's trying to have fairness, always trying to achieve fairness and always trying to advocate for, you know, a better tomorrow. And so, and learning about, you know, my grandparents, you know, about our title and about how that was not addressed and learning about impacts of development on our lands. My uncle had, was involved in a court case for the KSM-KLM band.

I have a lot of relatives up there, and so he was working on this court case when I was a teenager learning about that, how they were successful in obtaining an injunction against the spray of herbicides on the forest, and also taking Canada to court regarding the low firmac value of gravel extraction from their community. So I learned from my uncle regarding how the courts can be used as a tool to advance our community interests. In high school, I took a class called Law 12. And in my, I didn't do too well in high school because I've worked quite a bit. I wasn't fully focused. But going into college, I attended Douglas College for two years. And I did quite well and then went on to SFU for my criminalization.

And so criminology was a good stepping stone into law. And I knew that if I got good grades, I can get in a law school. And I applied, got in my, and they used to have different, you know, bulletins back then. So my cousin Stephen Point was the former director of the First Nations Law Program at UBC. And so, yeah, I applied, got in, and, Yeah, so, and I think it's, I'm also working, my tribal council, it's part of my undergrad.

I learned a lot about the pursuit of, um, my search of rights, when I said the pursuit regarding having, trying to have average rights and tell recognized. And so, you know, on different, you know, political meetings back then. And just to, you know, be able to observe and witness of the leaders, you know, debating how to move forward with rights and title and also the time period you had the sparrow decision regarding fisheries regarding the recognition of our people's right to fish for food social and ceremonial purposes back in I believe in 1990 and so that was quite influential

you know myself personally and also in our community and also of the Steinveld Valley is part of our nation, and so it's on the west side Lytton, and so I learned a lot about the Stein Valley and about trying to have the Stein Valley protected from logging, and I was involved in the Stein Valley before law school, as had the opportunity to hike from Lovett Lake over to Lytton to Stein part of the Stein rediscovery program and was also a guide in there for two summers. And so being involved in the Stein Valley really was a good learning experience. And then during articling, I was able to actually work on the agreement that says aside the Stein Valley as a park based upon agreement between my First Nation, the Liffin First Nation,

and the provincial government. So I had a role in that, and so it's very insightful regarding the action required to take, to have lands protected, to really ensure that we have areas that are usable by our people to honor our way of life and to ensure that we have this area to use for training for our youth. That's incredible. What was the law school experience like? Was it what you expected? Was it what you had hoped you would get out of it? For me personally, there was a few courses. Yours, First Nations Economic Development, but also taxation and business law that stood out to me as like, these are the things that I don't hear about in my community. These are the topics I want to take back to my community and return tax law back to my community because there's tools, there's knowledge in it.

that can be beneficial. So what was that experience like for you? Yes, I'm reflected upon my law school. So in first year, we were put into sections. And in our section, we had a total four indigenous students in my section, myself, my wife, Cynthia, Ardith, and Shannon. And so we had our own study group. And so we were quite close to share our briefs to work together.

We had our own study group. And so you had to take all these classes. They're all required classes, all black letter law classes. Aboriginal law wasn't really taught in first year. In fact, in prepped law, the professor asked us to present on our Aboriginal title perspective because it simply wasn't offered in law school back then. And all the professors back then were mostly non-native men. and we didn't have a lot of role models,

although there was, you know, a key role model was the late Judge Alfred Skao, and also Rene Taylor, both of them are from Lert Bay. So they're very good role models, also a lawyer by the name of Michael McDonald and some others. And during law school, you know, there was some racism. And so in our year, we had, I think, 20 students thereabouts that were in first year that were indigenous. And so it was a really a transformative time that you have more indigenous students attending. And really, there's a lot of, you know, average rights were becoming more to the forefront. But we didn't really have any curriculum based upon original rights and title.

And so we had to do the law, you know, self-learning and promotion of average rights and title for inclusion in law school. We had our first original law days back then. And in third year, we took, we were the first, they had the first clinic. We were the first students in that. So we were able to have one semester working on the downtown east side and representing clients who were required assistance. And so that was a very good experience. And so, yeah, there was some, you know, challenges of law school, got through it. And so a lot of the principals I learned from law school, I still utilize to this day.

but we sort of use the, you know, best of both worlds in our practice, you know, you use the mainstream law, but we also use, you know, a lot of infused by our own cultural values, our own traditions, and so on. Right. What you mentioned that there was racism, how did that sort of manifest itself? Because my experience, I don't think we had any of that. People felt there's like a cultural shift. People are eager to understand the wrongs of the past and make amends and be a part of the solution.

And it sounds like not everybody in your cohort had that same philosophy. Right. At that time, I think that there was, the live issue there was you had a lot of the non-native students who thought that we were taking seats from their friends. And so they thought it was improper that there was Indian law students who were taking. their seats. And so at that time, and to this day, indigenous people are still deeply underrepresented in the legal profession. And so the last school took active steps to provide more seats for indigenous students. And, you know, the vast majority of students have been successful, you know, graduated and so on. And there are some difficulties. And

And so I think that there was a bit of a, so you have some overt racism in the student publications, comments during law school in class, some very nasty discussions by students in class. So you have racism that's quite apparent from comments. and debate and discussion, even during the moot with some of the lawyers that would attend it, some of our classmates faced racist comments by the moot supervisor. So there's a lot of overt and subtle racism, and I'd say that racism still is prevalent in law to this day, and that when we look to the legal profession, You look at the composition, there's still a, we don't have the full representation or full inclusion of just lawyers and the profession to this day. Do you think that that is racism or just it's going to take time to bring about that kind of change?

Because I'm the first for my community to attend law school, but it's not because anybody is standing in my community's way. it's that a lot of people stop after two years, three years of their undergrad, they don't want to continue education. At least that's from my community. Right. I think that we look at it based upon systemic racism that has been institutionalized over the years or the decades because the Indian Act did not enable First Nations to attend law school unless you gave up your Indian status. And so we look at the first law graduates that were indigenous, did they actually have to give up their Indian status, their identity. And so you have the, you know, so right now there's no excuse for not having sufficient indigenous lawyers and the legal profession to the stay. So it's a lingering systemic racism that still confronts us to this day.

How do we address it? Are you saying that maybe we should move it from, I think it's still around 20 seats for indigenous people? We should move that up to like 100 and just open the floodgates and make sure that anybody in an indigenous community can attend it and get a degree? I think it's about providing better education opportunities for children, youth, to provide that capacity, to provide that support. so that we have, you know, good candidates for law school to have them, when they apply, have them, you know, accept it.

And so there's still a lot of, you know, very great candidates. And a lot of younger students have choices now. They can go to law school, medical school, going to teaching, and so on. It's a lot of choices. but nonetheless there's still a lack of inclusion of indigenous people in the law school and overall in the legal profession. Okay, fair enough. So what made you interested in First Nations economic development? When did that become, was that in law school that that became an interest?

At what point in time did Aboriginal law stand out to you? Yes. So it starts in law school learning from different classes, you know, corporations and secure transactions, property law. And you learn about, and also through the articling process, you have to take a professional legal train course. You learn about commercial transactions. And so I learned through Arkling and through my early years and as a young lawyer that my, Many of our clients are involved in business. And so we see that they've developed our business over time.

And so most of our clients required corporations starting being involved in forestry stores, gas stations, operating campgrounds, having leases, negotiating with industry. And the communities need to have a corporate vehicle to show them from liability because if you have some of our clients are involved and you know like forestry is as you know you can have big liability issues that may arise and so you're trying to limit the liability of the overall nation so you want to shield the

assets from liability from different things that you know may incur potential liability So you need to look at a corporate model to deal of taxation, provide for tax exemption, and also to limit liability, but also provide the ability for the nation to participate in business. Right. That is so interesting. When did you start your law firm? Because you started Callison and Hannah. How did that come about? Because I think I read that your partner, you met in first year law school, I think in the early stages as well.

So I'm just curious as to when did you decide you wanted to branch out on your own and how did working with your partner come about. So after finishing Articling, at that point, the market was very, very tight. There was actually limited opportunity to become an associate lawyer at that point. And so we decided to, so during Ardling, I started doing some work for some of the, first nations in my area and so I knew that if I became a, I had my own law firm that I'd be able

to continue on that relationship. And so that our relationship has actually continued on to this day for that one client. And so it's all about, you know, connections and relationships. And so we look at how we developed our practice. It's based upon, you know, personal relationships. We didn't have a, you know, website back then. And, um, but we decided, so we got married, um, on August 31st, uh, 1996, um, but Peselco Lake. Um, and so we, um, after we, um, got married, we, um, decided to open up our own law practice. And so we formed our partnership on October 1st, 1996. And so we slowly expanded. Um, most of our work is for First Nations and Métis communities, and right now we have five associate lawyers. We have moved to our office

downtown, and so we've just evolved over time. So we have a lot of files that we are negotiating on, dealing of business inclusion, economic inclusion, and dealing of historic legacies. I do a lot of work In specific claims, we have negotiations with mining companies with the Crown, one client that's involved in a land claim negotiation, and so things have really evolved over the time frame because at that point, it was really more, I would say, old school, but you know, you'd provide, you know, formal legal opinions and paper, everything. nowadays, everything's by email and everything's a bit different. And we have very good associates to provide support,

and four of the five of the associates are indigenous. And so we're quite proud to have articled numerous indigenous students over the years. And so we just found that many of our clients are involved in business, endeavors because of the of their traditional territory based upon the recognition of their rights and they want to benefit from development in their backyard and so typically what happens that you have a company that wants to develop a mine or they want to develop forestry and they have to deal of the First Nations or Métis and so we're involved in the negotiations and the resulting agreements.

And so it's created a lot of work for us over the years. So one of my big fears, when people are learning about indigenous people, our communities, is it seems like we spoon-feed them the worst facts about them, our over-representation in the criminal justice system, low education rates, high birth rates. It feels like when I talk to average people, those are the things they take away.

Like, I don't want to go on to reserve. I don't want to trespass, and I don't want to get attacked. there's still those stigmas that exist today. When working as a native court worker, part of me thought that I was going to be able to fix the problem with the overrepresentation. Then you start to realize that a lot of these things are long lasting, that they're very difficult to, if you help someone get counseling, that will help for six months a year, then they may find their way back into it.

And the executive director of the native courtworkers has this great line where it's like, our goal isn't to stop someone from ever visiting court again or having court matters because that's an unrealistic expectation of them. The goal is to make the space between their interactions larger and larger. So first it's three months, then it's six months, then it's a year and then it's two years, then it's five years, then one day they're not coming back. And so the goals are much more realistic within it. But taking your course, learning about business, learning about economic development. It really sounds like a lot of the long-term solutions for indigenous communities can be found in developing in a way that works best for them, because then you can

address the education rates. You can give the supports necessary for counseling. If you have the money, you can invest in your community in the areas that they need at most. Is that what you learned? Is that kind of your experience of like seeing how they come together? Yeah. So over the years, things have really transformed between the nations and the crown and that now there's a lot more opportunity, a lot more economic opportunity, more inclusion. When we first started out, the communities were quite isolated from the crown and that there was no sharing of royalties, there was no sharing of forest opportunities, there was no sharing of the development of land. And it slowly changed over

time with different, you know, cases and so on. And so now we have the communities that we work for that have full employment. And so it's really been remarkable over time where they before they were having, you know, small operations. And now they have multi-million operations. And so it's really transformed when they have agreements of mining companies that provide benefit payments of millions of dollars per year. And a lot of the nations have these funds placed into trust and how these funds managed for the barement of their community, providing other opportunities, developing more business

and creating lots of opportunity and just providing more infrastructure. And so you see it over time and things have changed. I want to say wholesale, but we have an evolution from the days of the Indian agent. So in the, I think the last Indian agent in the community was in 1975. And so then you have the transformation of the offices, of the First Nation offices to be providing more opportunity.

and through the resulting agreements, you have empowerment through more opportunity, more resources, and so things have really changed over time. Although there are a lot of issues arising regarding ongoing social economic gaps for communities, you see the closing of that gap through changes in policy,

through implementation of case law. Now we have UNRIP with the ability of First Nations and Métis and inuit to leverage the principles of UNRIPF, you know, having companies in the Crown honor the principle of FPIC free and informed consent for any project. And so having that FPIC centered honored, it really allows and also enables the nations to leverage this principle through negotiations to get a better result.

So it's no longer, you know, trinkets, it's real sharing of the wealth now. But we've got still a long ways to go now. So when we look at Trends Mountain, although they're having some good jobs, some good contracts, good benefits, the fact is that Canada being the owner of Trans Mountain has not provided redress for the historic and ongoing I'd say trespass of the pipeline through our nation's territories so although they're dealing over the pipeline under construction they've not dealt of that historic legacy so we're seeing now

with some companies dealing of that historic legacy and we have negotiated certain redress agreements with certain companies to deal of historic compensation, to deal of historic rocks. So we still have a long ways to go, but things are definitely transforming through different agreements, different rulings, and through prudent management. Before we go too far, I want to differentiate between Aboriginal law and indigenous law for people. people who might not realize, from my understanding, indigenous law centers around the laws that we would have had pre-colonization, the oral history, the stories around how to live a good life, the responsibilities you have to the land, ideas that have percolated over a very, very long time. Aboriginal law centers around the relationship between the crown, the British, the

French and indigenous people. And that has developed over time originally with like the Calder decision and then has changed as a consequence of Section 35 and kind of evolved from there. Can you help us understand the two areas? Right. So reflect upon the reference to laws that relates to our community. So in a formal sense, I've seen it evolve over the years going from an Indian law to Native law. to First Nation law, to Indigenous law.

So, but in, you know, in our legal practice, we deal of, you know, indigenous law, first nation law, there's, when I look at Indigenous law, it's based upon our language, based upon our culture, it's based upon our way of life. We don't have, like, a cold, I know there's to be some initiatives to codify our laws. I'm not really in favor of

codifying our laws because our laws are based upon our way of life, our community, our nation. It's about our relations to one another. And so it's really hard to you have to, it's a really, it's a lived

experience and so it's really hard to have a law saying this is the law for our nation. It's about the way of life on a daily basis, whereas Aboriginal law deals of

the intersection between the Crown Section 35 of the Constitution Act and the way of life of our people. So it's intermixed, and so in our practice we use a bit of both. And so in our specific claim hearings, we're able to bring in oral history here.

oral history evidence, have evidence brought it forward in the language through translation and so on. And so the judge is able to make a ruling based upon the historic record, which is really the archival record, plus the oral history evidence, which is infused with our legal principles. That is fascinating. So your main state is Aboriginal law in that you help indigenous communities negotiate. do you feel like one of the big fears is that indigenous people are being forced to choose between the environment and getting out of poverty?

How do you kind of see those issues? Because there's arguments, no pipeline because it's bad for the environment long term and indigenous people care deeply about the environment. And then the other side is it's not fair to ask them to stay in this economic position long term. for the environment because they're experiencing detrimental impacts by staying in poverty. Right. So for community nations comes on to the right of self-determination regarding, how do they want to, you know, manage their lands? When I say manage, it's regarding, you make decisions regarding their lance.

The problem, though, is that the Crown has a process for third-party developers to develop Crown lands, which really are lands. And so you have the ongoing conflict. And so to this day in the province of BC, we don't have the recognition of our urgent title. So even though we may self-determine

to set aside war sheds, set aside areas for more sustainable development, you have the pressure of the crown fostering industrial development. And so it's it's up to the community, but sometimes it's hard for the community to oppose a project

because the Crown wants the pipeline to be built. So it's very tough, but on single projects, you know, maybe a forestry development. It's really up to the community to inform that. They can say, yes, no, or let's have more of a process. And so it's really about, you know, obtain the wheel of the process. people? What do the membership say? And to find balance between, you know, having sustainable jobs and, you know, long-term jobs or short-term jobs. And so it's really up to the community to really decide. So acting as legal counsel for communities, we have to really

honor the direction of the community. And so some will want to be involved, but some may say, no, we don't want to be involved, but you got to respect that. Interesting. So when I wrote my directed research paper on First Nations Economic Development, I kind of understood that there's like a rubric. The first step is to consult the community, sit down with the members. In my community's case, we have around 650, try and connect with them, understand where are the problems, what do you think the solutions are, where do you want the community to be in 10, 20, 50 years? What would it look, what would progress look like to you and how do we improve the circumstances of your life? And then with all of that information,

you develop a comprehensive community plan, an economic development plan, similar to what municipalities often have, which is kind of like an official community plan. And then you give that back to the members to give feedback on what did we miss, what did we forget, what did we underestimate, and then you start to try and implement those plans. Is that generally a good kind of best practice. Yes, in respect to the planning process, so the comprehensive community planning process you're talking about is mostly for a, you know, first nation on the reserve, doesn't fully address the traditional territory fully. And so what happens here is that the, you might have good plans for the traditional territory, but then you have a developer coming in and wants

to develop a mine. Then you have a competing interest. And then you want the crown, you have the crown who wants to support that mine or the pipeline. And so you have these competing interests. And that's the problem is that you have these legacy projects in the territories. You have these legacy pipelines, mines, forestry. You have the impacts of these linear projects, highways, hydro transition lines. You get natural gas pipelines and so on. So you have all these ongoing colonial legacies to the territory and then pressing pressure from developers. So although the community may have a plan, how do you reconcile that plan with a broader initiative of industry and the crown? And that's the thing right now.

So right now we don't have the full respect for coal management in BC on the traditional territory. that it's called lip service. But on the reserve, yeah, planning is great. It's needed. But how do you provide that planning process to the whole churchfront territory and how have industry and the crown honor and respect to that broader nation plan for the church on territory? Right. That seems like it would be a particular challenge because the power of money to influence,

people's decisions, the long-term economic benefits to the government, to that business. How is there a best practice in regards to trying to square that issue? Is there a leaning towards industry in that regard? Is there a leaning to First Nations communities right now in that regard? What do you sort of see? Right. Okay. So basically the colonial framework, to this day, favors development by developers, you know, fostered by by the crown, by the province, by Canada. And so, you know, if undripping implemented, which is a game changer,

we'll see what happens over the ensuing years, but since BC has agreed to adopt undrip through their drip out legislation, things have not changed on the ground. So we're, you know, at least two years into the drip out legislation, and you still have the crowd, making, you know, major decisions over, you know, land development. So it has to switch to that, or, you know, have a more of a level playing field

and that there needs to be inclusion of the First Nations developing land in BC being co-managers or managers of the land base within their traditional territory. And so we need to have the Crown change your policy, change laws to reflect. to respect the planning process of the nations. And the planning process requires meeting and meeting and meeting to ascertain the will of the people, will of the membership. Interesting. So the big fear around free prior informed consent

is that it's going to shut down business and that BC is going to close for business if we were to do something like that. And I've just, I've heard that echoed and news questions and stuff. what is the response to that? How do we understand this in a healthier way than just this is just going to shut down all the business? Right, okay.

Really, the F-PIC standard has been implemented for quite a few years in BC probably in the last 10 to 20 years, having a nation providing their free prior informed consent. So no project goes ahead today about involvement, inclusion of affected indigenous groups. And that's been happening for many, many years now. And so the sky's not falling in. You can have resulting agreements.

And so there's agreements on everything that happens nowadays. You know, on the recovery, you look at the atmospheric river event, you know, the what's happened over the Coca-Halla Highway and Highway 8 and other roads that you have companies partnering in joint venturing with affected indigenous communities. that provides a win-to-win for both the company but also for the community. They get preferential opportunity for jobs, contracts, some sharing of the business profits, being involved in management decisions. So FPEC is here to stay, and it's evolved over time,

and it does provide greater inclusion of the affected indigenous communities for a better community, better nation, basically. So which one do you think is going to have a long-term, larger effect? Section 35, or F-PIC coming about and giving more power to the First Nations voices? So really, the Undrip and F-PIC

and Section 35 have really intersected over time. Because when you look at Section 35 based on the Choculton decision, where the Crown must respect and acknowledge Aboriginal Title and implement Evergent Title. The Aboriginal Title involves having the Crown and industry respect the consent of the nation. And so consent is part of the FIC standard. And so the problem right now is that we still have the Crown denying the existence of Aboriginal Title BC. And so to achieve full reconciliation, we need to have the Crown acknowledge and recognize

and implement everything title, and they'll provide the ability for nations to properly provide their consent for any development happening within their territory. Interesting. When you say the Crown, who are we talking about? Because the Crown has often been described at various levels of government, and you're saying particularly in BC, and I think at one point in time, it was involved with, like, actual Crown counsel who also prosecute, like, criminal files and stuff. So who, when we're talking about the Crown, who are we talking about? Yeah, so the Crown I'm referring to is both the Provincial Crown and the Federal Crown. So the Provincial Crown is the Provincial Garment. The Federal Crown is the Fair Garment. So in BC, you have the Provincial

government having administrative control over crown lands, and you have the federal government having administrative lawmaking authority over certain federal matters, including fisheries, major projects, pipelines, and so you have them intersecting on certain projects, and so you intersect to, and even with the Indian Act, you have reserve land, held by Her Majesty for Use and Benefit of a First Nation. And so Her Majesty is the Crown. And so we really need to devolve certain power over to affect it indigenous groups over time through negotiations. And so the problem right now is that the province makes claim to Crown land.

and we have urgent title and how do we reconcile these two differences we don't have the premier premier going to first nation saying look we recognize your title

and we want you to have the ability to manage your talents we don't have the province coming to our people saying yes let's implement your title they say that you have to negotiate it through a land claim process

but the land claim process involves the release of urgent tidal in the name of certainty. And so there's an ongoing conflict between the viewpoint of how to recognize Tidal and BC. And so it's going to take time, but we do, but, you know, our communities are getting impatient, I guess, so. Yeah, and it seems like it gets even more complicated when we talk about getting out from under the Indian Act. the challenge it seems like is different communities are trying to figure out the best way forward for them and it seems to go in such different directions and I'm wondering if you can help us understand it because I believe it's the Nishka that chose a treaty which is different than what other communities more recently are choosing like I believe to Wasson can you help us understand the different paths that communities are taking

in regards to moving out from underneath the Indian Act. Great. So the Indian Act was important. upon First Nations in BC, really during the reserve creation process in the 1870s, 1880s in BC. And then Kim were imposed in the 1950s. So it was really imposed through the requirement for elected chief and councils in the 1950s. And so we still have the Indian Act to this day. so we need to move into decolonization to devolve those reserve lands to those First Nations if they still choose. So really a First Nations should say, we could say, we want to be the full manager and owner of our reserve lands.

And so there should be the ability to enter into a self-government agreement with Canada to have those lands transferred over to the control of the First Nation. So historically, Canada has achieved that through modern land claim agreements, first involving the Nishka and later on involving the Tuassan. And so those agreements resulted in the transfer of their reserve lands into lands owned by those First Nations and NL fee simple. And so now Canada has a process to have a more of a nuanced approach. through land code whereby if you adopt a land code as a first station you can control your

reserve lands you don't need to go to Canada to have a lease approved so right now most lands most reserve lands are underdeveloped because to develop them properly you need to have Canada provide their consent to any leases so it takes on average around six years to have reserve lands leased for commercial development, which is a very long time. And so, but Canada is not allowing all frustrations at once to have a land code. They have what's called a rolling 30. So only 30 first nations across Canada can negotiate a land code. This is a very, very slow process to have a land code adopted.

And, you know, my thinking is that the Indian Affairs should shut down. down their Indian Affairs office on Melville Street, devolve First Nations to devolve the Reserve Land Administration and the Indian Act file to First Nations if they so choose. So we need to get into the phase of devolution to devolve that colonial power to self-governing nations. Interesting. So what do you think that would change? And how fast do you think that that would make big waves and change? It could happen over next five years quite easily, next 10 years. The end result is that First Nations will have the ability to administer their own reserve

land to have Canada oversee any administration of their reserve allowance. Because Canada right now has a fiduciary duty to ensure that any development isn't the best and trusts of the First Nation. So Canada has a bit of paranoia, I say, about their fiduciary duty. So they're very careful and cautious, which results in huge delays in the development of reservoirance. So you have really, I'd say wealth that's possible, but it's locked in because of the whole colonial process to develop reservoirance.

Do you think that's in part due to the Musqueam decision? The Muscoim decision, which is the, I think you're referring to as the glass decision. The golf course. The golf course. Yeah, the Shaughnessy. That's the Garan decision. So Garan involved Canada negotiating a long-term lease to a third-party golf course for the leasing of the Muscombe Reserve Lands. And so Canada did not disclose the deal to the First Nation to Musclean.

And so they were found in breach of their fiduciary duty to the beneficiary Muslim First Nation because the Musclean were vulnerable to the discretion of Canada. And so, yeah, so Canada is very live to their, you know, very live to their, fiduciary duty arising from the guarant decision regarding the management of reserve lands. So they take a very careful approach regarding any decision to lease any reserve lands nowadays. In the north right now, we have these experiences where First Nations are standing up for their land rights, similar to what happened a long time ago in like Ontario, I think in Manitoba. Can you help us understand those issues? There were a lot of protests

going on, a lot of strife and fighting. And so I'm just, as an outsider, it seems like the relationship between hereditary chiefs and elected officials seemed to have been kind of the catalyst for a national discussion around truth and reconciliation. Right. So that eminate from the court case initiated by the Kikasan and Wassotan nations back in the 1980s, and they were seeking a declaration of Arizona Title or their lands, and they went to trial before former Justice McCackeren, and he disregarded their oral history evidence, saying it's not

good evidence, and that case was appealed up to the Supreme Court of Canada, and the court found that Justice McCackran should not have ignored or disregarded the oral history evidence of the Kit Kassan and Wissotan and ordered a new trial and set out the test to prove original title. And the tests included the requirement for a judge to consider oral history evidence as having an equal footing as other historic evidence. And so although a new trial was ordered, the trial never proceeded. And then you have more case law over time that confirmed the existence of original title,

namely the Haida case and the Chukotun case. So you have a lot of frustration in that had Justice McCackran properly considered oral history evidence, there should have been a funny fact that the Kitkasan and Wasotan had Arizona title. And so then you have the proposed pipelines in that area, and you have a lot of frustration in that you have a very good Supreme Court Canada pronouncement involving the KitKasan and Wissotan, but the Crown ignoring this decision. and fostering the building of and development of pipelines through the lands of the Gikistan and Wittsoten.

And up there you have, in their nation, they have a traditional governing system that manages their traditional territories and you have in the same area you have first nations that have authority under the Indian Act or their reserve allowance but you have the same you know members who belong to the nation but members who belong to the first nation constituted under the Indian Act give of attention there internally And so the issue here is, you know, who has standing to represent the nation for Eversome Title. And so the Crown agreed that the her raritary chiefs had standing. They had a mediation, and there's a resulting MLU, I believe, that was signed off, acknowledging

the role of the heritary chief system to be the governing body for the crown to address. I don't know the status of what's happened there regarding the role of the heriture chiefs and they're

addressing this issue of the crown, but that's one of the, you know, it's outstanding issue. You know, we're not involved in that case. But it's an ongoing issue for nations regarding, you know, who has standing to represent the members for the recognition of Everton Title.

Interesting. Was it, is it hard to watch the disagreements? Like, you see videos online of police officers there almost ready to go, almost ready to fight with indigenous people. And the mindset of the people there are, this is my grandparents land, my great grandparents land we have a connection to this and we don't want this to go through and you can sympathize with them because it's so personal to them and then it almost feels out of place for the police to be there in some regard because it's not a violent situation unless things escalate

further it's people just standing their ground and trying to protect their land and so when you see the police there it almost gives those inclings of what we talked about before of children being brought to school with police officers. Like it's not the right place for them to be. How do you look at that situation? Yes. If any protests, you have to, you know, as a lawyer and also as a, you know, a first-acian person, you have to look at, you know, as the context of what's happening.

And so it's not, you know, your own community. It's a different nation. But nonetheless, you have to examine what's happening. And, you know, this is the ongoing pact of, you know, colonization regarding, you know, how do you deal with this on a community basis? And so I always say it's just through a lot of dialogue, a lot of discussion, have lots of meanings, have an understanding. And certainly it's very difficult when you have a police presence in a community.

And so as an advocate, it's always trying to have a process to have a way for people to to be heard, to listen to concerns and have a process to try to resolve the conflict and so it's really up to the nation itself, the community, and the government to work together to try to find workable solutions.

Interesting. So I'm wondering what are the best case scenarios? You've gotten to work with various First Nations communities. You've seen mining, you've seen fish, businesses, when I think of growing communities that are setting a positive example, I personally think of Stahaelis, First Nation, Musk, William, Squayala, Shacton, those are within my general region, and I've obviously seen them develop and seen the resources they're able to provide to their community members. But for you, you've worked across BC, you understand kind of what's going

on more at a national level, what communities stand out to you where it's like they've got they've got something going on here. The people, general people might not know about, but they are, they're kicking butt. Right. Usually it's based upon having a good community process, you know, where you have sound policy, sound laws, sound process, active community engagement, and creating a good circle to listen to, listen to, listen. to the community have a good circle of, you know, good, like people who have the capacity, who have the knowledge, who want to work together as a team. So having very good teams in place. And so you might have different teams that form part of the greater circle. And so you're having,

you know, the leadership supported by good teams. having the leadership work of the membership, having a full circle, full inclusive, and it's just trying to get the best result, but recognizing it may take time to achieve that result. Nothing happens overnight. There may be conflict along the way, but trying to look at different possibilities,

keeping an open mind. But you have to have a solid foundation. And the Sault Foundation for us is providing the legal tools of having, you know, the best contract in place, you know, policy in place, laws in place, reporting out information. And so we talked about FPC between a nation and company and between the nation and government. The nation also has to have an FPIC standard with their members to ensure that members have information, have prior information, are fully involved. And so when you have the best management practices so that, you know, the money is invested

and you have a return on investment and having the ability to have membership, you know, benefit from any resulting benefit agreements. So you just have to look at the overall framework. And so some nations have been more pronounced and more out there. Some are more quieter. So you see different levels of success. And you can learn from one another. But, you know, what are the best practices?

And so you look at the best practices of ensuring that you have, you know, lots of training, lots of capacity and um and um and just sometimes yeah it's just a lot of hard work and lots of meetings so i'm interested what are some case studies are there some communities you look at and you go like if people want to get started in this this is sort of a general rubric look at i don't know i think the dene you've worked like which communities stand out to you where it's just like they're they're moving in the right direction they're doing what they need to Do a lot of it's based upon location, the access to resources, and the willingness of the crown to negotiate.

So I look at my wife's community, the Telton. They've been quite successful because they have had a lot of mines in their territory over many years. It provides very good jobs for their membership and they're fully involved in all aspects of the economy in their territory. In my own area, when I look at

the 15 bands in my own area, every band is a different level of development. We also have to look at the impacts of colonization. So some communities have been more affected by residential school, and maybe they don't have the same access to resources. So I find that communities that are able to develop their reserve lands for leasing have done quite well. And so you look at, you know, the West Bank First Nation as one. They have their own

self-government, their own lawmaking ability, and they've done quite well. And, you know, you'll get Soyuz is always put out as a model but, you know, again, it's about location, you know, they both those nations are located in the Ocanogans. They have very good

you know locations for development. And then you have some nations that are in the Lord Mainland that have benefited from you know, their reserve land development. So you have to look at the and some nations have independent power projects in their backyard.

So they have agreements for these power projects that provide ongoing revenue. And some have agreements of mining companies that provide, you know, revenue sharing, sharing of the mine tax. And so there's, you know, throughout across Canada, there's many examples of of nations that are doing very, very well, but yet many nations are still underdeveloped to this day. And they're underdeveloped for various reasons. And maybe it's because of lack of redress by Canada regarding historic wrongs. So you have many nations that have outstanding specific claims.

And so Canada has ongoing liabilities for these historic claims that there's virtually thousands of tens of thousands of these claims across kind of so they're unresolved to this day. And, you know, these ongoing legacy projects of these ongoing mines, linear projects that have not benefited the indigenous nations, how can we provide the opportunity for these nations to benefit from these projects to this day? And so, yeah, so it's really, it depends upon the nation to leverage their assets, their land assets, their territory assets, their resource assets, and also their human assets. And human assets, you know, is really their members, you know, support their members to be, you know, trained to have, you know, full education.

I mean, we talk about education, it's just not about, you know, the, you know, mainstream education. It's about, you know, having, you know, cultural education and so on. Yeah. Interesting. Because that is something we experienced in my community is we had a specific claim for Seabird Island Band. Originally, the area of Seabird was given as land for the seven different communities. And so the seven different communities within the area all proceeded with a specific claim to be, paid out because people came to the federal government and said, hey, we'd like to be our own

reserve. And the government said, sure, why not? Not really thinking about the fact that they were taking away land that was shared between various communities. One of the challenges we faced, though, was that we got a significant portion of money, but then we didn't have a well-articulated plan of what we were going to do with that money. So we ended up giving, I think, around $15,000 to each member and not having like a way of saying, hey, this might not be great for you in the long term. We might be able to build better resources, better services, buy back other land that interests us to kind of make sure that we act in the long term seven generations' interest of our

community. Right. So for any resulting compensation package, you might have a large amount that's paid over. you might have ongoing payments. And this is what comes down to accountability and choices for the leadership and community. So the prick up to payout is probably not the preferred approach for sustainable community development. Provides some short-term payments, which is great for the members. But looking at the long-term, you know, looking down the future generations, you might be wise.

to use those funds to, you know, buy lands, buy back lands, you know, build up your businesses, buy businesses, invest in equipment, and make other investments in the community. Maybe invest in more educational opportunities, training programs, buildings, and provide for, you know, healing programs, cultural programming, language development, and so on. And so looking at the community needs, and so it's really up to the community to have those priorities. But it comes down to having the community to be able to inform the process to how those monies are, or invest it, expand it, and account it. So most nations are very, very good regarding involving, you know, the membership

and having planning and investing the money as wisely. but there are some nations that are lacking to this day where there's no accountability, no audits. And so that's sort of an ongoing issue. Yeah, that's one of my questions for you is I'm running for chief of my community right now and I don't want to pretend I have all the answers. I don't pretend to know what it's like for them to live on reserve.

So one of my hopes is to really start that community consultation process meaningfully, listen to every member trying to understand where they're at on and off reserve and trying to develop a plan around what their experiences and what their hopes are. But I'm wondering, should I be looking to work with a law firm? Should I be putting that into the back of my mind now and working with a financial company to help make sure that when we do develop, we have a plan in place. And then this kind of dovetails into my questions about economic development corporations

and where they come in. Right, right. Yes, for any, like for community development, you know, quite often you have a team. You know, you might have a law firm. The lawyers might help negotiate. You might have your own negotiator. You might have your own planning firm. You might have your own architect, your own engineers, community planners.

So you have a whole team, financial planners. You have a whole team. And it really depends upon financing, you know, do you have the finances to build a very good team? you might have a small team but end of days that you have to keep pace with the community and so how do you engage the community

provide information and it's like a looping process regarding you'll listen to the issues what are the plans and to have those plans implemented with the support of your team and that's always the

live issue so I find that you know working with leadership you know quite often it's an ongoing working relationship to try to get the best result and it's also being patient

things will take time I call it the Canadian way because it just thinks it does take time and to you know shop around there's choices and you know

get references and so on Sometimes you just sort of fall into, you know, the same advisor. Sometimes it's good to maybe change it up, maybe, or use different professionals to assist. And also to build up membership by, you know, having, you know, membership involved in negotiations, part of the negotiation team, you know, always having a circle, having a good circle. And having that circle also involved with membership, you know, having that the full circle. Interesting. So do you think that it's just a time thing where we just bring in good resources and things start to improve?

Is it pretty consistent that things get a lot better with economic development? I don't know why, but I feel like there's some people I've spoken to that are almost skeptical of economic development. Right, right. So really, it's having the leadership know how active can occur for the community within the community, like on the reserve, but also within the territory, having an understanding regarding how leadership may have oversight of the controlled corporation, having an understanding regarding, you know, the use of partnerships, joint ventures, and having an understanding regarding if you're negotiating of, if you're negotiating, the company, you know, what are their interests? What's the interests of the Crown? What's the interests of the province? Because everybody has their own different interests

in learning regarding how negotiations happen over time. And so just having more information. So you may have, you know, five people on leadership and they may not have a business background, but over time through training and sharing that they'll have appreciation regarding the benefits. of having a corporation and in fact most communities have more than one corporation they'll have multiple corporations for different for different businesses do you think that government

funding is at all dangerous just looking at my community it reminds me i don't know if you've ever seen the fast and furious movies but there's one where there's this guy i think it's in mexico or brazil and he goes we give them just enough to get by but not enough to ever revolt or or stand up or to fight. And that's how I feel in some regard is that it's almost like we get so used to every year we get about this amount of money and then we have to allocate this amount of money that the imagination that it could be double, triple, quadruple, whatever we're used to starts to fade away from the minds of the members.

And that's one of the things I think about in regards to economic development is we need to kind of get off of government funding, stop waiting for it to arrive. and start having a sense of independence, a sense of sovereignty, a sense of we have our own bucket of money to pull from if an issue arises. We're not solely reliant on somebody checking a box

in Ottawa or something like that. Right. So in fact to government funding, so funding is always required for as a governing body, you always need to have some form of transfer payment to provide the capacity to

provide services to your membership, whether it's education, whether it's training, health, for welfare. So you need to have the capacity to provide these basic human rights. Housing is a basic human right. So you need to have funding for housing, for renovations. But at the same time, you want to make sure that the membership are able to have their own sorts of revenue from business opportunities so that you can make the, you know, everybody's proud that's saying that this is our business. We raised $1 million to this business, or maybe it's $10 million. This is our own financing, and that this financing, you know, built these community buildings

or created these jobs, these businesses. So it's regarding how to grow your own source revenue over time so that this is your business profits being reinvested in the community. And we've seen that for many nations, they've grown from having no own source revenue to having multiple millions of own source revenue that's reinvested back into the community. And so I'm quite happy to see

when I see the financial statements that, you know, the community has, you know, X million or XX million from these businesses that are reinvested. So I'm not involved in the financial aspect where it's involved in helping negotiate the agreement, but it's great to see how communities invest back into the community. Yeah, and then they have opportunities, it sounds like, to buy back land,

to make sure that there's housing resources, that there's proper development, and that there's a certain quality, of life for everyone and then people really start to flourish because the thing that breaks my heart the most and I'm sure you've seen this is like depending on your postal code it kind of dictates whether or not you're likely to graduate high school go to university have a high quality career have your health taken care of like different things that it makes me sad to think that just because you live on this reserve which is three blocks away from the municipality you have a

different quality of life that you have to go through. I just think that that's incredibly unfair. Yes, I think through support providing capacity. So I think that each nation is a bit different, but it's trying to provide those supports, especially to those who need those supports. And so you have some families that may need more support, just because of their circumstances,

maybe because of family breakdown, maybe you have recovery from, you know, drug and alcohol, you just need to have those supports. And so having those supports turns or time into, you know, positive outcomes. And so I know that for myself, you know, through my career, I've received supports from different, you know, other professionals, other community members who provide, you know, opportunity, who provide supports, who provide coaching. And so it's always trying to provide those supports to the community so that they have the ability to be their best. What do you think the catalyst is for a community to go from struggling to strong economic development, long-term planning, community consultation?

Do you think it's a charismatic leader who cares? Do you think that it's just over time, getting tons of people kind of filling those roles on chief and council that understand what's been tried before, what's failed. How do communities take that major first step towards opening the doors for business? Right. It's really having a good governance framework, you know, policy, laws in place, training, and then also negotiating the best agreements, the best agreements of industry, with the Crown, and also ensuring that some land is perhaps available for business development in the community

based upon, you know, business community choices. So just trying to leverage your land, leverage your resources, leverage your traditional territory into the best result. So doesn't need to be like full cell development, but just trying to have some, having some, you know, small victories and build upon those small victories into bigger victories. I said victories, like having good agreements. Yeah, interesting. Do you think that when First Nations are sitting down, who do you think is the more challenging person to work with?

Industry or government? It really depends upon the project and the openness and willingness of the partners. So some companies are very good. They know that they have to honor and implement. went to the FX standard, but some companies try to get away of things cheaply. And so it's really about how companies have evolved over the years. And so it's really a whole mindset and trying to make it a win-win. That could be good for the community, it could be good for the company.

So you get the best results. It's also, you know, having the government. And so the issue of government is that it's you're dealing of a bureaucracy that's very slow to change and trying to show that the sky's not going to fall in, that it could be a win-win, that if you provide a sharing of the wealth, that it's a win-win-win. And so the sharing of the wealth is more sharing of the royalties. more sharing of decision-making being fully included in any project. What has your experience been like?

When people work with you, what is your philosophy, a First Nation calls you up, says, we need your help. What is your role in these negotiations and helping communities start to succeed? It's to understand the priorities and plans of the nation, and they set the agenda, and they may want to partner up, they may want to develop and trying to have a team to get the best result,

whether it's the compensation, the financial payments, the terms of the agreement for opportunities. And so it's always trying to push the envelope. And when you push the envelope so much that you don't know whether you'll get it or not, but you may get it more. money, you may get more opportunities, you may get more preferential opportunities.

You just keep on pushing envelope, knowing that it's all they can do is say no, but you always try to achieve yes. What would your pitch be for somebody who's like, we're choosing between Aboriginal lawyers, where is your differentiation between other Aboriginal lawyers? I think it's trying to understand and respect the community. and be in step of the community and provide the best results so that we know that they have choices and is always to honor the instructions to ensure that they have the full range of options and to work with them for the best solution and ensuring that they have the best agreement possible

and to ensure that the resulting agreement, you know, stands a test of time. And the thing of negotiating, you know, impact benefit agreements is that you can never, you know, fully foresee what may happen in the future. So you always try to anticipate things that may happen. And sometimes you have to have a, you know, a phase approach to an agreement. Interesting. My big fear, if I am elected, is that industry or government is going to have a number, their maximum or whatever it is, they always come in, say, hypothetically, just throwing out numbers, they have $1,000, and they go, we'll give you $1,000 for this. My big fear is that behind the scenes, their max is like $100,000, a million. Is that a stress?

Do you feel like there is good mechanisms in place to make sure that that's not going? on? Right. So usually in negotiations involving money, it's always sometimes informed by appraisal, it involves land, involves fisheries, having a fishery assessment. So you just have certain work of different advisors to inform the financial envelopes. It's not guesswork. So you try to ensure that if you have assessments, evaluations, appraisal that you always go beyond those professional reports, trying to get the best result. And so it's a principle of actual compensation is that it's not just based upon the reports based upon the losses to the community. And those losses may not be

you can't calculate them on a calculator, but you try to provide a a number that will that will honor the community for the impacts and they'll be embraced. And so it's not perfect, but you try to, you know, push and push and push and get a fair result. One fear that I have now, I just sat down, I don't know if you've heard of him. His name is Marvin Rosano, and he's a biologist. He was involved in the documentary Heart of the Fraser, the Heart of the Heart of the the Fraser is from mission all the way up to hope. And apparently 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 million fish swam through the heart of the

Fraser and spawned and developed. And when I sat down with him, he was like, we're at about 700,000, which is nowhere near the number that it was 10 years ago. And he has sincere concerns that all of the Fraser is going to be developed one day, that it's not going to be a river anymore, that recently I think it could be wrong on the organization Klassen Farms bought some of the

islands in between the Fraser and that that is likely going to be developed over time and that they're going to develop dams on each

side to start to build more I'm not sure agriculture probably and when I asked him like what are we going to do about this how are we going to get out

of this? How are we going to make sure we don't lose those fish populations? He was like nobody cares nobody's doing anything he's like I presented

dozens of times to thousands of people to First Nations communities to universities to experts in government to provincial federal and he's like we may just not have fish really flowing through the Fraser anymore um that is the trajectory we seem to be on and nobody's doing anything about it the fear that comes in is we're fighting for aboriginal rights and title we're fighting for the right to have access to these fish but my community held our salmon

ceremony in August because we were waiting so long for fish to come I'm interested in your thoughts on this what how do we look at this when It looks like some of the ecosystems that we care about are just disappearing. They're not going to offer any of the fruits that they once offered. We're going to hit a point where it's like, what are we fighting for if there's no fish in the Fraser for our fishing rights? Right. So we're starting to fishing.

So, you know, personally, I fish myself as a, you know, very good year this year. But, you know, the last two years were pretty lean. And so because the last year's the fishers closed basically to the stock high. The last two years we caught springs. This year we caught Sakai. And so in respect to the fishery is that the big issue here is that the fisheries managed by DFO, Fisheries from the oceans Canada, there is no true co-management for the fisheries. So although fishery is, you know, are people's food, we're not involved in the co-management of the fishery.

that needs to change. And so how can Canada be more inclusive to manage the fishery? How do you reconcile the commercial fisheries with the food fishery? And then you have the climate change, which is becoming more serious now. And so how do you deal of the water temperature increase and so on. So these are very, you know, dear issues to our nations, you know, regarding how do we address climate change while ensuring that our people have access to the fishery for, you know, food, social ceremonial purposes. And so it needs to be, you know, greater involvement of our people.

So you talk about, you know, resource development pressure. So our people should be involved in, you know, planning, dealing of development, to ensuring that, the repairing areas are protected for the fishery. And so it just needs to probably have a different mindset because the fisheries are still managed like they were, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. And so things have not evolved. So that is one example.

I think there's conservation officers now that are indigenous. I read in a short article about something going on in northern B.C. around indigenous communities being given back the responsibility of sort of maintaining habitats and stuff. Do you know more about that? I haven't seen, I know that when we were last summer we were sought by

the fishies and oceans after fishing and they wanted to know actually they stopped us on the river as fishing for spring and also was packing out and also got stopped again and so I know that I believe some of them were indigenous. They didn't

didn't actually identify being in business, but it's great to having more business officers at work for Canada, but at the same time, we need to have more officers that are, we need to have our own nations who have their own officers, who have officer power, and that's going to be the very big issue here and how to have our own people manage the fishery, be the stewards of the fishery.

Yeah, I think there's so much to learn from indigenous knowledge keepers, elders, around keeping healthy environments ecosystems. Like, I'm sure you followed John Burroughs, like some of his writing on how we look at indigenous knowledge and apply it to how we maintain. I think the section I saw was him and butterflies.

his mother understanding that if butterflies don't visit this year, it means we've done something wrong that we need to take better care of the environment. Does that interest you at all? Yeah, I think it's about, you know, sustainable development and regarding just being involved in management, knowing what's happening on the land, knowing, I know that for us, when the, there's a flower that blooms when the spring are returning, and so you have the connection of our way of life to the resources and without fish you know it'd be like um it would fully change our culture way of life and so um so we need to ensure that um we have the fishery for our next generations and um have um the ability to have a greer say um i think um poaching is a big

issue so we need to you know help ensure there's no poaching i say poaching you know so there's some wasted fish down by surrey that was just dumped which is just no wasted and so we just need to deal these um um um issues that confront the fishery at the same time we need to have a redress for the um the impacts on our fishery from historic um um activities namely the construction of the railway. So we know that when the CN Railway was built in 1913, 1914, that there's two major slides that impacted our fishery to this day. And so although our people were affected by that historically, that impact still continues on to this day. So we know that in 1914 when people had no access to fishery, they had to go to lakes to get the fish. And so they had to

travel some distance. And so right now, there's no process to address the Hellsgate legacy, the Hellsgate slide. Wow. As well, you are from a community, near a community that was detrimentally impacted by not only fires, but the atmospheric river. My understanding is mudslides. from that I'm hearing that there's some positive development obviously it's a tragedy but making more fire resistant homes can you speak at all to the development that's going on in Lytton right now yes so I've been involved behind the scenes I've provided my legal work to my first nation on a volunteer basis it helped with the contracts for a lot of things that are happening on the ground for the temporary housing that was just put in place. There was 42 marglers installed, and so I helped behind the scenes on that work.

Things are quite slow for my liking, I guess. And I guess it's a process. You want to go fast because you have members living in motels, and so you try to provide your assistance, your help, but things have just been slow for whatever reason and it's going to be an ongoing process my wife's community

Telegraph Creek was also affected by wildfire in the year 2018 and they also lost quite a few homes so I know it's a multi-year process to have homes rebuilt

and for the community to return and so it just takes time but nonetheless there are some things that need to be probably addressed to address the ongoing impacts and so

you know one is the I think it's having a we talk about having a circle having a team the recovery team more of a bigger circle so that everybody knows what's happening.

So I think you have a lot of teams working in silos between the province, the village of Luton, the First Nations, the tribal council, you have different teams working by themselves. And these needs to be some sort of more unified action to work more as one. And so I work with a, we have a language society called Paa Week, which means working as one and working based on that philosophy. So right now we're not working as one. So although we have a common goal, there needs to be a better process to try to break down the barriers to work as one big team, to have. have you know members return because there's so although we have 42 modulars built there's still a need for more housing and to build the infrastructure because we lost a ban ban hall

we lost the um or rosy skukai building which was a cultural building um we lost other community buildings and then you have all the services that were lost you know downtown Lutton the post office RCP the hospital or health center and so yeah so just it's going to be an ongoing work the biggest issue or one issue for the community is that we have a tribal council that has received monies from the mine and the tribal council not using those funds, to my knowledge, for the recovery. They're using the funds for a different project,

and everything is not being disclosed to the members. So it's not a very good situation where you have a lack of community input regarding the use of those funds, fund of mine, and so it's an ongoing issue. Interesting. Where for you does the court of public opinion come in? I've heard that things have taken far longer in Lytton than is fair, is just after everything they've been through, not just one natural disaster, but two. How, when does that become appropriate? We see it with Wetowin. They post a lot. There are various people involved. Certain communities really leverage it. I don't know always to their benefits. whether or not the Court of Public Opinion stays with you or after a certain time you kind of lose the public support. How do you think about that? Because it does seem like First Nation communities

have become fairly adept at using the Court of Public Opinion to try and raise awareness of an issue. But it's a bullet in the chamber that you want to use carefully, thoughtfully. And so I'm just interested in your thoughts on that. Right. So I think it's about It's, you know, they're real issues, and I think it's, you know,

down the capacity issues and trying to work with the various bureaucracies, trying to break down the barriers. And so, you know, with these events, you know, the fire, the atmospheric river event, and just events linked to, you know, global warming, you know, the fires that destroyed somewhere houses this past summer. So you have ongoing climate change issues, which are very serious. And, you know, for me, as long as you have people who need support, you need to support those members.

And so every day that members in a motel, you need to support those members. So some people may be calling it politics, but it's just regarding trying to take the best steps using best practice. to support the community and the difficulty here is that you probably need to have a review process to see, you know, what's happened, how can make things, you know, better, improve the processes because you're doing people's lives here. Yeah, I just wonder if it weren't liton, if it were in Vancouver, it would be getting press coverage daily, even if people weren't seeking it out. and it would be at the front of people's minds. If it was in Victoria, the legislatures would see that every day and think about it and have it at the front of their mind. My concern is that, again, going back to postal codes, that because it isn't in everybody's face all the time, because it's a more rural community, they don't get the public attention.

And so there's less scrutiny on going up to John Horgan or David Eby and being like, where are you at with Litton First Nation? What are you doing for Litton First Nation? it's not constantly being bombarded in their face. So it maybe falls slowly over time from the priority list. Like we heard the same from farmers who were impacted by the atmospheric river and the events there, is that they just didn't feel prioritized the way that when things happened in the valley, it felt like things happened quite a bit quicker. Yeah, I think it's difficult because of the area is not,

you know, in the public eye as much anymore. But you have the ongoing impacts. It's affected my family. So I know what happened with my aunts and uncles and, you know, cousins and so on. And so you try to support. And so it's just going to take time. And I think that the issue is, it's a bigger issue because it's the thing of climate change, which is, you know, here now, it's very apparent.

And there's probably a broader risk for other communities down the road regarding, you know, what are the standards for house building, the difficulties for getting, you know, house insurance. And just being aware that you may need to be evacuated because of fire. And so it's just, so I think that it's in the attention of the public, but trying to have an ongoing process to address it, and it's going to require a lot of funding as well at the same time. When did you decide you wanted to become an adjunct professor?

When did you decide you wanted to start taking everything you've learned over the years and start sharing it with others? I think that following law school and came into practice, I had a teaching opportunity with the, it used to be called the Institute of Indigenous Garment, the IIG. So I became a instructor teaching about self-garment, average rights, and so on. And then I was asked to teach a self-combering class at the law school. and then one of the teachers who first taught the

Indigenous Ecuador Department of class that teacher I think from one semester and then after that they asked me to teach it and so I harnessed that opportunity and that was back

I first started teaching at law school back in the year 2021 and so it's a honor to be able to teach to students and share your knowledge and to give back and love it's based upon my experience as a lawyer working for the communities and yeah so it's just it's sort of much rewarding and it takes a bad time and but yeah it's challenging because you've got to be on top of everything every semester what do you hope students take away from the course. What tools do you hope that they remember? Obviously, the course covers a wide variety of topics, but if you can instill certain things, what stands out to you is the key kind of tools

that will help them in their career? For the students to know that there's this potential for any nation, any community to develop their resources, develop their territory for the bearment of their community, and there's different tools, there's different options, different choices, there's various legal means to get there, and there's options available, and it's also about trying to provide information regarding the possibilities. You literally wrote the book on First Nations. economic development. I'm wondering if you could tell us

how your book came about and what the process was to put this together. Yeah, so it's a bit of a process in that over the years, Cynthia and myself I've presented to different conferences, gatherings over the years,

and because I've taught on the matter for years as well, every year I was trying to pull together materials for the class, and I thought it'd be useful to have one book for the students so they can access information

in one place and so this is basically it represents insight into our practice it didn't include all of our trade secrets so we had my associates help out as well and so it's been updated this year so we actually have a second volume coming out in January

and just to provide basic information to law students students. And I know that from feedback from last students, they've been very pleased with the books. Some say that they use it all the time in their work. And I know that many of my past students have went on to become lawyers. And I know that the class has helped inform them in their legal profession. And so that's encouraging. And for me, it's this about if they can you know, gain this information, this insight into how to develop First Nations and Métis communities, then it'll help the, you know, greater good.

And so, yeah, so it's just really a overview regarding how to provide a framework to develop a community nation based upon their arbitration rights and title, based upon their reserve lands based upon the resources in their area and dealing with the implementation of UNRIP, you know, implementation of FPIC and, you know, how to negotiate impact benefit agreements and how to implement IVAs, dealing of corporate structuring, tax issues, also doing treaty rights

and doing certain case studies involving, you know, gaming and casinos and successful First Nations and Métis groups. Can you share kind of the rubric of the book, how the chapters go, how did that kind of come about?

Did they come to you and say, hey, we want you to do a book? Did you come to them and say, hey, I've got a book idea? So I approached Lexus Nexus of the concept back, I think around 2016, and they said yes, they were fully supportive. And so it was a couple-month exercise to roll everything into the chapters. I leaned on my associates as well and my assistants, and we pulled it together.

And it happened real quick. and it's basically, you know, based upon my classes are based upon, you know, PowerPoint presentations. So it's rolling in the presentations into the chapter format based upon a case law, legislation, policy, best practices, experiences, experiences of working of different First Nations and Métis groups across Canada, and provides a glimmer into the, into the potential. Interesting. What do you hope people take away from what you've experienced? Over your years of service, working with First Nations communities, with your deep understanding of the development of various communities, what do you hope listeners might be able to take

away from this? There's a potential to utilize the assets and the will of the community to advance their trust to really put forward the best footing for recognition of their rights, for the accommodation of their rights, to have their rights honored through successive agreements with the Crown, with industry, and to provide opportunity for membership, and the opportunity might be, you know, training, education, jobs, contracting. And so it's regarding how to harness, you know, possible benefits through legal instruments, legal tools.

Darwin, this has been an absolute pleasure. I think what you're doing behind the scenes, the impact you have with your book, being able to take a course with you, it completely changed my philosophy, my outlook on the best way to support communities in their development and addressing, again, some of those issues that so many people know about, this seems like a tangible way forward for so many people.

So I highly recommend people, go grab the book. If you're indigenous, it is a fantastic read. I found it so accessible. The language wasn't intimidating. And it gives really tangible, logical ways forward for a community to take those steps, to get their members out of those circumstances,

to help make sure they have all the resources they need to succeed. And so they have the right, philosophy, the right ethos to kind of start to make those steps possible. Thank you. I really hope that we are able to do this again in the future because I think there's so much people

can learn from you. Do you have a way people can connect with you if they have more questions if they want to connect further? We do have a firm website, chtlaw.ca, and I'm sort of more quiet off of social media.

So I do have a Facebook account. I'm not too active. I don't have a Twitter. I don't have Instagram. So I'm sort of, I'm going to say off the grid, but I try to keep on a download just because we do all work for different nations. We try to keep all of the political spotlight. But, yeah, so if I'll just say that if you want to connect with me, just, you know, you'll find me. So we'll cross past at some point.

Sounds good, yes. I think if they want to connect with you, they can probably go through your website and get your email address and information like that. Thank you so much for being willing to come on. This was an absolute pleasure. Okay. Gushan, how much?