The Haida Gwaii Lesson: A Strategic Playbook for Indigenous Sovereignty

Praise for The Haida Gwaii Lesson

An epic story needs an epic writer. From the heart of a nation whose language is distinct from any other in the world, comes a story of intergenerational courage, battle, commitment and joy told by one of the most widely respected journalists of our time. Mark Dowie’s impeccable research, devotion, and love of the word, the people, and land bring an epic tale to paper. From these words, we can all learn.

—Winona LaDuke, author of All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life

THE HAIDA GWAII LESSON

A Strategic Playbook for Indigenous Sovereignty

MARK DOWIE

Illustrations by

April Sgaana Jaad White

Copyright © 2017 Mark Dowie

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Inkshares, Inc., San Francisco, California

www.inkshares.com

Edited by Jennifer Sahn & Jessica Gardner

Cover design by CoverKitchen | Illustrated by April Sgaana Jaad White | Interior design by Kevin G. Summers

ISBN: 9781942645559

e-ISBN: 9781942645566

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940694

First edition

Printed in the United States of America

For

The Siwanoy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface: Why This Book and Why Now

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Place

There is no place in the world quite like Haida Gwaii

Chapter 2: The People

And there are no people quite like the Haida

Chapter 3: The Problem

How and why thousands of independent nations were colonized

Chapter 4: Gold and Souls

The quarries of human conquest

Chapter 5: Sovereignty

The Golden Fleece of self-determination

Chapter 6: Title Wave

The sine qua non of sovereignty

Chapter 7: The Argument

What should work in almost every court in the world

Chapter 8: The Precedent

What’s worked in some

The Persistence of Force vs. the Force of Persistence

Chapter 9: The Strategy

And how the Haida made it work for them

Epilogue

Idle No More

Appendices

Appendix 1: Haida Timeline

Appendix 2: Strategic Land Use Agreement

Appendix 3: Haida Land Use Vision

Appendix 4: Haida Nation Constitution

Appendix 5: Reconciliation Protocol

Appendix 6: Mandate and Responsibilities of the Council of the Haida Nation

Appendix 7: Haida Claim of 2002

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Illustrator

List of Patrons

PREFACE

Why This Book and Why Now

I DECIDED to write this book while researching its predecessor, Conservation Refugees, an investigative history of the hundred-year conflict between global conservation and native peoples. Quite frequently, in remote communities around the world, a shaman, elder, or chief would ask me, Do you know the Haida?

I had heard of the Haida and seen their remarkable art in museums. But that was about it. Why do you ask? I would respond. Because we want what they have was the general response. And by that it turned out they meant aboriginal title, a form of land tenure that gives indigenous occupants of a traditional homeland final say over who lives there, who is and is not a citizen of that land, and how and by whom resources will be extracted and used.

How did a small remote band of seafaring aboriginals who had lived for millennia on a remote archipelago in the north Pacific get all those things back from a British colony that had usurped them, one by one, in the eighteenth century?

This book is the answer to that question. It’s not a simple answer—though I have tried to make it as clear and understandable as possible—but neither was it an easy path for the Haida. It took them fifty years of political strategizing, legal maneuvering, alliance building, information gathering, public campaigning, blockading, media manipulation, land-use planning, and astute negotiation—alongside long hours of self-examination, deliberation, historical reassessment, debating, careful planning, and finding common cause with rivals. Still, for the Haida, the struggle ain’t over yet, though they’re a lot closer to their goals than most other indigenous communities around the world. Their story is not only a lesson; it’s an inspiring tale of resilience and determination in the face of two centuries of persistent rudeness, oppression, and exploitation.

* * *

THERE IS an endless debate among historians, anthropologists, journalists, and indigenous peoples about what to call the original inhabitants of the New World. Indian is insulting to some, as are Indio and Amerindian. The main problem with Indian is that it overlooks the enormous diversity and ignores the true names and wildly differing cultures of Native Americans on two continents. Native has been co-opted by nativists. Aboriginal tends to identify Australian natives, although the definition of aboriginal (literally, from the origin) pretty much describes First Peoples everywhere, and is used quite frequently in international law. Indigenous peoples seems to offend no one, but is rarely used for self-description of specific tribes or tribals. (I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked not to use those terms.)

Although it is almost exclusively a Canadian term, I use First Nation(s) when referring to indigenous communities around the world, because it describes pretty much any legitimate and sovereign nation that preexisted the arrival and occupation of European settlers. They were there first. Not all of them had laws, a constitution, or what we would today regard as a national government, but they all had land, bordered territories, and hunting grounds that, along with a culture, language, and distinct people, they defined as a nation.

Another term I’ll use a lot, because Canada does so in most of its legal proceedings, is the Crown. It can mean the state, the federal or provincial government, or (in early colonial history) the royal place at the capital of an empire, or it can literally mean the sovereign imperial monarch who wears the crown—George of Britain, Ferdinand of Spain, Louis of France, or Maria of Portugal. However it is defined, the Crown, as I use it, is the power with which First Nations have had to and still have to contend.

* * *

YOU WILL notice that I have used very few proper names in telling this story. That will seem strange to many readers, particularly those who enjoy reading about colorful personalities or have read enough Haida history to know that there were definite heroes, men and women who sacrificed much in their long battle for freedom and self-determination. But I have minimized using names and profiling heroes because the Haida are a profoundly modest and anti-narcissistic culture, and it’s their story that the indigenous world wants to know—a story of collective leadership, not individual heroism; of patient determination, not celebrity biopics or amusing anecdotes about colorful elders, warriors, and hereditary chiefs. This does not mean that there aren’t creative, selfless, tireless Haida leaders who have served faithfully in key positions of power. In fact, while traveling the islands and researching this book, I found some of the most remarkable people I have ever met.

But one of the characteristics that stood out for me about Haida leaders, men and women alike, is that they do not strive for reverence, fame, or name recognition. What they do, they do for their community, not just for themselves, their immediate family, or historical distinction. As one former Haida Council president observes, Focusing on the individual is not the Haida way. OK, I’ll tell you his name. It’s Guujaaw, an affable, mischievous, humorous, and brilliant man, and a talented artist and drummer, who inspired and shepherded many of the decisive Haida battles of the past half century and served as president of the Haida Nation from 2000 to 2012. We had two long conversations while I was in Haida Gwaii, one sitting, one walking. I still have cramps in my right hand from taking notes.

Of course, the Haida are acutely aware of what Guujaaw and other leaders have accomplished, and those men and women are held in high esteem. But their goal is not fame. It is, in a word, independence, which they know is something that cannot be won by one or even a handful of people. It is won by a nation, as the story in this book attests.

What the Haida would like the world to know is what they have accomplished—the how of it, not the who. They know that what was said or written or done is more important and relevant to other indigenous peoples than their names and personal stories.

So I tell their story as a series of well-timed decisions and actions because it is those events, not the colorful individuals who designed, executed, or led them, that needs to be understood by native leaders around the world who asked that pressing question: How did they do it?

* * *

WHILE THE Haida created a strategy for self-determination that worked, there are scores, if not hundreds, of First Nations around the world for whom these tactics would not be appropriate, at least not yet. Their situations are so dire, so uncertain, and their oppressors so aggressive and potentially violent, that blockades and litigation would simply be futile, even dangerous.

However, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of indigenous communities—some larger, some smaller—that exist entirely under the sovereignty of a nation-state that absorbed them, without consultation, assuming complete tenure and title over their land and licensing its use and extraction of resources to anyone they please. It is for them this book is written.

INTRODUCTION

Whole nations melted away like balls of snow before the sun.

Tsiyu Gansini¹

ACCORDING TO the UN, there are 370 million self-described indigenous peoples alive today. Generally defined as people whose community preexisted a larger nation-state that enveloped them, indigenous peoples comprise about 4,500 distinct cultures and speak as many different languages and dialects. While making up only 5 percent of the world’s total population, they occupy about 20 percent of the planet’s land surface. They exist within and straddle the borders of 75 of the United Nations’ 193 recognized countries.

They live in tropical forests, boreal forests, deserts, and snow, on tundra, savannas, prairies, islands, and mountains, and they occupy every remaining complex biotic community (or biome) on the planet. They are stewards of about 80 percent of the world’s remaining biological diversity and account for 90 percent of its cultural diversity.

Many of them regard their ancestral territory as a nation—a First Nation—and would draw a very different map of the world than that found in most modern atlases. Instead of 193 sovereign countries, theirs would demarcate thousands of independent nations.

For most of the millennia they have endured, these small nations knew little of each other’s existence, languages, cultures, or lifeways. Nevertheless, they have somehow managed during the last century to cobble together one of the most remarkable worldwide social movements in the history of mankind, a movement to reassert their rights to self-determination and claims to the territories they have traditionally occupied.

An early indication of the movement was the small delegation of British Columbia Indian chiefs who traveled to London in 1906 to petition King Edward VII over the lack of treaties and the inadequacies of Indian reserves in their province. Similar petitions followed from other BC First Nations, including the Haida. While British authorities listened patiently and respectfully to the chiefs, the provincial government in Victoria, BC, stubbornly refused to recognize aboriginal title. However, in 1913, a Royal Commission on Indian Affairs was created by the Crown. For three years, commissioners listened to more claims and arguments for aboriginal title and sovereignty. The commission’s conclusion, however, was that Canadian natives were content and prosperous, and there was no systematic land problem.

The indigenous movement went global in 1923 when a Canadian Mohawk chief named Deskaheh led a small delegation of North American Indians to Geneva, Switzerland. There they called upon the recently formed League of Nations to defend the rights of their people to live under their own laws, on their own land, and according to their own faith. They were turned away at the gate and told that they were addressing a matter of domestic policy—Go home and deal directly with your governments (which of course they had been doing, to no avail, and was why they had gone to Geneva).

In the decades that followed, millions of very poor, almost illiterate people living in thousands of small communities, without electricity or communication infrastructure, and speaking thousands of different languages, managed to organize a global protest for land and human rights that has literally changed the way the world regards land tenure, the commons, human rights, and sovereignty.

As the world shrank due to telecommunications and transportation, inhabitants of the most remote villages began to discover that they were not alone. There were others like them on almost every continent—people with unique dialects, diets, cultures, and cosmologies who were at best misunderstood, at worst oppressed by the dominant nationalities that surrounded and subsumed them. They began to communicate, and to meet, and through interpreters learned of ways that aboriginals in societies like Haida Gwaii were finding to protect their cultures and recover the independence, culture, and ancient homelands lost to colonialism. They began to use terms like self-determination, resist assimilation, and petition provincial and national courts (and eventually the United Nations) for recognition of territorial and aboriginal rights.

And people in the developed world who valued cultural diversity as much as biological diversity—particularly anthropologists, human rights lawyers, social activists, and members of organizations like Cultural Survival, Survival International, EcoTerra, Amazon Watch, the Forest Peoples Programme, Terralingua,