Lubicon Lake Indian Nation Little Buffalo Lake, AB 403-629-3945 Fax: 403-629-3939 Mailing address: 3536 - 106 Street Edmonton, AB T6J 1A4 403-436-5652 Fax: 403-437-0719 April 6, 1993 Enclosed for your information is a copy of a newspaper article on UN review of a recent Canadian Court decision. In essence this particular Canadian Court decision held that the Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en Indians of British Columbia lost their rights to their traditional territory basically because they're Indians and white people wanted their lands. Simple as that. Chief Justice Allan McEachern of the Supreme Court of British Columbia concluded, in part: "I find it unnecessary to continue this debate (over whether Western European powers had the right to colonize North America). In my view, it is part of the law of nations, which has become part of the common law, that discovery and occupation of the lands of this continent by European Nations, or occupation and settlement, gave rise to a right of sovereignty..." Judge McEachern continued: "Aboriginal persons and commentators often mention the fact that the Indians of this province were never conquered by force of arms, nor have they entered into treaties with the Crown. Unfair as it may seem to Indians or others on philosophical grounds, these are not relevant considerations..." What is a relevant consideration, Judge McEachern said, since no treaty or any other kind of land cession agreement had ever been negotiated with the Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en, is what was in the minds of British officials during the colonial period. What was in the minds of such people, Judge McEachern said, determines whether aboriginal rights to traditional aboriginal lands in B.C. were properly "extinguished". In this regard Judge McEachern quoted Colonial Secretary Lord Grey as follows: "Men were to subdue the earth; that is, to make it by their labour what it would not have been by itself; and with the labour so bestowed upon it came the right of property in it. "Thus every land which is inhabited at all belongs to somebody; that is, there is either some one person or family or tribe or nation who have a greater right to it than any one else has; it does not and cannot belong to everybody. "But so much does the right of property go along with labour that civilized nations have never scrupled to take possession of countries inhabited only by tribes of savages -- country which has been hunted over but never subdued or cultivated. "It is true they have often gone further and settled themselves in countries which were cultivated, and then it becomes a robbery; but when our fathers went to America and took possession of the mere hunting grounds of the Indians -- of lands on which man had hitherto bestowed no labour -- they only exercised a right which God has inseparably united with industry and knowledge." It is thus on this basis, according to Judge McEachern, that traditional Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en lands now belong to the B.C. Provincial Government instead of the Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en. Just so nobody gets the idea that this decision must have been written by some primordial racist lunatic who just went bananas and has since been institutionalized, Judge McEachern has in fact been promoted to Chief Justice of B.C. Court of Appeal -- which is now hearing an appeal of this same decision. (Nice work if you can get it.) It is judicial thinking of this kind which prompted the UN to cite Judge McEachern's decision as proof that "deeply rooted Western ethnocentric criteria are still widely shared in present-day judicial reasoning" in Canada. It is also "judicial reasoning" of this kind which disinclines the Lubicons to seek redress from the Canadian Courts for the invasion of traditional Lubicon lands and the theft of valuable Lubicon resources. For the Lubicons know, from Chief Justice McEachern's point of view at least, that theft of Lubicon lands and resources -- and the consequent genocide of the Lubicon people -- is considered only "a right which God has inseparably united with (people of Judge McEachern's particular skin colour and ethnic background)". * * * * * Globe and Mail, Friday, April 02, 1993 LAND-CLAIM RULING SHOWS `ETHNOCENTRIC' BIAS, UN REPORT SAYS By Geoffrey York Parliamentary Bureau OTTAWA A senior British Columbia judge was displaying an "ethnocentric" bias when he dismissed an Indian land claim in a landmark ruling, in 1991, a United Nations study has concluded. The study, written by an investigator with the UN Human Rights Commission, said the B.C. judge's ruling was proof that "deeply rooted Western ethnocentric criteria are still widely shared in present-day judiciary reasoning." The UN report, which was distributed at a conference in Ottawa yesterday, quoted some of the judge's words as examples of ethnocentric thinking in the Canadian judicial system. In his landmark decision on the Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en land claim, Chief Justice Allan McEachern of the B.C. Supreme Court (now Chief Justice of the B.C. Court of Appeal) said the lives of the Indian people were "nasty, brutish and short" before the arrival of the white man. The judge said the Indians "had no written language, no horses or wheeled vehicles, slavery and starvation was not uncommon, [and] wars with neighbouring peoples were common." He ruled that the Indians do not have aboriginal title to 57,000 square kilometres of territory in northern British Columbia. The decision was appealed to the B.C. Court of Appeal, and a ruling is expected shortly. The UN report was written by Miquel Alfonso Martinez, a Cuban who was appointed a "special rapporteur" by the UN Human Rights Commission to study Indian treaties in several countries around the world. He has been working on the study since 1989. In an interview yesterday, Mr. Martinez said the B.C. court decision was "unfortunate" and "one-sided". He said the judge's decision was based on a misunderstanding of Indian culture. "This is something that has to be destroyed systematically," he said. Mr. Martinez said the UN study of aboriginal treaty rights is unprecedented. It is the first time that the United Nations has looked at the treaty rights of indigenous peoples around the world, he said. Mr. Martinez expects to complete his study in the next two years and to write a final report in 1995. In the report distributed yesterday, he said he treaty rights of native people have been eroded in Canada. "It is absolutely clear that the original treaties did not contemplate certain interpretations that are currently diminishing of the content of those treaties," he told reporters at the Ottawa conference, giving education rights as an example.