Region's chiefs forging ahead

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UCLUELET-The five Central Region Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations have started negotiating a new Interim Measures Agreement (IMA) this month with the British Columbia government.

Once again they are discussing co-management of the resource-rich Clayoquot Sound area on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Leaders of the Ahousaht, Tla-o-qui-aht, Hesquiaht, Ucluelet and Toquaht First Nations are talking with the government about extending the hard-won agreement that they hammered out in 1994.

That agreement only was reached after an immense 1992 showdown and blockade finally got the British Columbia government to the negotiating table.

The regional, infamous "war in the woods" as it came to be known by the Nuu-chah-nulth, turned into what the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council has described as "the largest human blockade and display of civil disobedience in B.C. history."

But eventually a peace was reached, and that same year the Nuu-chah-nulth Central Region tribes and the British Columbia government began government-to-government negotiations on the thorny and difficult issue of co-management of Clayoquot Sound.

Finally, in March 1994, an Interim Measures Agreement was signed.

The agreement established the Clayoquot Sound Central Region Board.

The agreement expired in March 1996, and was extended the first time that April.

It was extended again in March 2000, when it became known as the Interim Measures Extension Agreement: A Bridge to Treaty (IMEA).

Leaders of the five tribes have put the government on notice that they are expecting "nothing less than the government-to-government relationships provided in past IMEA agreements," and they say they will be negotiating throughout the month of November to achieve that goal.

"The IMA has provided peace in the region for the past decade, and it's an agreement that is worth protecting and worth extending," said Nuu-chah-nulth Central Region Co-chair Shawn Atleo (A-in-chut).

"First Nations are united in their desire to see this landmark agreement continued," Atleo added.

Both the earlier agreement and the IMEA are seen by Native people of the region and elsewhere in British Columbia as precedent setting, in that they recognize traditional governance and Aboriginal rights in First Nation territories.

These agreements also established new environmental sustainability standards for forestry and created a workable template for various joint venture boards and businesses on the West Coast.

For more information contact Jackie Godfrey, executive director of the Central Region administration, at 250-726-2446 or call him on his cell phone at 250-735-3393.