Interests clash as treaty is negotiated

There is a rift among Algonquin First Nations in Quebec on how to proceed on comprehensive claims.

Gilbert Whiteduck, chief of the largest Algonquin First Nation, Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, is disappointed that Abitibiwini, Long Point, Lac Simon, and Kichisakik, along with Wahgoshig in Ontario are joining forces to negotiate a modern treaty with the federal and Quebec governments.

“The only policy that exists in Canada in regards to comprehensive land claims is the federal comprehensive land claims policy in which if you’re going to enter into a treaty process you’ve got to extinguish … your inherent rights. What we have been guided by, the position of our community, is that we can never extinguish our inherent rights to the land,” said Whiteduck.

But that is not a concern for the five Algonquin First Nations that Bruno Kistabish, chief of the First Nation Abitibiwini Council, represents.

“You can put your rights within the (modern) treaty,” he said. “You can mark it down.”

At the heart of the concern for the majority of the First Nations that have joined with Kistabish is the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, which was signed in 1975 between the federal government, the Grand Council of the Crees and the Northern Quebec Inuit Association. That agreement, said Kistabish, extinguishes Algonquin rights within the territory by early 2014, which is driving the urgency to get the issue resolved.
“We keep saying to the government our territory is not Cree land. It’s Algonquin land. We keep trapping, we keep hunting on our territories since my grandparents were there. We know our territory,” he said. “But for now the rights aren’t written somewhere.”

Kistabish said the Algonquin have spoken to the Quebec Grand Council of Crees over the years, but with limited success.

The Algonquin territory currently included in the JBNQA is on the list of issues that the First Nations have identified as treaty themes to be negotiated with the federal and provincial governments. Also included are governmental autonomy, territory control, health, social services, education, mines and natural resources policy, a regional police force, economic development, wildlife and environmental management, and economic development, all of which are part of the present JBNQA. A condition for negotiations set by the Algonquin group is for negotiations to be completed within three years.

“We don’t want to start over something from scratch. All these things have been done with the Cree,” said Kistabish.

The JBNQA was negotiated in two years.

The request to negotiate has been sent to both the federal and provincial governments.

The Algonquin land that is part of the modern treaty negotiations borders on the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation.

“Government has told us … that even though there might be a modern-day treaty settled at one point … that our Aboriginal rights will not be impacted. That is so untrue. Because when the James Bay Agreement was signed a good chunk of what we consider to be Algonquin land was part of the James Bay Agreement… but our collective rights in that territory were in essence extinguished,” said Whiteduck.

Modern treaties are not what Whiteduck is after. He points to the ongoing arrangements that government has with corporations as a viable option for First Nations.

However, talks this past spring with Quebec Premier Pauline Marois, have been left hanging. Whiteduck said at that discussion “four fundamental pillars” were laid out: revenue sharing, coal management, environmental issues, and consultation and accommodation. The intent of the talk was to establish a process that would be engaged at the community level. That has yet to happen and Marois still talks about treaties.

And until Algonquin First Nations present a united front, Whiteduck doesn’t think a change in governmental status quo will happen.

“Unfortunately we have this kind of different viewpoint at the nation level,” he said. “But I’m not losing hope…We have a common ancestral territory and in some way our history is somewhat the same …  we still have that tie to the land. Land we have never ceded. Land for which there is no treaty. And for us, we don’t want that very fundamental principle and teaching we grew up with to be taken away. ”