The Secwepemc Territorial Authority project begins with the question of: What do “cultural heritage” encounters within Secwepemc territory, British Columbia, look like were we to fully accept and act upon the premise that Secwepemc peoples have economic, political, and legal authority within their territory?
This community-based project brought together Secwepemc community leaders and knowledge holders from the Neskonlith, Adams Lake, and Splats’in bands, and a group of leading social, legal, and political scholars.
This project has generated robust stories and dialogues around intangible and tangible culture and questions of ownership, advanced strong ethics of informed consent based in inter-political relations on the land, and aided First Nations people and scholars by outlining a set of practical and mutually supportive ways to discuss and implement Indigenous peoples’ self-determination and authority.
Secwepemc Territorial Authority: a living project in rapidly changing times
The Secwepemc Territorial Authority (STA) project – co-lead by Secwepemc grassroots activist Arthur Manuel and Anthropologist Brian Noble – has thrived as an unfolding response to shifting legal and political situations in Canada, which over the last four years in particular have been quite dramatic. This is the case because the Secwepemc engage in the project as Peoples with their own laws and jurisdiction over their knowledges, cultural material, and other tangible and intangible ‘heritage’ – even as Canada continues to assert its own exclusive jurisdiction. From the outset, the principle and practice of this collaboration between Secwepemc knowledge holders and Academic knowledge holders has been to conduct our research and writing from the shared position that the Secwepemc have authority in their land, their territory, and so to underscore a strong anti-colonial approach to the drawing together of knowledges and reporting upon them.
This action-oriented, grassroots approach to knowledge protection through collaborative engagement as embraced by the participants has responded to such developments as the Idle-no-more movement, the still-accelerating economic and environmental encroachment of mining and other massive scale development projects on Secwepemc lands, changes in two Federal governments (from the Harper administration to the Trudeau administration), the Supreme Court of Canada’s Tsilhqot’in decision, the resurgence of Indigenous peoples in the Academy and beyond; the TRC Calls to Action, and announcements that Canada intends to fully implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. If anything, the coming together of all these actions has made the work of Indigenous Territorial Authority all the more relevant in our current moment. This is all coupled, in turn, to an intensification of interest in engaging the earth conciliation practices of Indigenous Peoples, critical both to the sourcing and exercise of Territorial Authority and to advancing the means for earth-friendly, sustainable futures between peoples.
We are preparing our collaborative report from the Secwepemc engagements, while also witnessing several new initiatives being spawned. Two versions of the report are to be created: one that is meant for internal posting to the IPinCH collective, and the second will be assembled after a full collaborative consultation with the participating community members.
Extending on the Indigenous Territorial Authority Approach
Our focus on Territorial Authority, has also been attracting the interest of scholars and indeed of other First Nations, meeting their desired approach to assuring protection of their lands, knowledges, and heritages, especially those Nations seeking to ground their protection and positive rights governance in their own laws and traditional political authority.
The project team first met in a two-day discussion held in November 2013 to explore how researchers and others might (a) most respectfully undertake political-legal relations with Secwepemc people concerning tangible-intangible culture, and (b) develop fruitful scholarly and/or economic collaborations, while (c) fully honouring Secwepemc Peoples’ assertions of territorial authority.
In November 2014, several of the scholars and grassroots people associated with the STA collaborating community were invited to work with the Tsilhqot’in leadership not long after the SCC’s landmark Williams decision and declaration on Aboriginal Title, in what has been called the Tsilhqot’in Think Tank. This decision is monumental in Canadian legal history, and has helped to undergird the Territorial Authority for the Tsilhqot’in people, as it will for many Nations in the land and heritage protection efforts.
A follow-up gathering is being planned for this August of 2016 to take place in the Xeni Gwet’in declared Title area.
Arthur Manuel discussed the STA work with Chief Roger William of Xeni Gwet’in, and with Tsilhqot’in Nation Tribal Chair, Chief Joe Alphonse not long after the release of the Supreme Court decision on their Title. The Tsilhqot’in leaders were interested in the method of first seeking to understand the land sourcing of Indigenous Peoples legal and political authority. Brian Noble of IPinCH then joined with all three during the 2014 Assembly of First Nations meetings to discuss our subsequent “TTA” gathering which would be held in Williams Lake, just south of Tsilhqot’in territory. Thompson Rivers University Law Professor and STA expert participant Nicole Schabus soon offered TRU’s support in hosting of the Tsilhqot’in territorial authority session at the Thompson Rivers Williams Lake campus.
Several STA / IPinCH experts participated in the Think Tank convened with the Tsilhqot’in Nation leaders, in addition to Arthur Manuel and Brian Noble: Prof. Kent McNeil, Prof. James Tully, Prof. Nicole Schabus, Aaron Mills, Emma Feltes, Chris Abinati. In the course of our meetings, we engaged with several key matters:
- Dasiqox Tribal Park: Nexwagwez? an expression of governance initiated by Yunesit’in and Xeni Gwet’in, supported by the Tsilhqot’in Nation
- Land based, Title based sovereignty, taking guidance from the Nemiah Declaration, and extending Title to governance and jurisdiction
- Meeting with the Neighbouring Settler and Indigenous communities
In February of 2016, the Secwepemc Territorial Authority collective gathered to present their ongoing findings in the “Determining Access” meetings, again supported and hosted by Thompson Rivers University, and with the support of a SSHRC Connections grant, of which IPinCH Co-Investigator Brian Noble was a co-applicant. We also saw participation of speakers from Mi’kmaqi, who spoke to the way that Mi’kmaq Territorial authority meets up with everyday treaty relations around knowledges of small-scale fishing activities, in relation especially to the fall out of the Marshall Decision of the SCC.
This coincided with the gathering of the Interior Alliance which includes the Secwepemc, Sylix, St’at’imc, and Nlaka’pamux Nations, and a keynote address by Naomi Klein in a special workshop on Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples rights.
On Saturday May 28th 2016, several of the STA experts presented together at the Canadian Law and Society Annual meetings in Calgary during Congress, to provide updates on the project and its next moves in a session “Determining Access – Working In and Around Law to Build and Support Indigenous Territorial Authority." The session was one of the most highly attended and engaged at the meetings, and promised to extend even farther the network of interest in this approach even more widely in Law and Society communities interested in protection of Indigenous peoples’ lands and knowledge practices. Individual papers presented were:
- Logging to challenge provincial and Assert Indigenous Jurisdiction, Arthur Manuel (Secwepemc Nation, INET)
- Indigenous Governance – Opportunities In and Around the Law, Nicole Schabus and Janna Promislow (Thompson Rivers University)
- Intersections between Environmental Law and Indigenous Governance of Aboriginal Title, Sharon Mascher (University of Calgary)
- The Power to Speak the Law: Energizing Indigenous Communities to Take Back Control of their Lands, Chris Albinati (York University)
- Earth Conciliations: The Burgeoning Work of Indigenous Territorial Authority in Alliance with Settler Polities, Brian Noble (Dalhousie University)
Final Report in preparation.
Related Links
- TRU hosts rights and title decision forum, Williams Lake Tribune, Nov 14, 2014.
- Naomi Klein speaks in Kamloops, CBC News, Feb 19, 2016
- Naomi Klein links land claims with fighting climate change, Kamploops This Week, Feb 18, 2016
Chief Wayne Christian (Spallumcheen First Nation), Ernie Philip (Little Shuswap Band), and Henry Saul (Neskonlith Band) at the Secwepemc Territorial Authority gathering in November 2013; the group sharing a meal together (photos courtesy of Tania Willard).
