The preceding 25 years of contemporaneous treaty negotiations have been taken into account by the standard of capital accretion, as seen in other contemporary treaties. Poverty and dispossession are the effects on the indigenous people. This has been proven in a debate of the drafting, negotiation, implementation, and conclusion of some of the treaties in Canada's North, such as the Nisga'a Treaty. Recent treaties have been portrayed in this piece as an effective vehicle for capital accumulation and as an instrument of imperialism that continues the historical subjugation of indigenous lands for economic enslavement to the benefit of foreign governments. The Nisga'a Treaty was an agreement established between British Columbia government, the Canadian government and the Nisga’a. Two thousand square kilometers of land near the Valley of River Nas was legitimately allocated to the Nisg̱a'. Furthermore, three hundred thousand cubic meters reservation of water was also mad, and Bear Glacier Regional Estate also resulted from the Nisga’a Treaty. 31 Nisga'a residence designations within the region became were officially named. The first official agreement to be signed up by the main state within British Columbia ever since the treaties of Douglas in 1854 was the Nisga’a treaty. However, the final agreement was signed by Glen Premier from the British Columbia Province and Sir Leeson Nelson and Wright Edmond from the Nisg̱a'a Nation. However, the constitutional legitimacy regarding Nisga'a treaty was disputed by several Nisga'a community members, who specifically worked under self-government of Nisga’a nation. British Columbia Supreme Court laid down its verdict of continuance with the constitutional legitimacy of the Nisga’a Treaty on 19 October 2011.
History about Nisga’a Treaty
Early associations between Aboriginals and the non-indigenous population were linked with a noble deal of collaboration. Aboriginals in Canada were massively greater in numbers compared to the European settlers. They were associated with several activities, comprising the fur trade. Aboriginals were also integrally convoluted in activities like mining and logging. The non-indigenous European settlers greatly profited from these associations. However, with the advancement of the new colonies, Aboriginals became alienated from most of their lands, resources, rights and lands. The alienation of Aboriginals from their lands and resources, consequences of their experiences in residential schools and the substantial prohibition from the workforce caused the indigenous population to be the most deprived people in Canadian society. Substance abuse, health problems, legal problems, unemployment and the rates of truancy developed consequently persisted several indigenous communities. In this research, Frideres outlines some of these issues of societal dissimilarity. Dale, on the other hand, discusses how these societal dissimilarities in the history of marginalization, alienation and the societal problems have generated profound challenges for the native Canadian communities in respect to taking part in collaborative verdict making about resource and land disputes.
From the early 1970s through to the 2000s, the native communities in Canada progressively found support from the court of law. At around the same time, the public view concerning the native Canadian population had begun to change. Moreover, a vast population of the general public backed up their grievances.Canadian indigenous population began taking part in several types of street protest activities at around 1970s to 1980s to augment their land dues. These argumentative activities gained a lot of attention from the media platforms which consequently predisposed the public view. As a result of these pattern of forces (especially the amplified improbability over the legitimate status of resources and land) encouraged the provincial government to finally amend the Nisga’a treaty policies in 1993 in British Columbia.
The Societal Perspective of Indigenous Peoples and Forest Land Disputes
Over the past few decades, the indigenous people in Canada and British Columbia, in general, have been fraught to get control their forest domains. Various aspects of the indigenous-non-Indigenous relations in Canada and British Columbia illustrates these challenges. The confrontations include the barriers as well as legal challenges which had been started by the indigenous population in respect to their rights and title concerns.
Barriers prohibiting logging activities were only parts of huge plans to declare the rights of the Indigenous population and to inaugurate the indigenous title. Also evident was the challenge due to the past relationship between the indigenous population and the non-Aboriginal group. Smith describes their past relations to have proceeded under the assimilation models. Thus Aboriginal population was forced to abandon their land, culture, resources and language to the greater Canadian Society. However, the above challenges led to the establishment of several models of co-managements and other alternative assimilation models linked the Aboriginal rights.Aboriginal’s Concerns about forestry conservation by the fact that they were not being permitted to influence the management of their land and not profiting from the resource extraction were resolved.
For instance, Canadian and British high court elucidated the Indigenous rights in respect to the resources and further established the basis on what indigenous title encompasses in principle. Various means of interim measures were established, for instance, the co-management agreements where various alternative land tenure systems were created such as the James Bay Cree located in the North of Quebec. Forest companies were even motivated to enter into cooperative undertakings with the Indigenous groups. In some occurrences, the indigenous population established their forest companies. Through these ways, the indigenous population gained the chance to have more say in verdict making on issues concerning their forest lands as well profited from the forest resources.
According to Marc Stevenson, incorporation of the customary Aboriginal knowledge into the assimilation models played a substantial role in the sustainable forest management plan. For instance, the customary knowledge helped greatly in the legal establishments of the continuous utilization of the customary territories. Some legislation were made regarding the protection of the Aboriginal’s cultural artifacts. Marc argues that, customary knowledge only exists in specific contexts and that the aspects of the traditional knowledge cannot be hand-picked and plummeted into the western scientific charter.
In regard to the second question, Canada is a well-developed, prospering country comprising of substantial self-governing systems that provide equivalent opportunities to every Canadian inhabitant. Canada was founded out of the colonist imperialism, although it still served as the motherland to the various discrete Aboriginal population. Imperialism resulted to the strained affiliation between the non-indigenous and indigenous people in Canada.
A closer look at the living status of the majority aboriginal population in Canada marks the causticness of the state excruciatingly vibrant: the thriving projections, as well as the wealth of the nation-condition that they occupy, were obtained via grabbing resources and land from the aboriginal population. As a result, they currently face extreme impoverishments, regarding both the physical, cultural and socio-economical aspect. Additionally, numerous policies established by the Nisga’a Treaty implemented in a bid to deal with the challenges faced by the native population in Canada, simply worsened aboriginal population situation. Therefore, cognizance about the aboriginal population rights has developed over the past decades. Although despite the cognizance, practical situational change has not significantly been achieved. According to Edwin and William, regarding the transitional justice, they believe that some form of integrity is still mandatory purposefully to repay the blame generated by the past imperialism events.
The extensive antiquity of indefinability and injustice of the objective policies effected by the colonialists contribute to the incapacity of defining punishable crime and perpetrators. The Nisga’a treaty in 1854 was however not able to provide a satisfactory solution to the challenges linked to the indigenous population in Canada. The proposed assimilation models in the treaty were only geared towards extinction of the native’s cultural norms, language as well as land and resource grabbing mechanisms that resulted in the tenuous relationship between the indigenous and the non-indigenous population.
According to Frank and Elvis, A more practical approach should, therefore, be seeking reconciliation between the indigenous and non-indigenous groups via recuperative justice strategy. For instance, the affected indigenous group should be compensated, symbolically atoned and restituted. Recuperative justice differs from retaliatory justice since it centers on the curative means. It permits both the victimizers (non-indigenous colonist population) as well as the victims (indigenous group) to collaborate and establishes alternatives that are relieving to both groups. The entire community should be involved in conducting reconciliation process.
Discrimination can severely obfuscate the reconciliation process when executing the actions and policies which profit the aboriginal group. The respective aboriginal populations in Canada is composed of an inconsequential proportion of the nation’s entire population. Therefore, the general public opinion is prone to largely determine the Canadian governmental reliance. Consequently, it would not be surprising that in times of global fiscal meltdown, extensive monetary aid for Aboriginal policies or initiatives would not be prioritized by the majority of the Canadian population. In Canada, no such course of renovation has so far been successful despite the abundant initiative and policy steps are undertaken via the Nisga’a treaty meant to bridge the rift amongst the non-indigenous and indigenous population.
All the same, by the fact that the Canadian government had embarked on more substantial stages in respect to reparations and reimbursement, is not a guarantee that this has simultaneously resulted in generating reconciliation. The extent to which such initiatives have profited the aboriginal residents and thus led to reconciliation are still a matter that has generated a heated debate in Canada. Hence, it is necessary to assess these measures and policies of curative justice that have been attempted in Canada. This article, therefore, establishes the kind of approaches and initiatives which are likely to function properly in incapacitating the strained affiliation between Canada’s non-indigenous and indigenous residents. In assessing reconciliation concept on Canada, the first requirement is prioritizing what actually reconciliation entails.
Generally, reconciliation is presumed to come about on these stages: at the interactive level (amongst individuals), at the community or societal level also known as collective reconciliation and at the political level (occurring amongst opposing states or groups within a state). The extensive political level is the type of reconciliation of relevance in this article. The overall consent in the political level is that societies that experience the changeover after historical events associated with conflict, political repression and war en route for a more symphonic future where human rights are upheld, governance is accountable and deliberated to be legitimate. Human safety and Justice are also valued, and therefore a reconciliation process is mandatory. In light of the above fact, reconciliation is perceived to not only be a vital but a crucial cause to avoid fresh eruptions of conflict and violence. It has proved to be the end result of a provisional justice.
Conclusion
From the facts discussed above, it evidently clear that the establishment of Nisga’a treaty led to the emergence of several challenges that greatly influenced the indigenous Canadian population. However, through Nisga’a final agreement, these issues have been addressed via the developed policies such as the several models of co-managements as well as the reconciliation approaches to help solve these demands. It is, therefore, imperative for both the non-indigenous population and indigenous population to reconcile with regarding their past since this approach will help them to progress towards a harmonious and prosperous future. Additionally, not a single objective of reconciliation mentioned above are achievable in the absence of the concept reconciling: which encompasses acknowledging the rights and meeting the needs of the native population consistently together with those of the indigenous population as discussed above.
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