The Haida Gwaii Lesson by Mark Dowie

Author:Mark Dowie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkshares
Published: 2017-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

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IN 1986, new logging permits were granted and others extended on Lyell Island. More blockades were planned, but before they were launched, the Haida built a traditional longhouse at Windy Bay and invited the loggers and their families to a feast. They came, and a long reconciliation process began. Later that year, the province announced a moratorium on new permits in South Moresby, and the CHN and Canada began to consider the creation of a national park in the unlogged southern reaches of the archipelago that would be managed cooperatively by the Haida and the Canadian government.

Meanwhile, in Ottawa, the Federal Department of Justice became deeply concerned about a “Statement of Purpose” for South Moresby drafted by the Haida, in which mention was made of “hereditary activities,” “a vital part of our spiritual and ancestral home,” and “our right to continue traditional activities.” Justice lawyers feared that sentences like that might “compromise land-claims negotiations.” All copies of the report containing those sentiments were shredded, and the comanagement agreement that was proposed for the area never mentioned “aboriginal title” or “traditional activities.” The Canadian federal government seemed to agree that a national wilderness area should be created in South Moresby, but only on their terms. The Haida opposed it.

“We didn’t stand on the line to have a national park shoved down our throat,” remarked the president of the Haida Nation. “Our objective, preservation, has been won. It’s our responsibility to manage South Moresby. Anything Parks Canada does should be with our consent.”

Shortly after he said that, the president declined the governor general of Canada’s Conservation Award for his part in saving South Moresby. “I can’t accept this award until the Haida feel at home in Canada,” he said. The way the federal government wanted to shift responsibility from Victoria to Ottawa he saw as simply “another erosion of title,” and demanded equal say in everything regarding the management of South Moresby, park or no park.

“Whose land do you think you’re standing on?” he asked one federal bureaucrat touring the area. He and five other Haida leaders later renounced their citizenship of Canada and tore up their passports. They weren’t seceding from Canada, they wanted the government to know, simply reacting to a serious breakdown in the rule of law. “You are not behaving right or legally,” the president told a federal official.

The Haida then told the federal Parks Canada bureaucrats in Ottawa that if they didn’t approve the creation of a comanaged national park on South Moresby, the CHN was prepared to ask the province to create and comanage a park. Since BC had already created provincial parks on the islands, the Haida were confident they would consider their request for one more, despite the fact that the minister of forests and other Victoria bureaucrats opposed the idea.

In 1988, Canada and Haida Gwaii agreed in principle to create the South Moresby National Park Reserve and name it Gwaii Haanas, but until the conflicts over rights and title were settled, the

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