Dec 10, 2015

                                                                  The Argument

 In the course of petitioning federal and provincial governments for self-determination the Haida have inadvertently created a generic argument for sovereignty and aboriginal title, an argument that should work almost anywhere in the world. It's fairly simple, is addressed to the colonizer and starts with the obvious: 

 • We have lived here for a very long time on land we have always assumed was ours. 

 • We were here long before you “discovered” us and our homeland, which we have never left. 

 • For all this time we have thrived alone, without foreign assistance, on the resources of our land and water. 

 • Despite the fact that we were secure on lands we stewarded, in a culture we developed, with a religion we owned, under laws and life ways of our own making, you assumed when you first observed us, that we were a bunch of ignorant, heathen savages who had no idea how to manage land, forage and cultivate food, harvest medicines, worship our creator, trade with neighbors, conduct our ceremonies, build homes, create art or govern ourselves. And you coveted our land, and the resources on and beneath it.

 • So you conquered and subjugated us, and behind the superior fire power of your weapons, you assumed title over our land and sovereignty over us.

 • You kidnaped and “educated” our children, erased our language, sold our resources to others, extinguished our rights, attempted to convert us to your religion and turned the best of our rituals into crimes. 

 • We eventually asked you to reconsider your actions and the assumptions that informed them. You agreed to do so. 

 • Amicably we negotiated an agreement of understanding, or a governance protocol, a land use co-management plan, or a treaty. And amicably you signed it. 

 • But before the ink was dry you broke it, and returned to confiscating our land and selling our resources to people we had never met. 

 • While we are close to giving up the idea of sharing sovereignty with you, we have decided, one last time, to file a claim in your courts, where … 

 • … we seek only what we believe we deserve — self-determination, sovereignty and Aboriginal title to our land; not to some of it, but to all that we say is ours.