OPINION: TREATIES WITH FIRST NATIONS ARE NOT SECRET 'GIVEAWAYS' - by Ron Sam, Songhees Nation Chief & Chief Negotiator for Te’mexw Treaty Association Caroline Elliott looks at the Modern Treaty our Nation is negotiating with British Columbia and Canada and sees loss. I can almost understand why. If you begin where she does in 1974, with a new holiday and speeches about the “great people” who built British Columbia, then perhaps a treaty returning lands to First Nations looks like something being taken away. But my people did not arrive in 1974, or in 1858, or with the first survey stake driven into this shoreline. We were here long before there was a legislature to give speeches in. In fact, we were evicted from our village to make way for that building. So let me offer a different starting point, and a richer story than the one Ms. Elliott tells. The Treaty BC is finalizing with the Te’mexw Treaty Association (TTA) is not a whim of the current government. It is the answer to a direction from the highest court in Canada. For decades, the Supreme Court of Canada has been clear that the honour of the Crown requires governments to sit down and negotiate in good faith to resolve outstanding Indigenous claims and honour longstanding promises. As Chief Justice Lamer wrote in the landmark Delgamuukw case (1997), reconciliation is to be achieved through negotiated settlements. In 2014, the Court confirmed in Tsilhqot’in Nation that governments are under not merely a moral duty but a legal one to negotiate in good faith with First Nations to resolve claims to ancestral lands. In other words, the very thing Ms. Elliott decries is what the law asks of all of us. And we have taken that direction seriously. Songhees, together with the other members of the TTA, has been at this treaty table, in good faith, for more than 30 years. We have negotiated through NDP governments, Conservative governments and Liberal governments, through changes in Ottawa and changes in Victoria, outlasting more premiers and prime ministers than I care to count. This is not a backroom deal rushed through by one party. It is the patient work of a generation. If anyone doubts how broad-ranging the commitment to reconciliation has been, they need only look at who has sat across the table from us. When we signed our Agreement in Principle in 2015, the Liberal government of the day was represented by then Minister of Aboriginal Affairs John Rustad — the same John Rustad who went on to lead the B.C. Conservative Party, and whom Ms. Elliott herself recently sought to succeed as leader. Reconciliation through negotiation has not been a partisan project. Neither has the mandate to return certain public lands to First Nations — lands that, it bears noting, the government itself has already determined to be surplus. Ms. Elliott calls the return of land a “handout” and a “giveaway.” With respect, you cannot give someone a gift that was theirs to begin with. A treaty is not charity from the Crown. It is the lawful resolution of a debt this province has carried, unpaid, for generations. Ms. Elliott also warns readers about what Songhees “might” do with the land, what “could” happen, what access “may” be lost. The whole column runs on those words — might, could, may. When you do not know a people, it is easy to fill the silence with your fears. So let me fill it with facts instead. In 2013, the province transferred a former government liquor store to Songhees as part of our Incremental Treaty Agreement. It is now a Red Barn Market — an upscale community grocery store. Songhees has entered into several protocol agreements with local governments in the region and have collaborated with the City of Victoria on various projects. The fact is, Songhees people have lived throughout Victoria for a very long time, and the harbour, the shoreline and this city are still here. We are the city’s oldest neighbours, and we intend to remain good ones. And I would encourage anyone unsettled by this column to do one simple thing: check the sources. Follow the very link Ms. Elliott provides and you will find it leads to a public engagement slide deck from a 2023 open house series up and down Vancouver Island. This is not a leak, and it is not a backroom. It is a public process — consulted on, posted online and open for years to anyone who cared to look. There is room for discussion about the terms of any treaty — evaluations, governance, public access and the concerns of neighbouring Nations, like Esquimalt, are all worth debating in good faith. We welcome that debate. What we do not accept is the suggestion that our presence in our own territory is a threat to the beauty of a city we have always called home. The pioneers Ms. Elliott admires are praised for their courage in building something lasting. Finishing a fair treaty takes that same courage — the courage to settle old accounts fairly, rather than to keep romanticizing a fictional past. After 30 years, we are close. I would rather be remembered for finishing this work than for standing in its way.