Thread by @OrcaCedarbough

Now David Eby’s lawyer for the BC Provincial government, Echols, takes the mic at the #Nuchatlaht trial gearing up for some *exciting* bureaucratic heel dragging for procedural nonsense asking for a “fair trial” asking for more evidence in the case. 🥱 #BCpoli

Even as a layperson interpreting law, legal proceedings and litigation I can tell the province’s defense has been remarkably sloppy and unprofessional throughout the case so far.

Echols mumbling about “Respecting the rules of practice and fairness to all parties” as if WFP and the Province have some sort of right to “reconciliation” as if they’re the victim not the perpetrator of this injustice. It’s impressive seeing lawyers spin cognitive dissonance.

Echols can’t quite even pronounce “Haa’wilth Tyee” properly when referring to Chief Jordan Michael. Makes one wonder if he’s just kind of doing this case off the side of his desk or winging it a bit. 🤷🏻‍♂️ #Nuchatlaht #BCpoli

Echols carries on in opening remarks on the questions in court, “Nuchatlaht has not satisfied the prerequisite proof of aboriginal title, if there is aboriginal title, it’s not for the entire claim area”…

Echols now complaining about how the #Nuchatlaht were hoping for an affordable, compressed and lean legal proceedings and instead it seeking more and more “particulars” to draw out legal proceedings indefinitely 🙄

Justice Myers, visibly frustrated with Echols cuts him off “where are you going with this? We’re here today now aren’t we? The question is aboriginal title.”

Justice Myers “I do not want to be put in the position to make complicated rulings on legal matters… results in a very complicated disastrous process of rulings and appeals, ok?” He scolds Lawyer Echols.

“The Ahousaht ruling/proceeding is something we’re going to have to wrestle with here” associated with the discovery of documents and evidence. Echols arguing over which types of evidence is relevant or irrelevant in the case.

“The province anticipates that the plaintiff will object to” {lists a bunch of documents of potential evidence} - Echols

“At different points in time, different people would have been the Nuchatlaht…. What we’re saying is that their *were* a “Nuchatlaht” at one time, were their other groups like them in local groups in the area, and did they eventually become the Nuchatlaht?.” - Echols.

“The modern day Nuchatlaht is also in question. Are we talking about them in 1859 in 2017? It’s a factually complex question.”

“What was the political relationship between all the “local groups” back then?”

For us who was the Nuchatlaht at the date of sovereignty? And you can’t say that those groups that were there at the date of contact were indeed the Nuchatlaht.” - Echols

(imagine this level of interrogation and hair-splitting for Scottish clan family structure, or the rights of a farmers fields, or a logging companies “rights” on the land base? I would love to see the tables turned on the exploits of the colony on the land with the same right)

“Aboriginal title crystallized at the time [British] sovereignty was asserted” Echols argues. (Which of course is a racist logic grounded in Terra Nullius & The Doctrine of Discovery)