Thread by @EthanCoxMtl

🧵 Legacy outlets have dropped the ball in their reporting on the role and authority of band councils vs. hereditary leadership at #Wetsuweten. The result has been rampant misunderstanding of core facts of this conflict, fueled by vested interests pushing bad info. 🧵 #bcpoli

Tl;dr According to the Supreme Court of Canada and the governments of BC and Canada, the Wet’suwet’en hereditary leadership hold rights and title to their unceded territory. Not the band councils, who the pipeline company has signed agreements with. This is as settled as it gets.

I don’t want to downplay the legitimate divisions in the community over this pipeline, or neglect to mention that the reserves the band councils control are where many Wet’suwet’en live. But according to Canadian *and* Wet’suwet’en law, hereditary chiefs control the territory.

Despite the SCC’s Delgamuukw ruling in 1997, which dealt specifically with the Wet’suwet’en and recognized their rights and title to their unceded territories under the hereditary system, the pipeline company signed agreements with the band councils who administer reserves.

Then, the company used these agreements to argue that they had consent. But they had the consent of the wrong parties. The governments tacitly encouraged this sleight of hand, until things came to a head in 2020. In the aftermath of the raid then, both governments signed an MOU.

That MOU, signed with the hereditary chiefs, recognized their title and authority over their traditional territory. It was BC and Canada finally accepting Delgamuukw. At this point, both levels of government and the highest court are in agreement.

After this point, the legacies started to do better. They mentioned the hereditary system’s claim to authority more often, but still continued to treat it like a live debate. It isn’t.

There are arguments to be made for and against the democratic legitimacy or representativeness of both systems. As an outsider, I’m not weighing into that internal debate. But we all need to understand why, legally, hereditary chiefs have authority. It’s not he said-she said.

This doesn’t apply broadly. Other Nations may have vastly different realities. But in the case of the Wet’suwet’en, we have a SCC ruling specifically about them, and the acknowledgment of both governments.

CGL can argue the band councils are more representative of the people, but they can’t argue that the band councils have legal authority to consent. They don’t, according to every relevant authority.

A final thought on legitimacy. Hereditary chiefs are not kings. They are given their titles by the community in their feast system, and they can be stripped of them. Supporters argue it is a more democratic and representative system than band council elections with low turnout.

Things are different in every community, and each system has supporters and detractors. But to say one is inherently more democratic or representative doesn’t quite ring true to me. One is just more familiar to us, because it’s a colonial system modelled on our own.

To come back to media, I don’t attribute this to ill-intent. It’s a complicated issue, and many journalists were unfamiliar. The pipeline company has a more effective PR strategy than the hereditary chiefs. But legacies still helped foster a false impression with the public.

Namely, that the vast majority of Wet’suwet’en support the pipeline, their leaders have signed off and those opposing it are some fringe minority acting unlawfully and against the wishes of their community. And you’d have gotten that idea from the paper of record, not some blog.

I think legacies have an obligation now to correct that misapprehension they helped create, not gloss over their error. Mistakes happen, how we handle them is the true test. In this case, legacies misinformed their readers. Not through malice, but all the same. This is clear cut.

The reason this matters is that I’ve lost count of how many threads I’ve written laying this out. Every time Wet’suwet’en is in the news, people come out of the woodwork totally misunderstanding this issue. And that misunderstanding came from legacies, not disinfo platforms.

The very first step in addressing thorny issues of Indigenous rights and title in the context of reconciliation is to make sure everyone understands the agreed upon, established facts. Spin merchants for the pipeline company have gamed the legacies, and we’re all poorer for it.

References:

SCC Delgamuukw decision: scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-cs…

MOU between hereditary chiefs and governments of BC and Canada: rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1589478905…

An explainer on the SCC ruling (written prior to the MOU) by Erin Seatter and Jerome Turner: ricochet.media/en/2904/untang…

I don’t have a SoundCloud, but award-winning Indigenous journalist Brandi Morin is at Gidimt’en camp as I write this. She’s been sending out video reports all day (@Songstress28) and will have a feature in Ricochet soon on new RCMP tactics. Follow her for on-the-ground reporting.

Not all media were gamed.

Independent outlets like @thenarwhalca, @TheTyee, @thediscourse and @IndigiNewsMedia, @NatObserver, APTN, Ricochet and so many others have reported well and with a depth of understanding on this complicated issue for years.

Support independent media!

Postscript: Someone brought up in the comments that Delgamuukw was not a final ruling. That’s true, in that the SCC said the appelants would have to go back to court to establish the specific boundaries of the territory due to technical errors during the trial. But…

The SCC ruled clearly that the Wet’suwet’en (and Gitxsan) people hold rights and title, as represented by their hereditary leadership system. The only thing left unclear was the precise geographic boundaries of that title. See excerpts from explainer I linked above.

There’s a lot to be said about how our governments have sought to exploit this confusion/lack of finality to avoid implementing Delgamuukw, but on the question of hereditary chiefs vs. band councils the SCC couldn’t have been clearer.

In 2020, when both governments signed the MOU recognizing the rights, title & authority of the hereditary chiefs, that ended any debate. Now there is no party (other than pipeline companies) asserting that anyone other than the hereditary chiefs has authority over the territory.

How that right and title is implemented, and how it can coexist with the established Canadian legal system, is a very thorny issue. But the rightful holders of that title have been established by courts and governments.

There are two legal systems: Wet’suwet’en law, which predates colonization & from which hereditary chiefs derive authority, and Canadian law, which established band councils to pacify FNs. Canadian law and governments now acknowledge the former’s authority, so there is no debate.