Grand chief slams Rustad's stance on Indigenous rights and title

The federal government has been "absent" and failing to live up to commitments to First Nations on housing and clean water, and a B.C. Conservative government would fix the problems then send Ottawa the bill, leader John Rustad said Monday. 

Rustad said if his party wins the Oct. 19 provincial election, B.C. would partner with First Nations and "unleash the potential" for prosperity through mining, forestry and other resource projects.

He has previously pledged to repeal B.C. legislation adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Instead, his party said in a release, it would honour the declaration "as it was intended," with laws advancing economic reconciliation and Indigenous autonomy.

But Rustad's announcement came under fire from Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), who took to social media to describe the Conservative leader's remarks on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as "astonishingly reprehensible."

All three leaders of B.C.'s major political parties turned their attention to First Nations and reconciliation on Monday. 

B.C. NDP Leader David Eby took his family, all dressed in orange, to an Orange Shirt Day ceremony at the University of British Columbia.

B.C. Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau said during a news conference in Victoria that the province had been a leader in recognizing Indigenous rights, but warned that some want to "undo that progress and go back to a paternalistic relationship" with First Nations. 

Rustad, speaking in Cultus Lake, B.C., was accompanied by Sq'ewlets First Nation Chief Joseph Chapman and Indigenous candidates Chris Sankey and A'aliya Warbus,

The party has previously said UNDRIP should not be "an obstacle to development, but as a guiding principle for recognizing Indigenous rights and aspirations."

He said the provincial legislation enshrining the declaration had created "friction" and his government would remove and replace laws that get in the way of full economic reconciliation.

In an interview, Phillip said UBCIC "felt compelled to respond" to Rustad's announcement.

"We find it to be very counterproductive, very negative and quite frankly racist to make such an announcement, such an ambiguous announcement on Reconciliation Day," Phillip said. 

The work that went into passing the declaration, he said, "would be obliterated and we go back to conflict and confrontation."

He said First Nations would return to the barricades to defend their lands from logging, mining, and oil and gas production. 

"The acceleration of industrialized destruction of our homelands, our territories, is nothing to cheer about," he said. "It's not economic reconciliation. It's economic exploitation." 

Phillip is the husband of Joan Phillip, the NDP's candidate in Vancouver-Mount Pleasant.

Rustad said a Conservative government would create a loan guarantee program for First Nations to allow full participation in large forestry projects.

He said he's committed to returning 20 per cent of the province's forestry volume to First Nations, who would be "landlords of that land" and reap the benefits rather than governments getting stumpage fees with only a fraction going to First Nations.

Furstenau said governments need to abandon the past of "transactional approaches" with First Nations that have been "used to dispossess Indigenous peoples of land, culture and language, and move to relationships that are rooted in recognition of Aboriginal rights and title."

In a statement Monday, the Greens said "we understand the discomfort that some British Columbians feel about our history, but there is no moral path for the continued denial of Aboriginal rights and title. It is a socially reprehensible and legally fraught position. 

"We cannot escape our history. We must confront it, and we must reconcile it," the statement said. 

Eby sat in the front row with his family at the Orange Shirt Day event at UBC, while listening to Indigenous people relay their experiences about attending residential schools or other hardships they went through under colonial rule. He didn't speak during the event.