Nisga'a Nation launches Dispute Resolution Process against Federal and Provincial governments

The Nisga'a Lisims Government is moving towards making use of a Dispute Resolution process in the Nisga'a Treaty to address what it calls persistent breaches of the Nisga'a Final Agreement, putting the Federal and Provincial governments on Notice on Friday afternoon.

In an Information release for Nisga'a Citizens, the Nisga'a government outlined how many of the breaches of the Treaty relate to federal and provincial governments ignoring Nisg̱a’a Treaty rights; while giving priority to unproven and undefined rights asserted by the Nisg̱a’a Nation’s neighbours.

They did not specify in their notice what those government initiatives were, or who the neighbouring communities were; but they did note in their information release as to how they view the government's plans as repeated breaches of the Nisga'a Treaty

The current federal and provincial governments have each purported to implement policies of recognizing assertions of Aboriginal rights, without a requirement for the asserted rights to be plausible, much less proven or defined by the relevant Indigenous groups. 

These federal and provincial approaches, while superficially attractive, have not taken into account the fact that many Indigenous groups assert rights in areas where modern treaty parties, such as the Nisg̱a’a Nation, already have established treaty rights and interests, and the implementation of these policies by Canada and British Columbia in recent years has resulted in repeated breaches of the Nisg̱a’a Treaty.

Nisga'a Lisims Government President Eva Clayton observed as part of the the Nisga'a notice of Friday that the issue was not a dispute with their neighbours, but rather one that is focused on the federal and provincial governments.

“It is unfortunate that Nisg̱a’a Lisims Government was forced to take this step against the federal and provincial governments. This dispute is not with our neighbours, it is with our treaty partners. We have an obligation to our citizens to ensure their treaty rights are respected and protected, and that is what we will accomplish through these proceedings.”

The Dispute Resolution Process from the Nisga'a Treaty calls for collaborative negotiations as a first stage, should that fail, the next step would be to go to a facilitated process.

You can review how the process works from documentation on the Nisga'a Lisims Government website starting on Page 87 of the Understanding the Treaty background information.

The Full Notice from Friday as released the Nisga'a Lisims Government can be explored here.

While they did not specify what the issues were that led to their use of the Dispute resolution on Friday; in previous month the Nisga'a government has expressed its concern over how the Federal and Provincial governments had been addressing the topic of the Nasoga Gulf Dispute.

That issue, related to the proposed purchase of Crown Land along Portland Inlet became a flash point over the summer and found the Nisga'a making note of political motives when it came to the dispute with the neighbouring Lax Kw'alaams Band and Metlakatla Nation.

With the first stage of the Dispute resolution set to go into motion, more background on the focus of the Nisga'a concerns with the breach of the Nisga'a Treaty  will be outlined as that process moves forward.

For more items of interest related to the Nisga'a Lisims Government and the Nass Valley see our archive page here.



To return to the most recent blog posting of the day, click here.