Dissent and acrimony threaten historic Wet’suwet’en accord

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More than a year after it was agreed upon, a tentative deal between Ottawa, the B.C. government and the hereditary leadership of the Wet’suwet’en Nation appears to have incited an ugly imbroglio many were predicting.

You may recall that the agreement was conceived amid a nasty feud that pitted a group of Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders and their supporters across the country on one side against elected chiefs and others in favour of a natural gas pipeline in northern B.C. that crossed part of their traditional territory.

While the hereditary chiefs saw the pipeline as an unhealthy intrusion on their traditional rights and territory, the elected chiefs and their councils saw an economic opportunity that would help lift many out of poverty.

The dispute escalated, and eventually anti-pipeline demonstrators erected rail blockades across the country that shut down freight and passenger traffic for several weeks. The blockades subsided shortly before the pandemic struck, and eventually the two levels of government announced an unprecedented pact with the hereditary leaders that gave the Wet’suwet’en aboriginal title over their territory – a first in Canada.

There was only one problem: The agreement cut elected chiefs out of the picture and made their hereditary counterparts supreme. It was a recipe for a nasty internecine conflict – one very much like the one we are witnessing now.

Many across the Wet’suwet’en Nation, including elected chiefs, still don’t know exactly what the memorandum of understanding that was agreed upon on Feb. 29 of last year says. Eight of the hereditary chiefs have held few informational meetings, citing pandemic restrictions.

It is hard to imagine that a group charged with effectively hammering out the foundation of a treaty with two levels of government could be so cavalier about allowing anyone but themselves to have a say in what that looks like. And yet, it appears that’s where we are.

“We’ve tried and tried and tried to get information with no luck,” Maureen Luggi, the elected chief of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, one of the six band councils within the Wet’suwet’en Nation, told me this week. “Really, things seem to have come to a standstill and myself and the other five elected chiefs and councils believe this whole process needs to be stopped immediately.”

But efforts to get Ottawa or the B.C. government to respond to entreaties on this front have been fruitless. The two levels of governments have decided, for whatever reason, to give the hereditary chiefs the last word on anything to do with this tentative agreement and on efforts to shape an everlasting one.

One of the primary tasks the hereditary chiefs had on their to-do list was building a consensus among the Wet’suwet’en peoples on the type of self-governing model they are envisioning. But such unity is non-existent. The hereditary leaders sent out a negotiation update in January, but it contained little information that would indicate work was being done on difficult issues such as establishing a governance structure that reconciles the roles of hereditary and elected chiefs.

There is nothing in the documents viewed by The Globe and Mail that suggests land-use plans have been worked out or a regulatory framework that governs land-based activities in the territory, for that matter. Elected chiefs have been left to wonder what is going on with respect to the complex negotiations that need to take place around fiscal arrangements between the Wet’suwet’en and the federal government. It’s all a great mystery.

It feels an awful lot like Ottawa and B.C. signed this momentous accord in a desperate attempt to solve the pipeline dispute, leaving the hereditary chiefs with the job of drafting the broad contours of a treaty and coalescing Wet’suwet’en members around their vision.

Instead, the apparent tactics of the hereditary chiefs have sown deep divisions across their territory and made people suspicious and cynical of the whole process.

You can hear the frustration in the voices of people like Ms. Luggi.

“This is an agreement that regards our rights and title and we weren’t consulted on any of it and it’s still the case,” she said. “We did not give our consent to the original agreement. We have no information to go on about what is being agreed to on our behalf. It’s been absolutely terrible.

“I can tell you that any ratification of an agreement that [the hereditary chiefs] pursue will be met with objection by the elected councils. It will not happen.”

In attempting to negotiate their way out of one crisis, the federal and B.C. governments have created another. It would be in the best interest of all parties if the pause button was pushed on these negotiations immediately, to see if the deal can be saved.

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