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Friday, February 15, 1991 - North Shore News - 7

NATIVE LAND claims provide an opportunity for
Canada and for B.C. io show the world how a civilized
democracy treats a minority, 2 native minority with
aboriginal rights to land and resources guaranteed by our
Constitution. It is an opportunity to show the dzgree cf
honor contained within our legal system.

In 1763, the year France retin-
quished eastern Canada to Britain
in the Peace cf Paris, the British
Crown passed a Royal Proclama-
tion which precluded the transfer
of Indian land to British control
without Indian consent, and
precluded any transfer of Indian
land to private control.

The trail of Indian land claims,
as recorded in British and Cana-
dian law, begizis here.

Thirty years later, when Captain
Vancouver plied the West Coast,
the land we now call British Col-
umbia was occupied by some 30
native nations. At that time,
Spain, Russia, Britain, and the
upstart United States were all
claiming this land. Their obsession
with finding the ‘‘great river’’ that
Captain Vancouver missed was for
the sake of establishing that claim.

In 1793, as Britain and Spain
squabbled over the settlement at
Nootka, the Scotsman Alexander
Mackenzie, working for the North
West Company fur traders, bash-
ed his way over the Rockies, along
the Fraser, and then overland to
the coast at Bella Coola, and

thereby claimed the entire west
coast of North America for Bri-
tain.

Needless to say, no native na-
tions participated in that declara-
tion other than by keeping the
poor white man alive with salmon,
furs, and boat repairs.

Similarly, Simon Fraser himself
was kept alive by the generous
grace of the Atnaugh, Lytton and
Musqueam nations on his way
down the river that now bears his
name. When gold fever brought
10,000 miners up the Fraser in
1858, the indigenous people began
to resist. The Hudson Bay Com-
pany armed 160 miners who ad-
vanced from Yale. They burned
the native village at Spuzzum, but
the Lytton tribe held at China
bar, and a truce was established.

In the following year, 1859, the
British governor from Fort Vic-
toria, James Douglas, opened a
peace conference with the native
nations and promised ‘‘fair treat-
ment’? to the indians. When B.C.
joined Canada in 1871, home-
steaders and cattlemen were al-
ready moving up the Cariboo

Rex
Weyler

THE GOOD EARTH

Road as far as Barkerville, 385
miles north of Yale.

In response, the first Indian
Reserve Commission from Vic-
toria began to set aside certain
Indian lands for the undisturbed
use of the Indian nations.

In 1916, however, the McKen-
na-McBride Commission reduced
these reserved Indian lands. Some
B.C. native land claims today
question the legitimacy of this
unilateral reduction, called the
“cut-off”? lands, and other claims
challenge the 1876 Reserve Com-
mission itself for making a
unilateral decision, not ratified by

native groups, in violation of co-
lonial policy based on the 1763
Proclamation.

Some claims, such as the Mount
Currie claim to the Duffey Lake
road, stem from a 1938 transfer
of Indian land from provincial to
federal jurisdiction, in which the
province reserved five per cent of
the transferred land for right of
way. There is some question as to
whether this provision berween
B.C. and Ottawa, without native
input, is lawful, and this question
will almost certainly reach the
Supreme Court of Canada.

In 1973 Nisga’a Indian Frank
Calder claimed aboriginal land
rights in a case that split the
Supreme Court 3-3, with the
deciding vote being cast against
Calder on a technicality. The
court put Canada, and B.C., on
notice: the issue of aboriginal title
was not settled, and the am-
bivalent ruling implied a directive
to politicians to deal with it.

In 1979 the federal government
fought an Inuit claim on the
grounds that the Hudson Bay
Charter of 1670 had extinguished
aboriginal rights in the West, but
Justice Patrick Mahoney ruled
otherwise. An agreement between
Britain and a private British com-
pany could not, the court ruled,
dispossess a race of people.

The Canadian Constitution in
section 35(1) states that the ‘‘ex-

_ Natives Kept the white man alive

isting aboriginal and treaty rights
of the aboriginal peoples of
Canada are hereby recognized and
affirmed.'’ These rights have yet
to be defined, but the language
here is unambiguous.

Aboriginal rights exist and are
constitutionally protected.

In May of this year the
Supreme Court of Canada issued
its decision on the illegal fishing
charges brought against Ron
Sparrow of the Musqueam band
by the federal government, six
provinces, and 15 commercial and
sports fishing groups. The court
ruled 7-0 in Sparrow’s favor,
asserting that he held aboriginal
fishing rights under the Canadian
Constitution. The Crown failed to
prove that those rights had been
extinguished, and B.C. had to
reverse a position held for 119
years.

Canadian courts usually limit
their decisions to the particulars
of each case. However, in the
Sparrow case the Supreme Court
determined that an important
general principle was under
serious appraisal, and their deci-
sion made special mention that the
“honor of the Crown’’ was at
stake in Canada’s dealings with
aboriginal nations.

The honor of the Crown. Itisa
challenge and an opportunity for
Canada and for B.C. to display
that honor before the world.

mS
NO MACHINE.CAN DISPENSE
COMMON SENSE}...

MAILBOX

Condoms needed, says student

Dear Editor:

I came home from school to-
day, and as usual, your Wednes-
day paper was on my front
doorstep. I nearly fell off my seat
when I read the letters printed in
the Mailbox.

There were three letters, each
oppused to the idea that a con-
dom machine should be put in
public high school washrooms. |
almost laughed myself silly.

I am a Grade 12 student at a
North Shore high school. We have
had debates in our English classes
about this issue. Though half the

class has to be pro and the other
half con, we all think that it is
probably one of the best ideas
that the school trustees have come
up with.

Kids won't stop having sex
because there isn’t birth control
readily available for them. They
will have sex, and after, the girl
(more likely) will pray that she
isn’t pregnant. I know that I have
prayed to God that I wouldn’t get
pregnant, and I’m not even
teligious.

If the parents out there don’t
want their pride and joy to be a
mother or father at age 17, make

sure that your children know that
the condoms are there for them to
use. The condom machine is a
terrific idea, we can get a hold of
them five days a week and we
don’t have to buy a whole box.

The people who wrote those let-
ters should wake up and smell the
coffee. I know very few people
who have not had sex. isn’t it bet-
ter that we are protected from
diseases and pregnancy than un-
protected, regardless of where we
actually got the condom?

T. Piekaar
North Vancouver

News should do
condom research

Dear Editor:

Your paper continues to have a
bias against the family.

On Dec. 16, 1990, your News
Viewpoint, ‘‘Condom Sense”’ con-
tained the statement ‘‘but parents’
own opinions and morals have lit-
tle relevance to the deadly serious
issue at hand.’’

It is an outrageous comment
and is one of the more blatant an-
ti-family statements ever printed.
It does seem, however, to be typi-
cal of most of the media today to
erode family values.

With regard to condom
dispensers in the high schools and
the editorial’s statement about
presenting the facts, consider the
following. .

Condoms are not safe! All of
the statistics about them show a
high incidence uf failure. None of
this was mentioned in your arti-
cles.

The usual ‘*knee-jerk’’ reaction
that saving one AIDS transmission
is worth the installation of con-
dom dispensers is an argument
fanned by the media and medical
and pharmaceutical industries.

Research has proven that most
sex education programs increase
promiscuity, STDs and abortions.
The programs also put pressure on
young men and women who
choose to abstain.

Abstinence teaching hias sho:vn
a dramatic reduction in  pro-
miscuity in many school districts
in North America.

What would be the legal and
financial responsibility of a school
board that appears to condone
safe sex (because the board in-
stalled these dispensers in schools)
and then the student contacts
AIDS or one of the other emo-
tionally lethal sexual diseases
(there are over 30 of them)?

The lifetime psychological and

emotional cost of carrying an
‘incurable dirty disease’? such as
the human papiloma (HPV) or
herpes is immeasurable. Over 70
per cent of infected teenagers do
not know that they have a disease.

Schools are to teach. What has
a condom dispenser in a
washroom got to do with the cur-
riculum? Certain products such as
sanitary products, candies, and
soft drinks are available on a
school campus to be used on
campus. Surely, condoms are not
to be put in the same category!

Would the condom dispensers
be encouraged for heterosexual
and homosexual use?

Some research has shown con-
doms to have an eight per cent
rate, based on pregnancy factors.
However, the pregnancy failure
rate for condoms is far different
when we measure the safety of a
condom as it relates to STDs. The
female egg is fertilizable only 12-
24 hours per month. An STD is
transmittable every ininute.
Therefore, the failure rate of a
“safe condom’’ for STDs would
be substantially higher than eight
per cent.

Recently 750,000 condoms were
“‘recalled’’ because they were too
porous. Some tests have indicated
that the AIDS germ is small
enough to pass through a con-
dom. Another fact is chat
teenagers are typically in a frenzy
and/or in an intoxicated condition
and the failure rate becomes
substantially higher than it is for
married adults.

Sterility, incurable diseases, and
death are all possible conse-
quences of teenage promiscuity.
Your newspaper can perform 2
great service to the North Shore
by researching these facts.

Mei Bryan
West Vancouver