The Strathcona Regional District recognizes ten First Nations as communities within their boundaries, but the Tla’amin are not one of them. This topic arose during last month’s First Nation’s Committee Meeting and again when the committee met on February 22.  Most of the Tla’amin lands are within qathet Regional District, but they have a shared history with the Klahoose in southern Cortes Island and were given a large parcel of Mansons Landing by treaty. However Klahoose is one of the nations recognized by the SRD and Cortes Island is within their traditional boundaries. Azalea Milwood, the First Nations Liaison, explained, “I don’t believe, at this point, we should add the Tla’amin Nation, due to not knowing how the Klahoose Nation feels about that.”

Max Thaysen, the alternate director for Cortes Island, had correspondence from Steven Brown, Chief of the Klahoose First Nation. 

“He says,  ‘Yikes … This briefing note is not good,’  referring to the discussion paper. ‘Scattered, seems to dismiss the point of a land acknowledgement, an oversimplification and glossing over reconciliation. I also don’t recall Klahoose who’s ever being consulted, which contradicts the note. Tla’amin should be recognized. They’ve confused ‘territory’ and ‘location of occupation, which they also acknowledge is a problem in the note.’”  

“So we’re hearing from Chief Brown that it would be appropriate to include the Tla’amin, and I’m understanding that the sort of location of settlement is maybe not the best way to recognize territory, that the broader territory is pretty important as a part of First Nations rights and identities and culture.”

Chief Administrative Officer David Leitch responded, “This is going to be an ongoing challenge for us, when we have staff that have responsibilities. They have in this case, heritage Connections, relationships with First Nations. We task them to do work and we bring back recommendations to the committee. And then we have individual directors going out, doing the work of staff and coming back with contradictory recommendations.”

“This is a staff recommendation and I don’t know, moving forward if we continue on this path, if we’re ever going to get anywhere.”

Azalea Milwood: “I would like to comment that I did reach out to Chief Brown. He did not return my call. I also reached out to one of the knowledge keepers from the Klahoose Nation and what they responded was, ‘thank you, thank you for asking’ and that they would speak to the elders.”

“Once again, I would like to mention that, albeit individuals want this to be pre historical, we know which communities are located within the SRD. We don’t know exactly which territories are overlapping. You’re going to have a dialogue from one nation’s knowledge keeper, from another nation’s knowledge keeper, and nobody’s going to walk away satisfied. Territorial acknowledgements have been presented by First Nations since I’ve ever known it, and sometimes what it looks like is it opens up the floor. It’s not perfect. We’ve had 200 years of colonization. It’s not going to be perfect. This is pieces of reconciliation. But what a territorial acknowledgement does is it opens a floor for First Nation people like me to say, ‘Wow, thank you for acknowledging. I’d like to tell you who I am now.’”

“What is important is the intent. Perfection is not going to happen. It’s just not. And in that, I’m going to mention that First Nations were destabilized by disease, relocations and government assimilation policies that divided them into small settlements, reserves and bands. They no longer operated as a collective. So the passing of oral history and Indigenous laws were interrupted.” 

“I don’t disagree with what the chief of the Klahoose Nation is stating. I’d love for him to give me a call, and talk to me about that. So I continue to keep this recommendation based on that.”

“Also when we have overlapping territories from other nations, what are we going to do? And also, I’d like to say the Klahoose Nations traditional territory according to a map, I’d like to know why they’re not acknowledged in the Comox Regional District.”

David Leitch: “The Tla’amin Nation has unique property ownership on Cortes Island. Oddly enough, it is actually not in our regional district, and it is acknowledged in the qathet regional district. So there is a land acknowledgement by the regional district that they’re in.”

“I know that seems unusual, but that is the case and don’t believe there is any community on Cortes of this Nation.” 

Chair Kevin Jules: “From a First Nations perspective, we have certain protocols. When directors go out and they do this on their own,  it speaks for the regional district as well, but will that be overstepping our staff?”

David Leitch: “In my opinion it would,  if you hire a First Nations Heritage person to do First Nations relations work, they go out and do First Nations consultation representing reports and recommendations to staff. And then if you have 14 individual directors going to do their own work on that, I would say that’s  overstepping the role of the First Nations coordinator in my opinion.”

Kevin Jules: “That is definitely how I feel about it. That is what I meant why we have protocols. I don’t want to get lost in the communication  with being bombarded by all of  our members here. And we do have staff that do their job very well. We need to keep that communication key and we need to keep the communication proper,  from nation to nation that we speak to.”

Robin Mawhinney (Regional Director for Area C): “I was curious about exactly what you’re talking about, Director Jules, what the protocol is for a director to speak to a First Nation person  or representative  in their electoral area. I have in the past had direct communication with nation representatives within area C, and now I’m wondering, is that something that I shouldn’t be doing?  Is there a protocol for that and does that need to be brought and presented,  so that all directors are aware of what that arrangement is, and I guess that goes back to that whole director’s portal and what information is available for directors.”

David Leitch: “I have a couple comments on that.  One is, again, If you have an engineering question, you ask the engineer. I think if we have a First Nations questionnaire, always easy to default on our First Nations coordinator and consult her. She’s always available for us. So if you’re unsure, we may not have a specific  protocol for it, but you can never go wrong by consulting Azalea and asking her what would be appropriate.  A significant part of her role is to create relations with the different nations.”

Azalea Milwood: “I came into a set of resources and a set of work done by the previous First Nations relations coordinator and I didn’t disagree with them.  I tried to look at them critically. And I didn’t disagree with them. And in fact in designing this territorial acknowledgement, I would like to state that I honoured the old ways and walked the good path in doing this.”

Julie Colburn (Mayor of Zeballos), moved, “That we recommend that the first territorial acknowledgement states, we respectfully acknowledge our corporate office in the Strathcona Garden Regional Complex are located on the traditional territory of the Laichkwiltach people. We also recognize that we operate within the traditional, treaty and unceded territories of the Ehattesaht, Homalco, Ka:’yu:’k’t’h’ I Che: k’t1es7et’h, Klahoose, K’omoks, Mowachaht — Muchalaht, Nuchatlaht, Tiowitsis, We Wai Kai and and Wei Wai Kum First Nations, and and that the corporate policy CP 0 31 be amended accordingly.”

The Tla’amin, and any other First Nations deemed appropriate, can be added to the acknowledgement later. 

This recommendation passed unanimously and it will be forwarded on to the full board.  

Top image credit: Tla’amin Government House – from the front cover of the Tla’amin Final Agreement Appendices, Government of BC

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