Trespass law goes against treaty rights
It caters to rural landowners who form Sask. Party base
This week the acclaimed documentary nipawistamasowin: We will stand up begins its national screenings. This excellent piece of work by Saskatoon director Tasha Hubbard tells the other side of the fatal shooting of Colten Boushie and the subsequent trial of Gerald Stanley.
In the film, Hubbard debunks the myths that Boushie was a punk and a gang member. In fact, he had no criminal record and was living with his family.
This comes at a time when the provincial trespass law has received third and final reading. This law was clearly aimed at the rural landowners who form the Saskatchewan Party’s rural base. The additions to the protection of rural property make it much more difficult for our people to hunt. Under this law, land does not have to be posted with “no trespassing” signs in order to enforce trespass laws. This means our people will potentially be breaking the law every time they go hunting. For example, we will be unable to tell if a piece of non-developed land is private or Crown land.
When our people signed treaty, the understanding was that we would share the land with the newcomers and would be able to maintain our traditional lifestyle by hunting, fishing and gathering in our traditional territories.
Over the years, this right was eroded and attacked by provincial governments solidifying their dominance over the Indigenous people and their claim to the land and resources. Gradually our people saw their rights to travel freely over our traditional territory and our treasured right to gain sustenance from the land was severely limited.
Non-Indigenous people have very little understanding how much the land means to us. When I first began working with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians, I worked with the elders who formed the eight-man senate. One of my duties was to drive the senators to meetings and it was on those long drives that they would tell me about the land before settlement. John Tootoosis would tell me the names of landmarks and places that I had driven past previously without giving a second thought. He told me of camping places, important hunting areas and fishing locations along the North and South Saskatchewan rivers. I would look at a plowed field and imagine the camps and people with their horses.
In the north, Sen. Angus Mirasity would tell me of traditional gathering places, old canoe routes and freight trails.
On my reserve, we originally came from the Cypress Hills and recently we obtained land south of Fort Walsh as part of our treaty land entitlement. People from our reserve who have gone there have felt a deep attachment to the place that can only come from our roots and the connection with the spirits that live there.
To the south of my reserve is Manitou Lake. For years, our people lived there and raised horses, which they sold to the settlers. They were independent and made a good living. In the 1930s the land was taken and turned into a Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration pasture; the people were forced off and dispersed to reserves in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
The Poundmaker First Nation had a Treaty Land Entitlement land selection for the pasture that was pushed aside when the land was privatized and turned over to a ranchers’ co-op. Last year, my cousin and his friends went on the land to clean the old graveyard. He was fined by a conservation officer although there were no cattle in there at the time.
So now the settlers have further tightened their grip on the land and relations with the Indigenous people have deteriorated more.
The FSIN has declared that they will fight the province’s trespass law in the courts, but court battles are lengthy and expensive. The province will waste public money denying our treaty rights rather than recognizing them.
If we are ever going to improve race relations in this province, we must learn to share the land as promised under treaty. Otherwise, it will be open season on First Nations people as property rights trump human life and our treaty rights are ignored.