Who is actually governing the province of British Columbia? And who do British Columbians expect to govern this province?
According to a select group of Indigenous leaders, they have essentially been conjointly governing British Columbia with the BC NDP since 2019, when they helped co-draft the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) with the late John Horgan’s BC NDP government.
Dustin Rivers, the Squamish Nation politician who goes by Khelsilem, describes this co-governance nirvana as follows:
“In twenty years, First Nations and the Crown govern this province together. British Columbia is a place where First Nations and the Crown make decisions about the land, resources, and Indigenous matters together, as governments that recognize each other. No decision about the land, the water, or the resources of this province gets made without the nations whose territory it is at the table as equals.”
There are about 204 Indigenous communities in B.C., many with overlapping claims. Think for a minute about a Canadian province being co-governed with 204 Indigenous entitites and one provincial government. Would there be 204 different governments? Where would their jurisdiction start and end? Would multiple Indigenous groups co-govern areas with overlapping territorial claims? Who would have final say among “equals” across what is essentially a feudal government system?
Do British Columbians recall giving their democratically elected provincial government a mandate to rule hand-in-hand with activist Indigenous leaders who are completely unaccountable to 98 per cent of the population they’re making decisions for?
Such is the undemocratic reality of adhering to DRIPA, which commits governments and courts to the principles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The end goals of UNDRIP for its adherents are co-governance, veto and joint control by Indigenous peoples of a state’s legislative agenda and all land and resource decision-making.
Read more at the Northern Beat: Under DRIPA, co-governing with Indigenous leaders has begun