FLETCHER: Costs of indigenous ‘reconciliation’ piling up beyond measure

Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.Ottawa’s sudden unilateral move to sign away unspecified Aboriginal rights and title across the west side of Metro Vancouver to the Musqueam Indian Band has caught more than just BC Premier David Eby off guard.After it was signed on February 20, news of the sweeping deal hid in plain sight on the Musqueam website for a couple of weeks before a news release emerged from Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty’s office. Days later, after federal Conservative demands, the 30-odd pages of the agreement were clumsily released, and rival tribes got a look at it, along with the press, premiers, mayors, and the rest of the three million settler stakeholders, wondering about the status of their property.Squamish Nation leaders in particular were not amused, as one would expect given the gruesome history of contested fishing and campsites in this region. New examples of this emerged from oral histories in the Cowichan Tribes’ land claim trial that awarded a portion of this same land to the Cowichan, or Quw’utsun, as the court recorded it. Their summer campsite in Richmond, BC, was Tl’uqtinus.Paragraph 1,287 of the 800-page judgment describes how land claims were adjudicated before European contact around 1848:“Councillor Thomas said the Quw’utsun warriors at Tl’uqtinus went to the Musqueam village on the river, killed the chief, and took his head. He said that is how it was back then to show dominance or strength.” Heads were posted on sticks to mark territorial boundaries, as another oral history passage in the judgment describes a “massacre” of Haida members by Quw’utsun in a retaliation raid..Now these wars are fought with lawyers, and another front has just opened up for the Musqueam.“Let us be clear,” Squamish Chief Sxwixwtn (Wilson Williams) said in a statement to the Globe and Mail regarding the Musqueam deal. “The Squamish Nation government will defend and uphold our inherent Aboriginal rights and title. Any implication that another Nation’s agreement could extend into Squamish Territory will be challenged.”After the Cowichan judgment was issued in August 2025, my initial focus was on the staggering cost of what critics call the “reconciliation industry” that has grown up. The longest trial in Canadian history, over 10 years, featured 25 lawyers for the Cowichan, 17 for the federal government, 11 for the province, seven for the City of Richmond, eight for the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, four for the Tsawwassen First Nation, and 14 for the Musqueam.All are paid for by taxpayers, and all parties are appealing the dubious award of Richmond land and fishing rights to a Vancouver Island tribe known mostly for its historic raids up the Fraser River Valley.Decades into the reconciliation industry, are these still impoverished bands huddled on tiny reserves? Hardly. The Squamish Nation has a housing development underway at its former Kitsilano village, with three of 11 distinctive apartment towers under construction.The 10.5-acre site in the heart of Vancouver was secured in a 2003 court case, and the development was helped by a $1.5 billion loan from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. It proceeds without the usual amenity and parking rules applied to private developers, aiming for 9,000 residents in towers up to 58 stories..Musqueam’s 2024 financial statement lists total assets of $355 million, annual revenue of $56 million, and a population of 1,500 members. Like all of BC’s more than 200 Indian Act bands, it receives transfers from the federal government for health, education, and other services from that other federal ministry, Indigenous Services Canada, with a $25 billion annual budget.News reports on the surprise Musqueam deal have focused mainly on private property implications, with emphatic claims by authorities that private property won’t be affected. As with BC’s “land use planning” deals to surrender Crown land, Ottawa says the Musqueam deal creates “shared decision-making” over land and marine resources.Another news angle has been Eby’s claim that he had no knowledge of the agreement, even after it emerged that he had been sitting in the front row during the signing ceremony.He wasn’t premiering that day, his office suggested. He was acting as a local MLA who had been invited by Chief Sparrow. Pressed about what he knew and when he knew it, the legislature, Eby allowed that he was invited because Sparrow didn’t want his actual local MLA to attend. That would be Vancouver-Quilchena independent Dallas Brodie, the fiercest critic of the reconciliation industry BC has ever seen.While all this was unfolding, BC’s Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation issued a statement updating the legal tangle of the Cowichan case. The vague statement refers to ongoing talks with the Cowichan over what sounds like a settlement of the court-awarded site in Richmond. How this would affect the other parties appealing the trial court judgment remains unknown.But there are similarities with the assurances being given about the federal Musqueam agreement. Both seem to be heading towards an agreed definition of what rights and title mean in each specific case, followed by a taxpayer buyout.Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: Costs of indigenous ‘reconciliation’ piling up beyond measure

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