“Pack up your bags and go." That’s what an Alberta Indian chief told Premier Danielle Smith to do, after Smith announced she would not stand in the way of a referendum on Alberta’s future in Canadian confederation. Other indigenous chiefs have been saying basically the same thing. They are promising a summer of protests and turmoil unless Smith backs down.Albertans who might vote in favour of Alberta independence have meanwhile been called vile names, including “f***ing white trash Alberta separatists.” The chiefs claim that their treaty rights somehow stop Smith from allowing a referendum to be held.But, as Cory Morgan explains in this video, treaties don’t give indigenous Albertans any more rights than any other Albertan..If a referendum is held the chiefs and every other indigenous person will get exactly the same vote as every other Albertan. They are Albertans, and they are Canadian citizens. Their indigenous heritage does not give them any more rights than the Filipino, Irish or Chinese heritage that any other Albertan might have. Just as those people have no right to tell these chiefs to leave their homeland, the chiefs have no right to tell any other citizen to leave. The fact is that in Canada one’s citizenship has exactly the same worth, whether one’s ancestors came to Canada a hundred years ago, ten thousand years ago, or last week.What treaties did was to settle Indians on reserves, prevent warfare between Indian tribes, as well as with the new settlers flooding into the west, and provide Indians with some compensation for surrendered rights, as well as providing temporary help to the Plains Indians to make the transition to the modern world. By signing the treaties, every Indian promised to be a peaceful and loyal subject of the Queen, and a proud citizen of Canada..What the treaties did not do was to give Indians some kind of pension for life, as some chiefs seem to believe, or ownership of all of Alberta. In fact, Alexander Morris, the chief treaty negotiator, had to tell many of the chiefs that he negotiated with that it would be up to the Indians to provide for themselves. They would choose a reserve where they could live. And they would also have the right to use the surrounding lands — their traditional territories — to hunt and fish.But they would only be able to exercise that right until the land was needed by the government for development of any kind. “Traditional lands” did not belong to them. The land was Crown land, and had to be vacated if it was needed for development or housing.But the chiefs who are telling Smith to “pack her bags and go” are apparently not understanding any of this. They think that Alberta is theirs because they are Indians. That’s not correct. It is “theirs” only in the sense that they are Albertans and Canadians. To repeat: they have exactly the same rights as any other citizen. Nothing more and nothing less..These chiefs also seem to believe that they are entitled to some kind of pension for life. They are not. No Canadian citizen is. The chiefs earn their large tax free salaries — courtesy of taxpayers — to help their constituents prosper. So how are the chiefs doing?If they are truly interested in their people’s welfare maybe these chiefs — who appear to have suddenly become Canadian patriots, after thoroughly trashing Canada as genocidal, colonialist, and all the rest for the past few decades — might welcome an opportunity to start over. What about a country without a thoroughly antiquated and racist Indian Act? What about a brand new country without the squalid and unproductive reserves? What about indigenous citizens who don’t die almost two decades sooner than other citizens — who don’t fill up the jails, the child welfare system — but instead graduate as the doctors, engineers, teachers and other professionals so needed in Alberta?Cory Morgan has made some videos about the conditions that currently exist on typical Alberta reserves.The chiefs who are telling Smith where to go have a great deal of work to do to improve life on those reserves. Regardless of whether or not a referendum is held, and what the outcome will be, the chiefs might make better use of their time working to improve life for their people instead of threatening protests.And I don’t think Premier Smith is going anywhere.Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
