Re: Canada given top marks for Columbia River Treaty public engagement, July 30
I was dismayed to read this article by John Boivin last week.
This article talks about how Canada is being lauded for its engagement with Indigenous Peoples around the Columbia Basin Treaty, while ignoring the underlying fact that part of the reason that the Sinixt were declared extinct was to make way for the flooding of their land. The Sinixt are not even mentioned in the article.
Then the article names the government’s consultation with three government funded band councils who are each being encouraged to claim all of Sinixt territory, as if this were a great achievement. There is no mention of how the Sinixt, whose territory was devastated by the flooding and who had many of their most important archeological sites and best land put under water, have to this day not been consulted or given a seat at these treaty negotiations.
To the uneducated this is an article that can make Canadians feel good about being commended by international groups! In reality, the Canadian government has been censured for years by international justice organizations, such as the UN, the IITC, and CERD, for their human rights violations such as the ongoing one with the Sinixt Nation. To the uneducated this reinforces the idea that this is not Sinixt land and that the Sinixt don’t exist. Not to mention the misleading idea that the Canadian government is doing an A+ job with First Nation relationships.
I see this as unintentional propaganda. There is not even a disclaimer that this land is also being claimed by the Sinixt, who have requested a seat at these treaty negotiations and have been denied. Non-Indigenous people living here need to realize that Canada’s erasure of the Sinixt is not a historical event, but is in fact an ongoing project.
Erica Scott
Nelson
