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A Death Feast in Dimlahamid (New Star $16)
Terry Glavin recently went looking for clues as to how the Supreme Court of Canada's Delgamuukw decision had affected Gitksan area residents. He was accompanied by the godfather of his son, 49-year-old logging inspector Wii Seeks -- aka Ralph Mitchell, aka 'Tiger' to his friends. The two men had met at the Suskwa roadblock about ten years ago. "There he is," Wii Seeks says, "There goes Delgamuukw." A man sped past in a shiny, new F-350 pick-up truck at the 38-kilometre mark of the Kispiox Trail. The man short peering over the steering wheel was Earl Muldoe, the latest incarnation of Delgammukw.
The first case known as Delgamuukw versus The Queen began in Smithers on May 11, 1987. It continued off and on for 374 days, accumulating a transcript of 26,000 pages. By the time the Supreme Court of Canada reached its final Delgamuukw decision on December 11, 1997, dismissing Judge Allan McEachern's original ruling, the original chief known as Delgamuukw, Albert Tait, had died. The title passed onto Kenny Muldoe. When he died, the title passed down to Earl Muldoe, a carver who operated a small logging outfit named Totemland Contracting. Glavin didn't get to talk with Earl Muldoe, the newest incarnation of Delgamuukw, but he did interview Kispiox locals for a new, 5,000-word concluding chapter for A Death Feast in Dimlahamid (New Star $16).
Herb George, a Wet'suwet'en chief and vice-president of the Assembly of First Nations, reassures Glavin that Indians are not going to take anyone's private property and that he'll keep repeating that message until he's "blue in the face."
"The Delgamuukw decision," says 64-year-old Alice Maitland, mayor of Hazelton for 23 years, "is going to allow us up here to do what we all know everybody should have been doing all along."
Glavin criticizes scaremongers and doomsayers in Vancouver -- most notably Liberal leader Gordon Campbell, former Socred constitutional advisor Mel Smith, NDP constitutional advisor Gordon Wilson, former B.C. Liberal leader Gordon Gibson and right wing apologists such as Owen Lippert and Martyn Brown -- and provides his own vision of post-Delgamuukw Canada.
"When it comes to understanding the land itself, governments are now obliged to listen when old people talk about the adventures of Wiigyet, the giant who is sometimes raven, and about the wars waged by Medeek, the great bear, and about ancient feasts among the mountain goat people of Stegyawden. In our courts, these old stories now carry equal evidentiary weight with Hudson Bay Company records, mineral-deposit assessments, and timber supply analyses, and these different types of intelligence have to be reconciled. It is the law. It is like we have all finally arrived, somehow, as a country, in this simple thing."
The essence of the Delgamuukw decision is contained in Supreme Court Chief Justice Antonio Lamer's summation. "Let us face it. We are all here to stay." After Earl Muldoe, there will be another Delgamuukw. And another. And another.
Glavin, the independent B.C. journalist who has monitored the unfolding of the Delgamuukw case as closely as any other, believes reconciliation is possible, necessary and overdue. 0-921586-64-7
[BCBW 1998] "First Nations"
The first case known as Delgamuukw versus The Queen began in Smithers on May 11, 1987. It continued off and on for 374 days, accumulating a transcript of 26,000 pages. By the time the Supreme Court of Canada reached its final Delgamuukw decision on December 11, 1997, dismissing Judge Allan McEachern's original ruling, the original chief known as Delgamuukw, Albert Tait, had died. The title passed onto Kenny Muldoe. When he died, the title passed down to Earl Muldoe, a carver who operated a small logging outfit named Totemland Contracting. Glavin didn't get to talk with Earl Muldoe, the newest incarnation of Delgamuukw, but he did interview Kispiox locals for a new, 5,000-word concluding chapter for A Death Feast in Dimlahamid (New Star $16).
Herb George, a Wet'suwet'en chief and vice-president of the Assembly of First Nations, reassures Glavin that Indians are not going to take anyone's private property and that he'll keep repeating that message until he's "blue in the face."
"The Delgamuukw decision," says 64-year-old Alice Maitland, mayor of Hazelton for 23 years, "is going to allow us up here to do what we all know everybody should have been doing all along."
Glavin criticizes scaremongers and doomsayers in Vancouver -- most notably Liberal leader Gordon Campbell, former Socred constitutional advisor Mel Smith, NDP constitutional advisor Gordon Wilson, former B.C. Liberal leader Gordon Gibson and right wing apologists such as Owen Lippert and Martyn Brown -- and provides his own vision of post-Delgamuukw Canada.
"When it comes to understanding the land itself, governments are now obliged to listen when old people talk about the adventures of Wiigyet, the giant who is sometimes raven, and about the wars waged by Medeek, the great bear, and about ancient feasts among the mountain goat people of Stegyawden. In our courts, these old stories now carry equal evidentiary weight with Hudson Bay Company records, mineral-deposit assessments, and timber supply analyses, and these different types of intelligence have to be reconciled. It is the law. It is like we have all finally arrived, somehow, as a country, in this simple thing."
The essence of the Delgamuukw decision is contained in Supreme Court Chief Justice Antonio Lamer's summation. "Let us face it. We are all here to stay." After Earl Muldoe, there will be another Delgamuukw. And another. And another.
Glavin, the independent B.C. journalist who has monitored the unfolding of the Delgamuukw case as closely as any other, believes reconciliation is possible, necessary and overdue. 0-921586-64-7
[BCBW 1998] "First Nations"
Submitted on August 6, 2003 in By David.
