Treaties extinguish aboriginal land rights, negotiator tells Dehcho assembly

Treaties have extinguished the Dehcho First Nation's land claim, a federal negotiator told the group's annual assembly in Kakisa, N.W.T., Wednesday.

The Dehcho dispute this argument, and this disagreement goes to the heart of an ongoing debate about their land-claim negotiations with Ottawa.

Those talks are taking place in Kakisa, about 240 kilometres southwest of Yellowknife, during the assembly, which began Monday.

Appearing before the assembly Wednesday, government senior negotiator Mike Walsh quoted Treaty 11 to delegates, saying the Dene gave up title to their land when they signed the treaty with the Crown in 1921.

"As the federal government, we don't like to bring it up that often because we know that it upsets people, especially the elders," Walsh said.

"But in a situation like this, where there's a decision to be made, it would be dishonest not to be honest."

However, the Dehcho's position claims that the treaties signed were about friendship, not surrendering land.

Pipeline land in dispute 

The Dehcho represent 11 First Nations in the southwest region of the Northwest Territories. It is the only aboriginal group without a land claim agreement along the route of the proposed 1,200-kilometre Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline.

The issue came up this week because delegates expressed opposition to the federal government's offer of 46,000 square kilometres of land as part of land-claim talks. Some argued that the land being offered does not cover the Dehcho's entire region.

Speaking through an interpreter, Hay River elder Roy Fabian said he wonders why the Dehcho are negotiating at all, given Ottawa's position.

"They've come here to deliver that kind of a message to us, and all the negotiations that [were] done on our behalf, it was useless," Fabian said.

But Ethel Lamothe, a band councillor with Liidlii Kue First Nation in Fort Simpson, N.W.T., said ongoing land-claim negotiations demonstrate that the Dehcho people have rights.

"We don't have a maximum," Lemothe said. "The whole land is ours, the land, the water, the trees, the air, the minerals, the spirit [are] there for us."

The assembly runs through Friday.