Will Homes Be Confiscated: Canada On The Cusp Of Civil War

[formosan]

I was changing stations when I was driving this morning when on a talk radio staion they were discussing the confiscation of land in BC by Aboriginal bands.....one of the guests was an Aboriginal Chief who said that China was behind this and that they will ultimately end up with the land titles like they have done in countries on every continent....like organized crime they will lend money to Aboriginals at very high rates and when they default they get title to the land.

[Brent]

It appears we will have to wait until this fall to learn if British Columbia can find a way out of the latest effort to resolve the historic tangle of indigenous land claims and unfinished treaties across the province.

Premier David Eby has been warned that his latest trio of watered-down treaties, two of which were tabled in the BC legislature in April, must be halted for 180 days or they will face challenges in the courts and on the highways due to overlapping claims. Eby has also backed down on his plan to amend the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), promising to spend the summer negotiating a solution acceptable to at least some of the 203 indigenous communities in the province.

[Herman]

THE QUIET TRANSFER OF CANADA
Most Canadians have never heard of UNDRIP, The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is a treaty that the federal government signed on behalf of Canadians without any meaningful public debate, without any referendum, and without any honest disclosure of what it actually obligates Canada to do. What this treaty requires is so consequential that if Canadians understood it clearly, there would be a national conversation that those in power have no interest in.

At its core, UNDRIP obligates signatory nations to vest property ownership back into the hands of the Indigenous Peoples who preceded European colonization. In British Columbia, we are already watching this play out in real time. The federal government has moved to transfer land in the Vancouver metro area to the Musqueam Nation. We are talking about a band with fewer than 2,000 members receiving jurisdiction over land that is home to approximately 2 million Canadians. The government has not released the terms of the agreement. Canadians are being asked to accept a seismic shift in property rights without being permitted to read the document that governs it.

In 2021, Parliament passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. This Act commits the Government of Canada to fully implement the UNDRIP treaty. In other words, this Act legally binds the Government of Canada to transfer ownership of all parts of Canada traditionally used or occupied by Indigenous Peoples to Indigenous Peoples. This is most, or all, of populated Canada.
Article 26 of the UNDRIP treaty reads:
1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.

2. Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they have otherwise acquired.

3. States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with due respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned.

An important point to recognize is that UNDRIP is not limited to unceded land. Many in Canada think that they are safe from having indigenous property rights being imposed on their property because they live where land was ceded by treaty to the King. This is an error. UNDRIP is not restricted to unceded land.

It applies to all land traditionally owned, occupied, or otherwise used by Indigenous Peoples, ceded or unceded. The Government of Canada has committed itself to transferring ownership of most, if not all, of populated Canada.