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Category Archives "First Nations"

Long days at “the office”

September 30, 2025 By Chris Corrigan First Nations, Football No Comments

Long days of retreat facilitation. They start early. 6:30 wake up, and a little focused think about how our day is going to go. Breakfast with the group and off to commemorate the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation at the incredible Haida Heritage Centre near Skidegate. We are working here with the Sahatu Renwable Resources Board, the wildlife co-management body that was formed under their Land Claim Agreement in 1993. The history of intergovernmental relations in the Northwest Territories is fraught, as it is everywhere when fossil fuels are driving the agenda. The Sahtu people persevered for a century standing in their integrity on their lands waiting for an agreement that would serve their communities. The Haida representatives at today’s ceremony, which was MC’d by Miles Richardson, were deeply appreciative that the Sahtu had chosen to come to Haida Gwaii for this retreat, and tomorrow we will spend some time with their leadership discussing wildlife co-management in different contexts.

After the ceremony we returned back to Haida House for a deep check in and some timeline mapping and story sharing. The main goal of this retreat is relationship building, so stories are a critical aspect of that. It was a long day, but I’m happy with how it went.

Afterwards I got a chance to unwind by catching up on the Bodø-Glimt v Tottenham Champions League match. it was a weird game. The first half showed a flat and uninspired Spurs team, who spent most of the half absorbing pressure, with only Lukas Bergvall pressing the back line out of possession. Nothing worked and a series of dramatic giveaways resulted in a penalty that was skied by Høgh and some other rued chances. The second half began with more of the same, except the home side led by a scintillating performance by Hauge, took the lead. After Bentancur had a goal disallowed, Hauge scored another and Spurs were in deep trouble. Things looked a little better after Simons and Kudus cam into the game, which at least stemmed some of the awful giveaways we were having. Micky Van der Ven managed to get one back on a header from a Porro set piece, and late in the match at 89′ an Archie Grey ball fizzed into the box bounced of the Bodø-Glimt keeper and onto his defender Gunderson and into the net. A 2-2 final score saw Spurs return to London with a point we really had no right to have. A long day at the office for them too.

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Rain on Haida Gwaii

September 29, 2025 By Chris Corrigan First Nations, Travel No Comments

Crossing Skidegate Inlet, yesterday

We are working in Haida Gwaii this week. At the Haida House Lodge at Tllaal on the east side of Graham Island, there is a dictionary of Haida words collected from Skidegate dialect speakers over the years. Last night I sat on the covered porch while the rain came down off the Hecate Strait and a southeasterly lashed the side of our cabin. This morning I had a look in the dictionary and there are dozens of words and expressions for rain. My blog doesn’t have the ability to write Haida orthography, so I’ll share some of the translations:

  • Fine rain
  • Fine rain coming down
  • It is raining so hard the water gets calm
  • One drop of rain less
  • Misty
  • It is raining small drops; crying on the way
  • Sprinkling rain
  • Heavy or big rain that hits the water and bounces up
  • Rain that calms the sea
  • Rain drops here and there
  • Rains too much and everything is damp
  • Starting to rain
  • Starting to rain hard
  • Rain that cleans
  • Rain that is hard and noisy
  • Rain that is easing off.
  • Rain shower that goes by
  • Rain squall coming that darkens the sky
  • It is raining so hard the droplets are sticking together
  • Snow turning to rain
  • The clouds keep rubbing
  • The rain that is pouring straight down

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Living true reconciliation

September 23, 2025 By Chris Corrigan Featured, First Nations No Comments

While summer rolled to an end, a truly significant ruling on Aboriginal title happened in Canada when the BC Supreme Court recognized the Constitutionally protected Aboriginal title of the Haida Nation to all of its territory. This declaration was built on previous court cases, co-management agreements and the ground breaking recognition protocol signed last year. Since 2003, and really since the Delgamuukw decision in 1997 defined the concept of Aboriginal title as a form of title within Canadian law, the province of BC and the Haida Nation have been preparing for this day. There is no First Nation in BC with a more secure grasp on its traditional and historic territory than the Haida Nation. It was only a matter of time.

When we talk about “reconciliation” in Canada we are, technically and most significantly I think, talking about the reconciliation of two different sets of laws. The Court in Delgamuukw implored the government of Canada to figure out how to reconcile Canadian law with Indigenous law. Reconciliation means this: how is power shared between two legal frameworks that may have different objectives, and different methods of governing. In 1851 when the Crown stopped making treaties in what later became BC, it inadvertently ensured that Aboriginal title remained unextinguished. Aboriginal title refers to the rights in land of First Nations that existed before contact with European law. In Delgamuukw the Court basically said that the Crown can’t just show up somewhere, plant a flag, and declare thousands of years of Indigenous rights to be extinguished. In other words, the idea of terra nulls, that the land was empty before Europeans arrived, is not a legal concept in Canadian law. The land was full. And the obligation on the colonial powers of Britain and Canada, acting in the interests of the Crown, was set out in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. That obligated colonial authorities to negotiate with the owners of these lands before doing anything else in Indigenous territories. After 1851, Canada just stopped doing that here in BC, and the consequence is that every action taken subsequently by the Crown is in doubt as to its legality under Canada’s own law.

Now it’s important to remember that it is First Nations who have been saying, for the past 175 years, that there is a need to negotiate land rights. The intention all along has been to create agreements that would be of mutual benefit to First Nations and settlers to these lands. In legal agreements and negotiations, First Nations have never said that existing private property is in doubt or that settlers should go home. It is First Nations that have led the way in inviting relationships that are sustainable and mutually beneficial.

Because Canada just stopped making agreements in BC, First Nations here retained all of their rights and title intact. Traditional and historic Indigenous land uses have continued, despite Canadian government actions which forced First Nations off their lands, created a cultural genocide, and, in the case of the 1862 smallpox epidemic, leaned into actual physical genocide as canoes full of infected people were towed up the coast from Victoria all the way to the Nisga’a and Haida territory, leaving death and destruction in their wake.

First Nations have been true to their position of land ownership since the very beginning. They are the rightful owners of their territories and they have desired mutually beneficial relationships with the Crown. In 1910 at Spences Bridge, a number of Interior chiefs made a declaration that led with an invitation to create treaties.

For all this time in British Columbia, colonial governments have just ignored these requests, trampled rights and title, ignored existing treaties and applied Canadian law as if there was no legally recognized set of governments and people already on this land. In 1973, the Nisga’a finally gained recognition of their existing rights and title, nearly 60 years after they first demanded it. Although it was a split Supreme Court of Canada that wrote the decision, the case led to a negotiation of rights and title that lasted another 25 years and culminated in the signing of the Nisga’a Final Agreement.

The treaty process in BC has churned along since 1992 and meanwhile, First Nations have also been active in the courts with a series of decisions that confirmed the existence of Aboriginal as a concept (Delgamuukw) and then found that it actually existed on the land (Tsilhqot’in). From the moment that Delgamuukw was settled it was clear that it would only be a matter of time before the Haida pushed the envelope on this.

September 30 is coming up and in Canada that is a day set aside for the commemoration of Truth and Reconciliation. Lots of folks will be wearing orange shirts and learning about residential schools or participating in other public activities. I will be on Haida Gwaii that day, for the first time in my life, working with a co-managment board who jointly steward the wildlife in parts of the Northwest Territories. That is a body that is actively engaged in reconciliation of laws, of knowledge, of ways of relating to land and animals.

In my mind, no court ruling is needed to tell me where I will be. I will be in what has always been Haida territory, visiting an island archipelago that has been governed sea stewarded from time immemorial by the Haida people. Canada is a slow learner with respect to Indigenous rights. From the very beginning First Nations have seen the opportunity to build something together with the settlers that were arriving in their lands and the governments that were exercising authority. Through centuries of being ignored, disposed, killed, re-educated and denied the means to argue for rights and title. First Nations have continued to ask Canada to be its best self, to be in active mutual relationship and see what we can do together. It sometimes takes court cases to hold Canada and Canadians to account by the terms of our own laws. I’m good with that too.

If you do nothing else on September 30, or any other day for that matter, do yourself a favour and follow some of the history of the invitation that First Nations have consistently made to Canada. Understand that, despite the protestations of some of Canada’s political “leaders” who court short-term gain from stoking racism and outrage and misinformation about land and rights issues. Remember that he work of reconciliation is fundamentally about how we will permanently live together here in ongoing mutually beneficial partnership. Canada has always been afforded the chance to do the right thing, the beautiful thing and the moral and just thing. At any time we can seize that chance. Let’s do it now.

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Safety, bubbles and resilience

September 3, 2025 By Chris Corrigan Complexity, First Nations, Notes, Uncategorized No Comments

Today Dave Snowden has published a significant post outlining his team’s work and thinking about safety: “we must stop trying to write better rules and start building better processes for rapid decision-making in each unique context.” Taking a complexity view on safety is essential. Organizational life, when it separates accountability from decision making by downloading simplistic accountabilities to front line workers while constricting their ability to respond appropriately, is full of structurally dangerous situations. Dave’s encouragement to look at the substrate for action is exactly right.

Last month Ted Gioia published a post wondering if we hadn’t reached the top of a stock bubble. Just leaving this here in case I want to come back to it.

At Game of the People, one of my favourite football blogs, guest writer Laura Joseph gives us a run down of the current bubble in football and why football economics is a little different from the bubble Gioia writes about.

A couple of films to look out for from Dana Solomon. The first Blood Lines deals with themes of belonging and family in a Metis setting and stars Solomon in the lead role. I love that the film includes Michif dialogue. The second is Solomon’s full directorial debut, Niimi (She Dances) is about an Indigenous ballerina who recovers her sense of self and love of her art after a traumatic episode. Both seem resonant with the themes Michelle Porter explores in the book I’m currently reading, A Grandmother Begins the Story.

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Actor Graham Greene has died

September 2, 2025 By Chris Corrigan First Nations

Graham Greene died yesterday. Greene was a remarkable and iconic Oneida/Canadian actor. He is one of the most recognizable Indigenous actors in our country and a cultural treasure. He became instantly famous for his role in Dances With Wolves for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. The first film I remember seeing him in was the excellent comedy Powwow Highway and maybe my favourite was his role as Arthur in the little-known 1991 Canadian thriller-horror Clearcut.

Clearcut was truly a film of its time, and captured the frustration of the struggle to protect Indigenous rights and territories from rapacious resource companies. All over Canada at the time, from the woods of New Brunswick, to the Pines in Oka, to Temagami, to Clayquot Sound, this issue defined a moment in Indigenous-Crown relations that changed everything. The film captures and distills the main characters in that moment in history into a plot where everything is, well, pretty clear cut. Greene plays an Indigenous environmental activist who has lost his patience with logging companies that are clear cutting in his territory. He kidnaps a company CEO and subjects him to the same kind of treatment that trees are subjected to, including a gruesome scene where he peels the skin from the leg of his victim. His performance left a deep impression on me and I’ve been an admirer of his work ever since.

In 2007 he made his Stratford festival debut as Shylock in Merchant of Venice and I always thought it was fascinating that he had played two roles, 25 years apart, in which, literally, a pound of flesh was involved.

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