Indigenous Relations, Agreements, and Responsibilities at UBC
As UBC moves beyond symbolic acknowledgements to material agreements with titleholding and rights bearing First Nations how will this shape UBC’s internal relations with Indigenous peoples working, living, and studying at and within UBC’s social domain?
Engaging with the titleholders
In A Campus Resident, an online newspaper about the UBC community, I discussed a 2010 Ministerial Order and its relation to UBC’s land use planning and Musqueam rights and title. As UBC’s current Land Use Plan (LUP) comes to an end UBC has run out of land to monetize. The ability to monetize UBC’s land holdings requires a provincially approved LUP. That is the only way to release UBC’s land for privatization and revenue generation. To move ahead UBC needs to involve Musqueam in the LUP process:
A new UBC Land Use Plan that envisions developing UBC land (which could be returned to Musqueam by the Crown) is a potential infringement of Musqueam title to the land. UBC, as a private entity, is not itself obligated to discuss their land use plan with Musqueam (except for the fact of the Ministerial Order). Where the duty to consult kicks in is at the point the provincial government approves UBC’s official land use plan. What clause 4 [in the MO] does is delegate to UBC what the Crown called “engagement,” but in fact is the technical process for consultation as a result of the potential infringement of Musqueam Rights and Title.
This is actually a big deal.
This also explains why there is a very detailed parallel Musqueam Engagement process for Campus Vision 2050. At the time I wrote the story about the Musqueam Engagement process (December, 2022) I had yet to find MO 229-2010. With it now in hand, it is clear UBC has no option but to set up this parallel engagement process - MO 229-2010 requires it.
In addition to UBC’s engagement with Musqueam through the coming LUP and Campus Vision 2050 we know, from various sources, that an agreement with Musqueam is coming.
Last December, 2022, I asked UBC’s media relations for a statement on the importance of their relationship with Musqueam. I was working on a series of stories about UBC and Indigenous issues. I had innocently assumed they would send a kind of generic “UBC values its longstanding relation with Musqueam and looks forward to deepening our connections” or words to that effect. Instead they responded as follows:
“given the importance of our relationship with Musqueam, we recognize it’s important that the university discusses any public statement relating to our relationship with them, so we’re currently waiting for their input. We will endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible and are aware of your deadline.” UBC Media Relations, December 8, 2022.
That was essentially the last substantive comment I received from UBC Media Relations on this subject.
Beyond the official non-answer the evidence is clear from many small public meetings and actions on campus that an agreement is coming, not least to ensure that UBC’s LUP can proceed to Provincial approval.
At a campus seminar in February 2023 a university official had this to say:
“Maybe we don't know where the thing is going, but I think we will be negotiating a new settlement with a relationship agreement with Musqueam. You talked earlier, … many of us did, about how powerful that [existing] relationship [with Musqueam] has been in moving this university forward and getting it to reckon with things. We have to reckon with that. I think whatever comes out of [the new agreement] is going to be a different kind of relationship. It's no longer going to be about recognition, it's going to be about land rights and voice in the university and places in the university and then also about programs and recognition of the labor that it takes to come into a classroom or to be with research students.”
At another meeting in February 2023 I attended on Campus Vision 2050 two university speakers, Aslam Bulbulia (meeting facilitator) and Gerry McGeough (Director, Planning and Design), both highlighted the new relationship with Musqueam and the ongoing inclusion of Musqueam in the planning process in their opening remarks. During the subsequent workshop discussion, staff at several of the small discussion tables highlighted the significant role Musqueam is currently playing in the land planning process.
The Musqueam Agreement was raised in the March 15th, 2023 meeting of the UBC-V Senate by Chris Fay, Director of Strategic Policy (Campus Planning). Chris was asked if the agreement would encroach on senate powers.
“Mr. Fay responded that the ongoing relationship agreement with Musqueam is broad and responded that the participants involved in the ongoing relationship agreement conversation have an opportunity to have more engagement with the Senate. He stated that he will coordinate with the Senate Secretariat to bring the discussion back to this forum” (pages 16-19 of the docket).
To my knowledge no such engagements with UBC-V Senate have been made nor has there been any subsequent discussion at UBC-V Senate (I am an elected Joint Faculties Senator).
Impact Benefit Agreements with titleholding nations and confidentiality
Entering into Impact Benefit Agreements between a private proponent (like UBC) and a titleholding nation is a longstanding practice in Canada’s resource extraction industries. Such agreements do not recognize or affirm Aboriginal Rights and Title (only the Crown can do that), but they arise as a result of a First Nation’s potential rights and title and the extent to which the private proponent considers its operations may be impeded without such an agreement. Ken Craine and Naomi Krugman wrote one of the few scholarly analyses of the problems of IBAs. Chief among the problems is the veil of confidentiality that typically accompanies such agreements. Their paper is well worth the read.
Caine and Krugman make the following observations about confidentiality:
While IBAs may facilitate development profits for proponents in exchange for sharing the benefits and offsetting some of the negative impacts of development, a constraining element of that exchange can be found in two provisions found in many IBAs: confidentiality clauses and noncompliance clauses.
Confidentiality clauses restrict the communication of the contents of IBAs to anyone outside the negotiation process or beneficiary population. Not surprisingly, they restrict openness, transparency to the public, and thus contradict democratic principles.
By inhibiting cross-community comparisons and communication about what may be desirable for most Aboriginal communities, confidentiality also restricts holistic discussion of benefits and valuable experiences among communities that are negotiating IBAs.
Communities are thus not negotiating with full information and lessons learned from past oversights or newfound understanding in other communities. As a result, they are particularly disadvantaged in their negotiations with industry representatives who bring and incorporate valuable historical and collective corporate knowledge to the bargaining table through their lawyers and consultants (Bielawski, 2003; O’Faircheallaigh, 2008).
While it is a poorly kept secret that UBC and Musqueam are negotiating an agreement (as noted above), the contents of such an agreement have been kept behind a veil of secrecy. My own experience as an observer and sometime consultant supporting First Nations negotiate agreements with private proponents informs my reflections on these types of deals. This leads me to feelings of concern over the potentially coercive effects of a culture of secrecy in negotiations and, as Caine and Krugman highlight, it is a confidentiality that benefits neither the FN leaders involved in the negotiations or the wider democratic publics. For public entities, like UBC, cultures of secretary undermine public trust and call into question the process and justification of subsequent agreements.
UBC has a clear example of a very public process that successfully produced the Indigenous Strategic Plan. The plan involved widespread, Indigenous led, publicly reported on discussions that resulted in the plan’s eight goals and 43 action items. Among the action items are specific financial disbursements (to fund research, hiring, and structural change), changes in policies (ranging from business contracts to research models), directives shaping redesigning and Indigenizing of curriculum, and creating physical (and cultural) spaces on campus for all Indigenous peoples. This is a simple and incomplete list. The point here is that the ISP was done fully and completely in public following generalized Indigenous practices of openness and inclusion. It set records for its inclusiveness and thoroughness. It took time when time was required. It was not an agreement devised by lawyers and strategic planners in a boardroom.
Is the university just a place for settlers?
A lot of the university’s teaching and research begins from the vantage point that it is a place primarily populated by settlers. Clearly universities are colonial legacy institutions. But is there a place for Indigenous peoples here beyond the university’s philanthropic desire to ‘build our capacity’? In a chapter co-written with my colleague Caroline Butler (Gitxaała Nation, Heritage Research Manager) we discuss University/First Nation research relationships. I mention this here as it relates to the question “Is the university just a place for settlers?”
When so much of the university enterprise assumes a non-Indigenous dynamic, the university can lose sight of the Indigenous people existing within the university’s own communities of account. There is, for example, an entire research support unit that is devoted to helping settler scholars find interested First Nation community partners and those same community partners to find university researchers:
Indigenous Research Support Initiative “supports research excellence and helps create and sustain meaningful collaborations with Indigenous communities. Whether it’s your first time collaborating on an Indigenous research project, or you have experience working with community, IRSI can assist with the tools, resources and professional support necessary to ensure a successful and beneficial outcome for all.”
The chapter Caroline and I wrote focusses on the university research enterprise. The excerpt quoted below highlights the assumptions of the university about who is here, who does the research, and who needs help remediating their research capacity deficits. It has a bearing on how those in positions to strike agreements and partnerships may be limited in their comprehension of the difference between the internal existing Indigenous communities and the official entities external to the university holding potential rights and title. They may incorrectly assume signing an agreement with a titleholding nation sufficiently checks the box ‘Indigenous issues.’
“Charles Menzies’ own subject location as both Gitxaała member and university researcher complicates and disrupts the normative approach of university-led community research, in which the researcher typically self-presents as a non-indigenous ‘expert’ on indigenous peoples. The mainstream narrative of collaborative research has assumed that non-indigenous researchers are at the core of the endeavour linked to the research university. The dominance of the normative model is clear when one reviews the literature on community-based and participatory research methods. These methods are designed to resolve the methodological problems associated with an assumed power imbalance tilted toward the university-based non-indigenous researcher. Although the situation is starting to shift, in most parts of the world, the majority of university researchers studying indigenous communities are not indigenous themselves. This fact (consciously or otherwise) has shaped the discussion on collaborative research toward consideration of the power of the researcher versus the presumed lack of power of the researched. This is not surprising as it follows the topography of debates within mainstream anthropology over the past several decades, in which giving voice to the voiceless is considered a critical principle of anthropology (Marcus and Fisher 1986). Debates over the presumed power of the anthropologist reflect an underlying colonial history of anthropology (Asad 1973, Gough 1968). Despite a turn in political anthropology in the 1990s (see Bellier 2015) the majority of studies (irrespective of their liberal values) still presume that indigenous communities lack power, authority, and the ability to speak for themselves” (Menzies and Butler, 2019:267-268).
Indigenous university-based researchers challenge the university’s approach to partnership building by our very presence in the university. It disrupts the ‘we’ in the agreement building structure that assumes a settler ‘we’ researching out to a titleholding nation or a potential First Nation research partner. When the university maintains a self image as an entity of settlers then agreements with titleholders and partnerships with First Nations communities are significantly simpler to execute as there is no need to consider Indigenous peoples internal to the university.
What ensues is similar to the 1980s era joint-venture forestry companies. At that time anti-logging protests were emerging that formed strong alliances with First Nations. At first the logging companies tried to fight the protests. Then, after several significant losses they realized the better path was to find First Nations leaders who would enter into corporate joint ventures and in that way the logging companies were able to continue their classic logging practices.
Universities require access for continued research and data collection. A good proportion of ‘community-based’ research support within universities is a tactical realignment to continued data collection unimpeded by protest. UBC, due to its real estate operations, also has a material economic interest to seek accords with titleholding nations.
Indigenous diaspora, ceremonies, and smudging
Smudging, the ceremonial burning of a plant and then bathing in the smoke, is not Indigenous to coastal BC. However, the effects of colonialism has dispersed and shifted our communities so that today more than two thirds of Indigenous people live in urban areas, often far away from our homes of origin. Movements of our peoples across this land are not new, but the extent of the displacements and movements are far greater today than any of our histories tell of in the past. In these contexts ceremonies like smudging, that originated away from the coast, have come here and have for many Indigenous people become an important aspect of one’s spirituality.
Smudging with sage is not something that I am familiar with from back home. More common has been making teas or tonics from plants like wooms or tying a bundle of their stems above a doorway. Smg̱a̱n is often used to bless places, people, and things by lightly brushing them. Huułens is sometimes used to purify the air when people are sick by heating it on a stove. [Note: no one should use any traditional plant medicinally without instruction and guidance from a knowledge holder]. None of these are the same as smudging. I understand that smudging is also not a traditional practice with Musqueam.
Smudging has, just the same, become important in many urban and university Indigenous settings. UBC has a mixed approach to the ceremony. When I was first hired at UBC (in the mid 1990s) I heard of issues with campus security interrupting smudging ceremonies and fire alarms being triggered. Colleagues for whom this was an important issue worked hard to get a protocol in place that would permit indoor smudging.
In a conversation on how UBC facilities and operations are implementing the Indigenous Strategic Plan I was told about how in the design of the new gateway building the planners were able to accommodate smudging in the building.
“There are some communities the academic occupants of the Gateway Building work with where their tradition includes Smudging. … Figuring out how to accommodate everyone's needs [is important]. We pushed out the timeline on that project to make sure that there was time and space for folks with the expertise. Our role is to facilitate these projects coming forward at the optimal time, not the fastest time, the optimal time. We're creating that space for the conversations that need to happen, but then we're pushing the contractors on the build of it. The Smudging piece, for example, that was one where it required a lot of conversation. So, when the need was identified, we created space within the design process to facilitate those conversations led by others with the appropriate expertise to then inform the design needs as the Smudging protocol was worked through and developed in order to be able to optimize that design.” …
“Our ultimate goal is to have the building support the functions as well as they possibly can and not the other way around. So those fire systems, they're there for a nominal overarching safety piece. Where that safety doesn't create cultural safety, we need to think differently and think about, okay, if we understand deeply what the needs are within the building, what are the other options?”
This is an important accommodation for one academic unit’s Indigenous partners. It’s not clear this approach is being applied consistently across UBC. In another building design process a staff person responsible for scoping the rebuild said that smudging inside would not be supported as it deviates from Musqueam wishes. It’s a big campus and it is unsurprising they had not heard about the Gateway Building process. They instead pointed to the approach taken by the First Nation House of Learning in 2019.
As reported in The Ubyssey (Nov. 2019) FNHL Director Margaret Moss contacted a representative of the Musqueam Indian Band to inquire if smudging could be practiced at UBC.
“[We] came to an agreement that yes [we] could do it, as long as it was outside and as long as [we] didn’t start any official ceremonies with this practice,” said Moss. “Each time [we smudge] we’re going to be saying, ‘We recognize that we are on Musqueam territory and this is not one of their practices, they’re allowing us to do this for others.’”
This highlights a space within which agreements with titleholding nations could undermine accommodations of diaspora Indigenous practices. UBC is a multiracial, multi-cultural institution; in essence a community of communities. Finding the balance of respect is important. It is unlikely other communities on campus would respond positively toward an indoor prohibition of their spiritually important cultural practices.
Finding the balance
UBC is a globally oriented research intensive university. The people working and studying at UBC come from all parts of the world. UBC is also BC’s university and as such has an obligation to the entire province. BC rests upon a legacy of colonialism that necessitates UBC acknowledging its responsibilities as part of that legacy. Achieving all that is a tall order indeed.
Seeking and entering into agreements with titleholding nations is an important aspect of acknowledging UBC’s part in the colonial legacy. Respecting diaspora Indigenous campus communities will set the agenda for a better future for all. What is required is an authentic process that includes all Indigenous voices - titleholder and diaspora; student, staff, faculty, and community. UBC has the experience of one open process that drew from Indigenous protocols and has created the current Indigenous Plan. We have a path in front of us that in its very nature is an act of decolonizing and Indigenizing practice - let’s not revert to a corporate boardroom where deals are made in secrecy.
xwĕ lī qwĕl tĕl Steven Lewis Point’s closing comments at the celebration of the installation of the bronze disk at the foot of the Reconciliation Pole is a fitting thought to end this reflection.
“Richard, you’ve done a great job. What a great carving. It reminds me of a spindle whorl suĺsuĺtun in our language. The elders used to take that spinner and make dog hair, goat hair blankets for the chiefs, though only for the chiefs who wore the swuwqwá’lh blankets. And that amazing pole, Jim. Amazing breathtaking pole, I must say. Reminds me of the stem of the suĺsuĺtun that the elders would have put on their knee to spin that wool. And they made beautiful weavings.”
“You and I have to start making weavings together, my dear people. We have to start again, maybe changing that word reconciliation to creating new stories together. We can't afford in this day and age to pass on old conflicts to the next generation. We're far too divided by race, by gender, by religious affiliation, even from one generation to the next. We have to find ways of bringing our weavings together.”