It's comforting to see first nations of canada recovering a central role in modern canadian society.
However, having lived here for a year a year now, I have observed a concerning aspect of this re-integration, which is mentioned in the article: First nations aren't just propped back up and re-integrated in society, it goes further in that they are given special rights that go beyond what any other class of canadian citizens have access to. In this case it is exemption from zoning laws, but all over the country it's access to mining, lumber and fishing rights. They are exempted from federal quotas on fishing, cutting forests, etc ...
On moral grounds, I find it questionable to give some citizens special birth rights greater than others. But on more practical grounds, this is creating a great big loophole for the traditional resource extraction companies to circumvent environment regulation by partnering with first nations on projects.
> they are given special rights that go beyond what any other class of canadian citizens have access to
> I find it questionable to give some citizens special birth rights greater than others
The reason for this is because they are using their rights from signed treaties that define how resources are used on their lands.
Persons that are part of First Nations like the Squamish and the Haida are not just "some citizens" of Canada but rather part of Nations that have their own governance and jurisdiction. Nations that have signed government to government treaties with Canada that clearly define their rights and jurisdiction.
And in many cases in BC in particular, treaties were never signed, and First Nations never ceded their lands and title, so in fact there is an enormously strong legal case to justify their influence and power over lands that they never legally ceded to British Columbia or Canada. These First Nations continue to rack up wins in the courts that continue to side with the FNs that their title to their lands has never been extinguished.
> power over lands that they never legally ceded to British Columbia or Canada.
Actually curious about this concept of "unceded land". If it's not Canada's land then can I come in there and break laws and say Canadian law doesn't apply because it's not Canada?
Seems like this "unceded land" concept is only applied selectively?
I dunno there's a lot of layers to "sovereignty" some of which FNs have deemed to test and others they have declined to do so.
It's not just land issues. For example in other areas some FNs have wrestled back control over their child services from the Federal government.
But regarding land, it used to be that you could "pre-empt" "Crown Land" and get permission to build a cabin on it and take ownership of it, but that hasn't been a thing for quite a while, likely because the Crown realized that their foundational arguments for owning "Crown land" was pretty shakey.
At the moment FNs in BC largely seem interested in regaining title over their land and regaining a fair degree of power over how it is used.
It's entirely possible for a jurisdiction to have ownership and control over land and to still be within the context and laws of the State called Canada.
Summary from the Ballotpedia page: "The court reversed the OCCA's decision in a 5-4 ruling, holding that under the Indian Major Crimes Act, lands reserved for the Creek Nation in eastern Oklahoma constituted Indian Country. As a result, the state of Oklahoma could not legally try a Creek citizen for criminal conduct in state court.[1] Justice Gorsuch delivered the majority opinion. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas each filed dissenting opinions."
If 2 families solely inhabited (owned) an island, since pre-history, and Family 1 sells the entire island to newcomers, while Family 2 takes no part in the deal or its approval, and does not cede their land to the purchase, then any court in the land will, quite rightly, hear Family 2's case that they are still the owner of their regions of the island.
Israel wasn't founded by Britain. The UN is effectively what created Israel.
Britain acquired the region ("Mandatory Palestine") after WWI as a temporary measure to govern it until it was self-sustaining; that never happened, and in the wake of WWII, they mostly just wanted out of the situation and left the UN responsible. The UN voted on a partition plan - and the UK actually abstained from that vote.
Israel certainly wasn't founded by Britain, whose forces had simply abandoned the region after the Mandate expired in 1948, but the UN partition only set the stage for the eventual territorial bounds of Israel, as the partition plan was never actually implemented.
What cemented Israel's official modern territorial bounds were the 1949 Armistice Agreements following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which resulted in Israel controlling 60% of the land that was not originally defined for the Jewish State in the partition plan. According to the 1947 partition plan, Israel was not going to extend to Jerusalem, but the captured territory did extend to this point by the time of the 1949 armistice, as well as extending to most of the land border with Egypt which minimized the Gaza region's border with Egypt, and extending along Lebanon, which prevented the West Bank from sharing a border with Lebanon, as was intended in the partition plan.
The Jebusites (who were a type of cannanite) if you believe the bible. If you don't believe the bible... while who knows if the battle is even a real historical event.
If you are trying to make some allusion to modern events i think its pretty silly to talk about 3000 year old battles that way, and even if you did, both sides of the battle are probably more closely related to modern jews than any other modern ethnic group, albeit who really knows when our only written source is the bible.
> If you are trying to make some allusion to modern events i think its pretty silly to talk about 3000 year old battles that way, and even if you did,
I neither believe in the bible, nor think some events from 3000 years ago should have any bearing on who has a fair claim to the land today.
But if someone is going to use a conquest from 3000 years ago as an explanation for why the Israeli government is justified in ruling the land and occupying territories within it, I think the identity of the owners prior to that conquest is more relevant.
The only reason Israel was founded were it was, can only be justfied by its first nations like connection to the chosen territory. It was not like Britain was lacking other
colonies, protectorates, and mandates to choose from for the Jewish people at the given time.
Indeed several other locations such as Uganda were considered and were leading candidates beforehand. It originated as a colonial project, not a "land-back" initiative.
> Herzl approached Britain because, he said, it was "the first to recognize the need for colonial expansion." According to him, "the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea, should be easily and quickly understood in England.38 In 1902 Herzl approached Cecil Rhodes, who had recently colonized the territory of the Shona people as Rho- desia. "You are being invited to help make history," he said in a letter to Rhodes. "It doesn't involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen, but Jews. How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.
> Ronald Stort, The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storr (New York: G.P. Putnams, 1937), 364. Stort, the first Briitish military Governor of Jerusalem Sir Ronald Storr described Zionist ambitions for Palestine as the creation of "a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism."
This comment makes it sound like the formation of Israel in the chosen territory was more or less random. Uganda was not chosen for a reason, don’t you think? Are you trying to say that the millenial history of the Jews has nothing to do with the chosen territory?
The history is why jews wanted that specific land for Isreal but the US and Britain didn't enter WW2 to help jews so it's not that much of a stretch for them to support territory for jews that isn't their first choice. It's not like the rest of europe liked jews either, there's a reason jews disproportionately died from _poland_; the other european countries already killed many of the jews within their borders. Even some of the Allied countries exported jews to the Axis when hitler asked them to.
Britain even wanted to avoid Isreal's current location [1] namely because jews and palestines have never gotten along.
As well as US and Britain both but an embargo of arms to isreal prior/during the 1948 war to appease the Arab states. Quite a different response than the current UA one where US/Britain have a vested interest in UA winning so they're a lot of support while in 1948 they'd prefer the Arabs winning.
It is irrelevant to the conditions of the time which the Nakba was carried out, and irrelevant to the topic:
>If 2 families solely inhabited (owned) an island, since pre-history, and Family 1 sells the entire island to newcomers, while Family 2 takes no part in the deal or its approval, and does not cede their land to the purchase, then any court in the land will, quite rightly, hear Family 2's case that they are still the owner of their regions of the island.
Which describes the Balfour Declaration if Family 2 accounted for over 90% of the territory.
The current Likud party also recognizes their claim to the territory "from the river to the sea" does not involve the will of its other residents, as in the Family 1 & 2 story:
> Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.
It is possible to have two thoughts in the head at the same time.
The Palestinians living in this geographical area have a connection based on the history of their families living in the area. The Jewish people have a connection to the area based on the fact that most of their culture was founded in the area, but were later driven out as consequence of Roman and Byzantine actions – wars, enslavement, expulsions etc.
This of course is the root of the whole conflict (with the additional pressure from surrounding hostile nations).
From what you have written it sounds like you mean that the Jewish people have no connection to this area. You also put words in my mouth that I have not said: "You’re suggesting the 90% native Palestinian population previously stole the land"
This is a difficult conflict to solve because both sides have valid arguments. It doesn't help to pretend one side doesn't have any valid arguments at all.
I don't think the root of the problem is that. There are currently 10-12 million people with nowhere else to go. That's the root of the conflict. Most people don't care enough about "where" to get shot over it. They just want to raise their families in peace and Israel happens to be where politics landed them. Historically as refugees, and today as having been born there or escaping persecution or discrimination, or in seeking opportunity. Just like everywhere else in the world. The conflict is that a handful of assholes are set on war as a way of corporate profiteering on one side, or as an attack on Western ideology on the other. Everyone else just wants ANYWHERE to go live in peace. And no other country is going to let them move to there so they are staying put, and fighting, because they have to.
The one you’re commenting on will say things like they aren’t refugees, they democratically chose their current predicament, the civilian population is filled with terrotists and collaborators, they already turned down good deals for ending the conflict, and more questionable ancient oral tradition histories etc. Just useless to debate
If it's not Canada's land then can I come in there and break laws and say Canadian law doesn't apply because it's not Canada?
I don't know to what degree indigenous people have integrated their laws with Canada but it seems utterly obvious that any degree to which Canadian law and customs aren't applying is the degree to which indigenous laws and customs do apply so whatever else, "no, this doesn't mean a rando can do what they want".
> If it's not Canada's land then can I come in there and break laws and say Canadian law doesn't apply because it's not Canada?
There are 43 first nations communities in Canada that are entirely self-governing. The Canadian Police have no power and no jurisdiction, and the community deals with everything entirely itself.
So, yes, First Nations people in those communities break "Canadian" laws every single day and nothing "Canada" does nothing about it (and legally can't).
I don't know if that applies to you if you are not a first nations person of that community. I doubt it.
There are 25 self-government agreements across Canada involving 43 Indigenous communities
To quote: "However, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian Human Rights Act and other general laws such as the Criminal Code continue to apply"
Well, for that to work, you’d have to get a court to rule that the land you committed your crime on was indeed indigenous land and not part of canada. Good luck with that.
"Unceded land" means that because 100+ years ago the British settled as they wanted without asking for permission, the land actually still belongs to indigenous people, and not to Canadians, not to the people who currently live on it.
"Unceded land" isn't exactly a legal concept, it's more of an activist slogan from people who want to see all public land (e.g. >90% of BC) privatized based on race, or want to hold the threat of that over our heads to get more special treatment based on race.
Legally, Canada does have title to the land, BUT that title is also encumbered by "aboriginal title" – a limited set of extra rights of indigenous people. For example, Canada can't prevent indigenous people from hunting, needs to meaningfully consult with them before approving resource extraction projects, etc.
All of this is very poorly defined – in one paragraph of the constitution, and a couple more in ancient royal proclamations – the rest is being interpreted and re-interpreted by the courts as they wish, largely following the general popculture trends.
Was this land openly sold | gifted to Canada or staked and claimed despite prior occupation?
I recognise the current state of affairs, etc. but this "Legally Canada owns the land" is at root just a way of saying "might makes right, we took it, it's ours now, and we will shoot or imprison anyone who says otherwise".
That's how it works, sadly. Everywhere, not just here. The part you're missing is that "we" – the people living in Canada today – did not steal anyone's land. Certainly neither myself nor my ancestors. The original British settlers who stole the land are not us, they are long dead.
You can always look into the past to find injustices to use as an excuse to perpetuate horrible things in the present. Look at just about any conflict, modern or historical, the aggression today is always justified by something in the past. That doesn't mean that this is the right thing to do.
The right thing to do, is to lift up the people disadvantaged by past injustices, without resorting to race based division, e.g. target support by economic status instead of race. Sadly that's the opposite of what we're seeing in Canada nowadays.
Wasn't pretty much every country in the world established as a result of war, or one group taking it from another at some point in the past if you go back far enough?
Might makes right is how all land is owned. Always has been, always will be.
We've stacked lots of layers of paper and convention on top of that fact to reduce the amount of war we make, but people ignore this basic fact of the world at their peril.
Not always, eg: in Austraia the British declared Terra Nullus across the continent ( 'land belonging to nobody' ) and were later forced by their own legal system to return ownership to places still occupied.
"by their own legal system". The Australian government can come to whatever conclusion it wants about how it deals with its land.
That is, it was the Australian legal system which made that decision and further that decision was not countermanded by the Government of Australia. It wasn't the legal system of, say, Jamaica forcing the Australian Government to do that. Or even the legal system of the peoples who were occupying the territory when the British arrived.
> "Unceded land" isn't exactly a legal concept, it's more of an activist slogan from people who want to see all public land (e.g. >90% of BC) privatized based on race, or want to hold the threat of that over our heads to get more special treatment based on race.
This is a terrible misrepresentation of how “unceeded land” is used.
To characterize it as a call to privatize 90% of the land based on race is bonkers. Nobody means that. Even “land back” movement people aren’t talking about that. And even if some land is returned to indigenous nations, that would not be privatization.
And to call it special treatment based on race is ignoring the reality that indigenous people were for decades, and still are to some degree, systemically disenfranchised and devalued in society. A call for reparations, yes. A call for “special treatment” - nope.
> Legally, Canada does have title to the land
In much the same way that legally I have title to your house if i write “I own that house” on a piece of paper.
> To characterize it as a call to privatize 90% of the land based on race is bonkers. Nobody means that.
And who are you, to make that claim so confidently on behalf of First Nations, to put limits on them?
We used to have a treaty process to make such claims formally. The First Nation and the Canadian government would sign a treaty that would outline the extent of First Nation's claims, and the same treaty would FINALIZE those claims – the First Nation would get some of its land back, but would not be able to make future claims on more land.
As of 2019, this process has been officially abandoned by the BC NDP. Any treaties or agreements signed nowadays do not include finalization, so the First Nations are always free to demand more land, as they do.
Pretty much every First Nation consistently denies Canada's ownership of their lands, saying that their lands were stolen, that the colonialism continues today, that Canada has no right to govern their lands, that they should be the ones deciding what happens on their lands, etc. – you can take those as empty feel-good slogans, which would be disrespectful I think, or you can take them seriously, and look at the consequences of those claims, should the government or the courts grant them legitimacy (as they increasingly do).
As just one of many, many examples, from the same Squamish First Nation, from an article about a land parcel near Murrin park being returned to them [1]:
> "The history of land confiscation from the Squamish Nation going back to Confederation has always been one where our people and our leaders, going back to the founding of the nation, have articulated that we never surrendered our lands. It's all ours," said Khelsilem, also known as Dustin Rivers, a spokesperson for the [Squamish] Nation.
> "The Crown, through the province or the feds, claim jurisdiction over our lands. We contest that jurisdictional claim. And we continue to fight for the return of our lands back to our community. And we've been successful at that in a number of areas. And we'll continue to press that fight."
Again, you can disrespect him, and assume that he means something else than what he says, but I don't think that's wise.
> 90% of the land
Is it perhaps this high number that's unbelievable to you? Well, the Tsilqhot Supreme Court decision [2] awarded that First Nation 45% of their claimed traditional territory into aboriginal title. 45% isn't 100%, and aboriginal title isn't literally private property, but that Nation now makes the rules for who and how is allowed to access all that land, both for commercial activities and non-commercial recreational visitors, unbound by any equality or freedom of movement provisions in the Canadian law that normally bind Canadian governments.
And that decision is from nine years ago – an eternity when it comes to the development of indigenous rights in Canada and BC. If a similar case reached the court today, you bet it would be even stronger. Also, as I mentioned, the scope of aboriginal title is continually expanded by the courts, so eventually it will likely become indistinguishable from private property for all practical purposes.
> And even if some land is returned to indigenous nations, that would not be privatization.
You can use whatever PC words for this you want, if it makes you feel better. The essence remains the same – previously publicly owned land with public access is transferred into ownership with restricted access. There are many ways in which it is accomplished, from transferring land parcels into private property – sometimes in exchange for approving resource extraction projects, sometimes without any exchange, to signing various "joint management" agreements that enable First Nations to exclude non-indigenous people from large swaths of lands, give them veto rights on any commercial activity, etc.
> In much the same way that legally I have title to your house if i write “I own that house” on a piece of paper.
No, because nobody will honor your piece of paper, whereas pretty much everyone in Canada and in the world honors Canada's title to its land, whether they like it or not. See the other subthread for why that is.
> And who are you, to make that claim so confidently on behalf of First Nations, to put limits on them?
This is a transparently cynical "gotcha" argument, so I'm going to ignore it.
> As of 2019, this process has been officially abandoned by the BC NDP. Any treaties or agreements signed nowadays do not include finalization, so the First Nations are always free to demand more land, as they do.
There have been no treaties signed in BC since 2016, so I don't know what you're basing your "treaties or agreements signed nowadays" or "as they do" comments on. Certainly not things that have actually come to pass.
> Pretty much every First Nation consistently denies Canada's ownership of their lands, saying that their lands were stolen, that the colonialism continues today, that Canada has no right to govern their lands, that they should be the ones deciding what happens on their lands, etc.
Their lands were stolen. Colonialism does continue today. The right of a democratic nation to govern is dependent on the consent of the people - so it is well within their rights to challenge that right.
> Is it perhaps this high number that's unbelievable to you? Well, the Tsilqhot Supreme Court decision [2] awarded that First Nation 45% of their claimed traditional territory into aboriginal title. 45% isn't 100%
You're doing some fancy math there. If I claim 100% of my house, and am granted 45% of it... I wasn't granted 45% of all houses. Afaik land claims come with a high burden of proof, I would be shocked if their original claim was for 50% of their actual traditional land.
> previously publicly owned land with public access is transferred into ownership with restricted access
This is nonsense. Previously access to the land was restricted by the canadian government. If you wanted to use it, you had to a) be canadian, or b) get permission from canada. If that land now belongs to another nation guess what the new rules are? If you want to use it you have to a) belong to that nation, or b) get permission from that nation. You're just describing being on the wrong side of a border.
> No, because nobody will honor your piece of paper, whereas pretty much everyone in Canada and in the world honors Canada's title to its land, whether they like it or not.
You've just described colonialism. Odd, because it seemed like you were implying earlier you didn't believe the idea that colonialism was happening today.
The story shows one of the facets of the value of sovereignty what countries and nations have over the history been fighting for. In this case the indigenous people invested into their sovereignty countless lives and suffering, and 2 centuries later it starts to pay off (similar to many other countries/nations in today's world who had been fighting for their freedom for decades and centuries until finally achieving it).
> so in fact there is an enormously strong legal case to justify their influence and power over lands that they never legally ceded to British Columbia or Canada
Not that i think this is a good thing, but arguably since this is all pre world war 2, wouldn't the land, in absence of a treaty, be british by right of conquest? Like its a pretty recent development in international law that you actually have to get the other side to ceed land. Most of history was brutal and violent with might makes right.
Part of the point of reconciliation is to accept unequivocally the sovereignty of indigenous peoples. Is it not morally questionable to ignore indigenous peoples' sovereign rights (over fishing, forests, lands, etc.) as we have been doing up until now?
How can this work in practice, though? Wouldn't acknowledging indigenous peoples' sovereign rights over their lands require the formation of entirely new nations with their own borders and laws and military and courts etc etc that would cover the entirety of canada ? If they are have the right of a sovereign over these lands then can't they just tell everyone else to leave?
Canada is already a federal structure with overlapping jurisdictions. Adding another layer to it complicates things, but doesn't fundamentally break anything. Treaties are just more laws in a constitution that is already a mix of Common Law, written law, (French) Civil Law, our history with the BNA act, and our recent constitutional patriation.
The USA has similar treaties, and the US Supreme Court has been flip-flopping trying to decide the limits of Oklahoma criminal authority in half the sate. It can be messy.
Yes, that is exactly the case today. There are 43 self-governing first nations communities in Canada where "Canadian" laws mean nothing, and "Canadian" police have no power.
* Under self-government, Indigenous laws operate in harmony with federal and provincial laws. Indigenous laws protecting culture and language generally take priority if there is a conflict among laws
* However, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian Human Rights Act and other general laws such as the Criminal Code continue to apply
I don't really see how this is that challenging. It's just another jurisdiction with its own governance structure, just like what happens when you pass between regional districts, provinces and municipalities and the underlying various laws change.
> I don't really see how this is that challenging.
"Not challenging"? Ok, suppose you split the province of BC into 100+ of these independent indigenous-run jurisdictions, or maybe a bit less if any First Nations decide to amalgamate in the process.
What will actually make these jurisdictions independent / sovereign? What mechanism will they use to keep the power in the hands of indigenous people? Are the millions of non-indigenous people living in BC supposed to pack up and leave for their ancestors' countries, that they might have never been to? Or are they supposed to exist as second class citizens, deprived of democratic and property rights? What fraction of indigenous blood will be enough to get first class citizenship?
And don't cop out with "the indigenous people will decide these things". Obviously they will, if it comes to that. Show at least one feasible "not challenging" solution that they could possibly decide on, that would see such jurisdictions qualify as sovereign.
> just like what happens when you pass between regional districts, provinces and municipalities and the underlying various laws change.
Those Canadian jurisdictions are all governed by people who are elected by all Canadians living there, and all of those Canadians are also eligible to run for office, regardless of race. None of these types of jurisdictions could possibly give First Nations any meaningful sovereignty if their structure was applied to them, because these types of jurisdictions have no mechanism to ensure that indigenous people – or any other subset of people – will be in control, or will stay in control.
Jurisdictions with indigenous sovereignty would inevitably require aggressive race-based laws, and either a more distinctly two-class society, or a purge of non-indigenous people from Canada. You could say that this kind of thing is indeed "challenging", to say the least.
The significant thing that makes this less challenging than the bizarre and inflammatory fears in your last paragraph is that FNs are simply seeking jurisdiction over land use on their lands and over their people that are part of their FN.
You seem to be dreaming up scenarios that FNs themselves have not been advancing.
The day to day reality of someone who is not part of a FN that lives in an existing municipality doesn't change at all.
The most significant changes are for resource companies that seek to make use of crown land that now have to have additional conversations with a FN about resource projects instead of just the Province, and this is pretty much already the case and they're already doing this.
Maybe the worst case scenario for a typical British Columbian is that a backcountry enthusiast could find a potential activity limited by some FN that seeks to limit access to their lands.
> Maybe the worst case scenario for a typical British Columbian is that a backcountry enthusiast could find a potential activity limited by some FN that seeks to limit access to their lands.
And that's something that a lot of people have trouble with, but ultimately it's a potential outcome (hopefully avoidable!) that comes along with Canada ceding back some power and control to FNs they stole land from or negotiated treaties with that they immediately reneged on or ignored.
In all sorts of aspects people hate to lose things and have things taken away from them, and so that's why these discussions become such heated flashpoints.
Ultimately I think the strongest drive from FNs on these issues is simply to become masters of their own destiny and to benefit from the wealth of their lands; to seek an end to the sort of resource exploitation that Canada pursued through much of its history, extracting resource wealth from FN lands while returning little of that wealth back.
> resource companies that seek to make use of crown land that now have to have additional conversations with a FN about resource projects instead of just the Province, and this is pretty much already the case and they're already doing this.
Resource extraction companies most certainly do not consistently consult FN, in any case not the ones whose land they’re prospecting on. Source: about every other year the local FN boot out unwelcome mining companies that legally prospect on their sacred sites with no consultation. Unfamiliar helicopter activity is the only tell tale sign.
Officially consultations are required but writing to our representatives, they just reply those operations are legal and there is no problem, which is a problem in itself.
The main thing about land back and FN legal action strategy, as I understand it, is not so much about literally getting land back or kicking people out of their homes as seems to be a common fear, but rather about changing laws that continue to enforce their underlying colonial philosophy into modern days.
Oh yeah don't get me wrong, like inconsistent and inadequate consultation is still a problem, but we've at least gotten to the point where companies are recognizing that they should be and need to be doing consultation with FNs, which is a big step forward, and I expect this trend to continue.
The good resource companies are already doing consultation and getting local FNs on board before even talking with the Province. I've heard of examples of this recently.
The change that needs to happen and I expect will happen in the future is that the Province will make legislative changes to bring these expectations of consultation into requirements and to create more certainty from that.
You claim that I am "dreaming up", yet you refuse to say what exactly do you suppose indigenous sovereignty could look like.
Everything you just said is not sovereignty, it is already the status quo in 2024, yet there are zero First Nations in BC who are happy with the level of "sovereignty" they are currently getting, they all still want more, despite getting more land, more meaningful consultations, and more rights today than even a few years ago.
I think the confusing part is that the word "soverignty" isn't normally used to describe things like that.
Cities aren't normally "soverign". Soverignty traditionally implies absolute control of a piece of land, independent foreign policy/military, a seat at the UN, etc. That is quite different than limited self-government or even an atonomous territory.
I don't think the traditional type of soverignty is the type of soverignty first nations are seeking. If it were, i imagine Canada gov wouldn't exactly be cool with it.
This is essentially what we do in the United States. I've yet to see any problems from it. This is also why laws and treaties exist. How do you think the rest of the world works with multiple nation states close to one another? My counter question would be, would it be fair to give peoples land that first belonged to them as well as independence and then tell them what they can or can't do with that land? That would from my point of view be tantamount to an occupation
This is very much not what we do in the United States.
Rather, we forcibly uprooted, exterminated, and/or migrated indigenous people until they only occupied the most marginal land available, and then told them "here's your bit".
I would like to point out that’s way better than what most people did over the course of human history, certainly including a lot of those Native Americans themselves.
This is not what I'm arguing at all. We have been making (and largely breaking) treaties with indigenous peoples since before either country existed. But to say they didn't matter and that we still don't recognize them at all is completely ahistorical and out of touch with reality. Indigenous peoples in the US and Canada have worked hard to restore sovereignty. Your claim is completely ignoring that and recent precedents we've taken to right those wrongs. While it's not perfect (nor enough imo), it doesn't account to nothing
Times have changed and these peoples don't live the romanticized lifestyles of the olden times anymore. For the most part, they're just as modern and profit-seeking as any other group of Canadians. If you allow them to not have to adhere to Canadian law, you have a group of people that enjoy all the benefits and none of the restrictions of the country they live in. If you argue for sovereign rights, they should have their own separate countries, so they have to deal with any imbalances or environmental issues they create themselves.
>But on more practical grounds, this is creating a great big loophole for the traditional resource extraction companies to circumvent environment regulation by partnering with first nations on projects.
There's a certain demographic that can't accept that indigenous people might not be nature-worshipping druids that never pollute and are infallible stewards of the land, so through that lens of course they don't need to be subject to environmental regulations.
That may be true, but fundamentally this is about autonomy. These Nations do not necessarily fall under the jurisdiction of the National or Provincial government since they never ceeded their territory.
It's a bit of a grey area for sure, but this isn't about "giving the people of the forest" stewardship of the land in order for them to protect it, it's recognizing that they didn't sign up to be governed under the nation/province.
The idea that they do not fall under jusrisdiction is a farce and legal contrivance. In reality they have no international standing and do not and would not constitute an independent state under any normal criteria. What's happening here is the government is treating them with kid gloves because there is the perception what happened in the past is unfair (true!) and there is a desire to make amends for it. That's all well and good, let's just acknowledge it and call it what it is. If tomorrow they decided to start developing nuclear weapons I don't think "they didn't consent to be governed" would fly.
"If tomorrow they decided to start developing nuclear weapons I don't think "they didn't consent to be governed" would fly."
Any nation developing nuclear weapons will get serious problems from the nations who already have them. Native, or not.
And it used to not be necessary, to have "international standing" to have your own state. You just minded your own buisness and tried to get along with the local neighbors. As far as I understand, this is a compromise, to bring some of it back. They are still subject to most of federal law and that is not going to change. So there won't be a true souvereign native state inside of canada anytime soon.
Looking at realpolitik, I can see one path: Quebec independence. If it’s achieved within our lifetime, a sovereign Quebec might offer full independence to First Nations to get them to sign a dotted line to stop trying to be inside Canada.
It doesn't matter if they don't have international standing, what matters is that Canada has recognized them as sovereign entities. You can't be sovereign but then be boxed into the laws of another country
Exactly why they wouldn’t be sovereign nations except by Canada’s niceness. You can only be sovereign by having some form of strong leverage, either resources, power, or international support.
Except for the legal treaties Canada signed with them? This isn't Canada being like gee I guess it'd be woke of us to say you're a separate legal entity. This is based on treaties they've signed and being legally obligated to recognize the rights of a people
Legal treaties, or any kind of contract really, are only worth their paper as long as there is an underlying system with power to enforce them. I believe these nations have no standing in international courts; they have no armies, allies or resources. Upholding these treaties is entirely dependent on goodwill.
If Canada was to ignore them and take over all land, who would stop them? It is, in the end, Canada being nice. Is that such a terrible thing?
Canada is already a federal state with sub national entities that don’t have all the rights of the federal government. Pretty much any state that has a federal system already deals with this.,
2024 Canada is an absurd time and place to be alive.
Canada 2024:
- Universities have "Black only" swim hours and segregated "Person of Colour" buildings - "no whites allowed".
- Indigenous people get special treatment by courts (the courts were literally instructed not to hold them to the same standards as others)
- The courts now use the term "person with a vagina" to refer to women
- Land acknowledgements... Everywhere. What a waste of time and resources that accomplishes nothing
- (Of course, if we keep saying we stole their land -- they are going to want it back - and this is what we see in the courts)
- And this is just scratching the surface of whats happening
My wife works for a government organization, and even their internal emails have land acknowledgements in them. She has to take 1-2 days of DEI training per month.
... I could go on for hours. After living in various countries over the last ~15 years, moving back to Canada has turned out to be one of the worst choices I've ever made. And I'm at least lucky enough to be able to afford a house here.
What a strange view to call this an "absurd time and place to be alive" and that the "country is imploding". Lots here needs sources as it's hard to verify or taken out of context.
> Land acknowledgements... Everywhere
No they're not. They're heavily used within the government but in the private sector I have never experienced anyone doing a land acknowledgement.
> My wife works for a government organization, and even their internal emails have land acknowledgements in them. She has to take 1-2 days of DEI training per month.
Since I also have a partner working for a government organization and they don't have to do anything even remotely close to "1-2 days of DEI training per month" so this doesn't seem to be universally true.
> The courts now use the term "person with a vagina" to refer to women
Are you referring to the couple of times the supreme court has used that term? At least one of which dealt with sexual assault. You make it sound like courts universally use that term - that is false.
I have spent so much time in Canada and it is just unbelievable watching the country go more and more insane.
What I have read about the Harms act is so bat shit crazy that it is hard to believe it can be real. Then looking at polling on support of the bill it seems like that is what Canadians want.
I actually didn't know there are buildings that say "no whites allowed". How incredibly disturbing. All while electing a leader with multiple pictures in black face.
>"On moral grounds, I find it questionable to give some citizens special birth rights greater than others."
They did not ask to be a citizens of Canada. They were invaded, conquered, killed and actively suppressed. Mistreatment still continues. How's that for moral grounds?
Nobody born in Canada was asked to be a citizen of Canada. Nobody born to poor parents was asked to be born poor. Just treat everyone equally based on their own actions and merits, and their actual individual circumstances, not based on their broad ancestry.
Morality really only has relevance to an individual. Was it moral to invade Canada? No, at least not under contemporary morality.
Is it moral to give a random subset of people special rights in modern Canada? Is a seperate question, that has nothing to do with historical treatment.
My take is that the current government does not adequately represent several groups in Canada, and the best solution would be to allow for separatist actions as a fundamental human right.
I wonder if a more workable arrangement would stipulate that indigenous people are exempt from these regulations only when the work and management of a project is also designed and implemented by Indigenous people.
That would seemingly circumvent this loophole where a large, private corporation run by white canadians effectively uses the indigenous people as a loophole, cutting them in to circumvent regulations.
Wouldn't really help e.g. overfishing issues but seems directionally better.
Would be pretty easy for a motivated corporation to set up a branch composed entirely of those indigenous people for the purpose, or to form a partnership with a company of those indigenous people.
They're the rag tag survivors of genocide, perpetrated by white settlers, over the past 200 yrs.
Giving them a tiny fraction of their ancestral fishing rights back, now w that we've severely degraded the ecosystems they call home, is literally the least we can do.
> On moral grounds, I find it questionable to give some citizens special birth rights greater than others.
Kind of the point here is that it was happening the other way for a couple hundred years, so just abrogating current inequality still leaves one party as a disadvantage. The hard part is deciding when these catch-up priveleges have run their course. Since first nations metrics along the lines of economic status are still below the national average, it's clear we're not there just yet.
> Since first nations metrics along the lines of economic status are still below the national average, it's clear we're not there just yet.
Instead of rushing for race-based policies, how about implementing policies that would help all disadvantaged people equally without looking at their race.
You can't compensate for past racism with modern racism. It will never end. Canada will learn that the hard way, it seems.
I see you took Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s plan from way back in the 70s out of the moth balls and are now trying to pass it as new.
It cannot work. Our government signed binding treaties with independent nations in the past. Those treaties are still valid, and we cannot declare them null and void because it’s unfair that they give more fishing rights to 3% of people.
This isn't about treaties – BC signed very few treaties, unlike other provinces. The rights to fish come from a couple of very vague paragraphs in the constitution and the royal proclamation. They are very much free to interpretation, and the courts have been re-interpreting them for decades to match the contemporary social attitudes.
For example, does the constitution guarantee the indigenous people the right to subsistence fishing with traditional methods, or to large scale commercial fishing unlimited by any Canadian regulations, or something in between? None of that is defined in the constitution, it's all up for interpretation.
And this isn't about fishing either. No one's chanting #fishback around here, it's all #landback. 90%+ of BC land is currently public land that all Canadians are free to enjoy. Whether it stays public, or whether it is entirely privatized based on race, like the activists want, is a much bigger issue than who gets to overfish.
> The rights to fish come from a couple of very vague paragraphs in the constitution and the royal proclamation. They are very much free to interpretation, and the courts have been re-interpreting them for decades to match the contemporary social attitudes.
That is the supreme court's job. They decide how to interpret things. Their interpretation is law.
You say it like it's a good thing, but it's not. Specifically, the fact that our country's foundational document is so vague about our fundamental rights, is a very bad thing for everyone involved. If it was more specific, our fundamental rights would not only be more clear, they would also be more stable, not subject to the momentary (on a historical scale) whims of pop culture.
If our fundamental rights are subject to change every few years with a new Supreme Court decision, then we're either abusing the process to make these changes, or these rights should not be in the constitution in the first place. The constitution is supposed to contain the most fundamental, the most immutable rights.
We have a proper democratic process to update the constitution, but it requires a certain high level of consensus, as it should – these being our fundamental rights, after all. Yet this process is completely bypassed by activist judges who of course are happy to use the power that their predecessors afforded themselves. That is not a good thing in any way.
First Nations right have nothing to do with our constitution; it’s either treaties, or in the absence of it, a court agreeing to a nation asserting itself.
The treaties are literally part of the constitution.
Also section 25 & section 35 of the constitution act talk about treaty rights:
35 (1) The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed.
...
(3) For greater certainty, in subsection (1) treaty rights includes rights that now exist by way of land claims agreements or may be so acquired.
I used an unfortunate shorthand; I said constitution when I meant charter of rights.
My point still stands; the treaties were vague, but that's what both sides wanted in the past. That courts are taking a written passage that says: the right to freely fish for our nation, and then taking that to mean more than you can take your boat and go out, but to mean your nation can own fishing companies, then that's fine legally. After all, they can freely fish.
To change them to be restrictive, you cannot change our constitution. You need to negotiate new treaties with First Nations. Who have no incentive to sit down and negotiate for a worse deal, when we haven't even legally respected the previous deal for centuries.
So why not run programs along the lines of current economic status, which is relatively easy to objectively determine and relatively light on ethnic, racial, and national animus? It is impossible to do a good job of litigating history and it is guaranteed to make people hate each other.
This is absolutely the correct answer, all identity-based solutions are coarse and imprecise ways to solve a directly measurable problem (relative economic hardship). But the identity-based lever has proven too effective rhetorically and creates ample rent-seeking and self-enrichment opportunities to those wielding political power with an identity-based community. Plus, general means-based intervention is generally scary to the “wealthy” identity (cutting across all other identity divisions).
Complicating this calculation is the way that the 'catch-up rights' are provided via tribal mechanisms, which incentivizes 'chiefs' and 'council members'/'elders' to prolong the inequality so that they can maintain their power & control.
When the catch up is in the form of hiring quotas for a mining project on native lands, that’s just a consensual business deal and it’s positive.
But sometimes the situation is taken advantage of and the appeasement goes too far. Like instead of cutting firewood for the wood stove, you just throw all your furniture and cabinetry and doors in there. Then you just ask for new ones from a big company who just wants to quietly put this problem away without stirring up a fuss and risking their project or bigger costs later. That actually happened lol.
It’s not a race issue or a cultural issue. Natives are competent people. We may have different ancestral traditions, but we share exactly the same culture today. Where do you think the Canadian accent comes from? That’s a native accent. Our cultures mixed together.
If a business and a land owning band want to cut a deal, by all means. If the government and the bands want to settle land compensation, then settle it once and for all. It really just never ends as it stands. Like what does free post secondary have to do with land claims? It really looks like systemic racism.
And if the government was serious about any of this they’d give them autonomy in their lands. Statehood. That hasn’t happened. Why not? I get that you can’t sign over Vancouver because it’s been developed, but a lot of these places are in the bush.
It’s really a shit show. We’re not the rich country we once were. We can’t afford to pay billions forever on repeat just to make it go away for a little while. Settle it all immediately and make all races equal.
"Instead of cutting firewood for the wood stove, you just throw all your furniture and cabinetry and doors in there. Then you just ask for new ones..."
Having spent quite a bit of time on various reservations in Western Canada, I've literally seen this happen with my own eyes.
To do that you need to break international law by declaring the treaties signed in the past null and void. You also need to break international law by refusing to negotiate with nations who never signed treaties, and want deals at least as good as nations who signed treaties.
There’s a very good reason why what you’re proposing is not what’s happening: it’s because you’re dealing with nation to nation negotiations, and the other nations want nothing of fairness and equality. They want their full rights, and denying them that is turning back the clock decades.
How would it be breaking international law? Who would enforce it? Would the US stop trading with Canada because Canada nullified some treaties with a third party (ie. not the USA)? Would Germany invade Canada?
Treaties are just agreements and are broken all the time; for an obvious example look at trade treaties or weapons treaties. In the Canadian context the constitution states that Canada must maintain those existing treaties with Aboriginal tribes, but constitutions are changeable. Every other treaty is a mere act of Government away from nullification.
The whole current recounciliation is based on the premise that we will respect the treaties we didn’t in the past. Courts literally limited what was written in them in the past, in blatant disregard of common law.
You want to go in the direction of breaking them again, and making Canada look like a fool on the international stage.
> If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there.
What is happening now is that First Nations have leveraged the courts to force a rule of law country like Canada to actually follow through on obeying the rule of law and following through with treaties they had signed and agreements they had made.
What treaties? BC signed very few treaties, unlike other provinces. That's why those lawsuits are even considered. We can thank a bunch of long-dead British guys for that.
And let's not pretend that this has anything to do with the constitution or the rule of law. The actual "rules" in the source material are woefully under-specified and open to all kinds of interpretation, so the number one factor actually affecting these decisions is the social popculture that everyone in the country, including the justices, is subject to.
We simply have a bunch of unelected people effectively writing an important part of Canadian law for decades, because the elected people whose actual job it is to write such laws don't want to do it.
The situation in BC yeah largely without treaties gives the First Nations even more leverage to control their lands under claim because otherwise Canada has to somehow justify being a rule of law country and also stealing people's land in the year 2024.
Obviously it's not going to work, which is why the courts continue to rule in the favour of BC FNs.
The native nation, Squamish Nation, used to own the entire parcel of land immediately north of the 10 acres land mentioned in this article as a reservation granted by the former-colonial government (a native village stood in Vancouver downtown but the colonial gov forced them to move across the inlet).
But thru multiple forced relocations and unceded land take over, the reservation was gradually taken over.
>Slowly, from 1886 to 1902, Indigenous peoples were removed from their traditional village sites and homes and required to live on reserves. As the City grew around them, legislation was enacted that required all Indigenous peoples on reserve be removed if the population around them exceeded 1,000 settlers. In 1913, this happened at Sen̓áḵw. A barge arrived, and the residents were instructed to board the barge to receive funds from the Indian Agent. Once everyone from the village had boarded the barge, it was pulled from the beach and set adrift into English Bay. The village was then set on fire and burned to the ground. The owner of Cates Tugs, seeing the barge drifting precariously in the Bay, went to the rescue and towed the barge to Capilano Reserve, located in North Vancouver.
Thanks for the context, i did not realize that this was land that had been returned to the squamish nation. The previous reporting i'd seen on this developemnt made it sound like the parcel was the original treaty land.
Think this is great for Vancouver which needs more housing. The zoning is broken, and far too conservative. Glad to see the Squamish addressing a need that will likely benefit all, and hopefully this encourages the city of Vancouver to do the same on their own accord.
Yeah, this is great. The way I see it, potential sovereigns gain legitimacy by organizing things for the good of the people. Right now it looks like the exercise of Squamish sovereignty is in the interest of all people (except property leeches). In which case, by all means run the show. You're doing a better job than the other guys.
Building more homes in Vancouver will not result in lower prices because this is not a supply problem it is the financial assetization of home equity that drives higher and higher prices. Blue collar workers turned multi-millionaires rely on the continued rise of home prices to purchase cheap credit which they use to speculate on more homes. When they couldn't find anymore locals they turned to the international market to sell their bags. Now these 20k homes ppl are celebrating are NOT going to be sold under market prices no matter how much reddit and hn crowd wants it to be true. It will only stabilize the prices at current inflated levels.
Be careful what you wish for. The only type of housing they are building is not white picket fenced backyard with a shed that is being converted to homes but high/low rise apartments primarily for rental, a hotbed for crime.
Since David Eby overrode the strata no-rental rules, while not responsible it resulted in huge increase in cases of squatters, petty theft, drug labs and brothels. This does not include what a retired VPD officer describes as an "Amazon of drug labs and brothels" which is familiar to vancouver high rise but now its even easier for criminals. Vice reporters were even reporting on it years ago but now these cases are accelerating since Eby stepped in a populist spirit.
I'm all for alleviating housing situation but we need to stop and ask if those people who are demanding/feel entitled to it really have the necessary income to justify it. Often I see people making 60k CAD/year lamenting how they can't find a home to live in. You can't afford anything in developed urban centres except in emerging economies.
So I think rather than building more housing we need to ask who really has merit to be here and the biggest determining factor is income not how long you lived in Vancouver like certain demographic of locals are suggesting which is basically dogwhistling to say the market forces should not apply to them because of their skin colour.
Simply blaming this on local housing policy failure like reddit does when housing prices has been appreciating all over the world, not just Vancouver, is myopic. There are cities that are far more dense than vancouver and has even more ridiculous real estate prices. They love Vancouver and the blue collar Canadian workers that bought their homes after 6 month of work in the 70s, 80s are not desperate to sell as they have nowhere else to go.
Lot of people are being setup for major disappointments if they think vancouver home prices are coming back down to 2012 prices. There is simply no way to force homeowners to sell when they have no urgency or financial stress to do so. over 50% of homeowners in Vancouver do not have mortgages.
> Since David Eby overrode the strata no-rental rules, it ended up increasing cases of squatters, petty theft, drug labs and brothels. This does not include what a retired VPD officer describes as an "Amazon of drug labs and brothels" throughout vancouver high rise. I mean Vice reporters were even reporting on it years ago.
David Eby has been premier since October 2022, strata property act happened soon after in November. Maybe, just maybe, the squatters, petty theft, drug labs and brothels aren't a result of the strata changes. Certainly not the ones that Vice reporters reported on years ago.
It's funny how the people who sling this as an insult so often have a literal deed/title and are pursuing policy that pumps its value to the detriment of others.
Local housing policy only sets housing costs explicitly if they override market forces e.g. via rent control. There are plenty of examples of how the market responds to this type of intervention, by not building more supply, letting existing supply fall into disrepair and constricting uncontrolled supply, resulting in much higher market rate.
In general, housing policy affects supply, and market forces decide the prices. Notably increasing supply doesn't always lower prices as demand is elastic.
They override market forces explicitly with zoning rules that forbid building more housing. The ability to produce more supply in response to demand is the market at work. That’s why everyone who complains that rent control distorts the market can be ignored unless they are also complaining about zoning, building codes and permit processes.
The political system does not strive for affordability, it strives to make housing a good investment. Unaffordability is just the inevitable consequence.
Housing is extremely expensive in China as well. It’s one of the main barriers to Chinese yuppies having the three kids their government wants them to.
Isn't China having a real estate overproduction crisis right now? There can be different problems in different places, I mean, it's a big country, but that's mostly the opposite problem.
The hukou system also can't help - you can stop immigration to an expensive city but presumably you also stop emigration to a cheaper one.
Home prices in Canada and US have been climbing at insane rates pretty much everywhere, including rural areas. People in cities tend to ignore market force because they’re only focused on their city.
I do not own a home so I can't be a NIMBY. If you understood remotely what is taking place here in the Western world, you wouldn't be saying this.
Instead what you should be describing is a inverse colonialism in the West where NIMBYs are the benefactors treating everybody like serfs. Those NIMBYs were blue collar workers in the 70s, 80s who bought when homes cost next to nothing, and now oppressing everybody.
Be careful when you throw around accusations of racism just because somebody has a different view that you can't even offer a rebuttal on. I take it you didn't even read about my sliding income rental proposal in the other comment.
I know this because you logged in after 3 months just to write some half assed comment without offering anything insightful. This is why there is so much stagnation, people like you simply brush off anything they don't understand (because they can't even pay attention if its not a short video format) as racism.
Houses there are a luxury, you would need to be a multimillionaire to buy something there.
Also, most of Vancouver is zoned for sfh, check a zoning map.
Your entire comment can be summarized as:
Build buildings-> more rentals -> lower price -> lower income can afford it -> poor people are criminals.
I lived there for 2 years, and a local tech salary was barely enough to afford living in downtown/near downtown renting an apartment.
Incorrect. There are affordable homes outside city of Vancouver. Vancouver itself is now rezoning for multistory units and converting shed into housing.
Building more supply when you have inelastic demand is unrealistic and will do nothing to the price. As I've said it is the banking relationships of those multimillion dollar homes that is fueling this speculative bubble from locals + foreigners. The only way to attack this problem is to start from the root. Banks are incentivized to give HELOC because many Canadian retirees are relying on it for their livelihood and why would banks kick their own bee hive.
If you lived here for 2 years then you would know where False Creek is and why building 20,000 units around one of the most expensive area is NOT going to result in trickle down effect like most are claiming.
I'm suggesting rental controls that is on a sliding scale based on income NOT based on how long you lived in Vancouver which is what a certain political elements are trying to pull.
If somebody is making 60k/year they are not going to own homes period and its irresponsible to give them that insane leverage without auditing. Somebody making 600k/year should own homes because the sliding scale model would make their rental expensive.
Your other point conflating low income as criminals is another attempt to shove words in my mouth. I said these rental units attract criminal elements not that poor people are committing crimes (as you wrongfully assumed). If you lived here you would know these are kids from upper middle class joining gangs and becoming drug dealers. I don't have an answer to why that is. Could be the result of pluralnational dynamics creating isolated disenfranchised second gen.
If you wish to have a worthy discussion that will yield new insights I'm all ears but so far all I've seen people attacking me, they are purposefully infatuated with their own fixed (incorrect) workings of supply & demand (elastic) to a highly inelastic demand market.
You misunderstood me because you didn't read what I wrote carefully but I don't care to convince you of your biases. I don't have time for this BS anymore.
Listen my neighbour just died. He was a struggling renter. I'm deeply saddened by this and everybody struggling. I know its even harder to leave behind what's familiar but it's not going to get better but the longer you stay in a financially strapped situation and waiting for a bailout from the government the more you suffer. This is why I'm telling people to forget about this miserable city and look elsewhere as I am.
The Canadian government is taking 60% of my income. Why isn't it being used to alleviate this situation?! My sadness is turning into anger and disappointment.
That's for federal income tax. In BC the top provincial income tax bracket is 20.5%, so a total 53.5%. I assume the person is also including property tax, EI, MSP premiums or other vaguely government related payments, or rounding up pretty generously to get to 60%.
Land back policy could be a very interesting win-win loophole for allocating new land for the purposes of redevelopment without consulting NIMBYs. A sort of accidentally leftist eminent domain. Of course, thats a bit insensitive and would be asking indigenous groups to fall on our sword for our political gain. In exchange for billions of dollars of land. And that would be bad? Unless..?
In some cities in the west like Palm Springs the reservation already owns like half the city in a sort of checkerboard pattern. Despite the fact this is expensive palm springs you still see the same old “reservation” style development of a casino and couple story hotel rather than big huge towers of hotels and condos like in miami beach. Maybe there really is no market for something like that in palm springs, or, there are larger forced that put a thumb on what these reservations are allowed to do with the land under their domain.
I say this all as a YIMBY who is very happy to see 20k new units added to vancouver: something feels off about the plans for the Jericho lands but I can't describe it.
I feel like when you have these mega developments where 10 condos go up all at once in the space of a few blocks, they end up as "bedroom neighborhoods", where people sleep but don't do anything else. There are a lot of these happening in Canada right now. There's one on Victoria in Waterloo. Concord place in Toronto is another example. I don't see street life there. I only see people going to or coming from somewhere else.
The best neighborhoods are the ones where there is a broad-strokes master plan, but beneath that, some amount of decentralization in implementation. Then you get a diversity of ideas about how to live all in one place.
It's not exactly what you're getting at, but you might enjoy Christopher Alexander's essay "A City is not a Tree". It also talks about why highly planned cities can end up not working and feeling "right" in the way that older more incrementally-grown ones can.
Take Tokyo for example. It’s ugly and massive and sprawling but, connected with amazing transit, there is not only plenty of housing for everyone at all income levels, but the place is also just totally rad.
It would be more convincing to rage against planning if the backdrop wasn't a situation clearly created by the complete absence of planning. Obviously there's a middle ground. This isn't it.
I think the tough part is it's hard to master plan these thing sometimes. Is it better to limit restrictions and let people put coffee shops and bars where they want?
It seems like it had othe problems apart from being discontinuous from the city. There are lots of areas like this in the US which are contiguous with the city, that still end up as dead zones.
Did anyone really believe this was a good idea? I feel like the developers' need to turn a profit and the government's need to impose itself don't leave any good ideas on the table. Instead they focus on packaging up the same bad ideas just with different marketing.
When it inevitably doesn't work as promised, they just say oops, and move onto the next project.
I think the lack of organic place making is hard, but certainly not impossible. The example I listed suffered from insufficient place making (which one day may yet appear).
The pedestrian and shopping areas are linearized instead of polycentric as you would see in an urban core limiting mobility and discovery of the local businesses that make an urban landscape thrive. Additionally a limited variety in offerings of real estate limit the use patterns of a place. For example there stretches along the main way that form a barren pedestrian zone (among those are freeway underpasses, giant shopping centers and large office blocks).
Why its hard to replicate the organic formation of these places is that markets and public will, over time, evolve the space into the best value use. Of course, put enough people living in an area and urban life will emerge as people fill out coffee shops, theaters, etc. -given policy accommodative to mixed use development.
Here are two highly cherrypicked illustrations of my point.
If the old city centers are crowded and expensive because they're so desirable, then why do we need any new solution? Can't we just copy paste the old stuff outward in every direction in concentric circles from the old downtown?
I've never understood all the headscratching on this topic. Everyone likes charming little streets, plazas, coffee shops, locally owned restaurants. Just let people have it!
It really is! Americans like myself feel the magnetic energy of old European city centers yet we relegate them to vacation rather than import them here.
My only guess as to why developments don't achieve this is that the most desirable outcomes to society is that all stakeholder interests can't possibly be seen within a development plan. With that a more narrow band of priorities are emphasized and bureaucratic processes lead to a rationalized and simplified plans rather than the controlled chaos that incremental and democratic growth creates.
(in the same way a product manager may propose a box to be the product shape - if profitability and volume is prioritized, and the box shape is explainable to regulators and management. While if the product had been iterated through organic public reception, it will evolve to take an ergonomic shape formed and validated by users over years).
I disagree about master plan neighborhoods being better. It's just way too much ownership, control, and responsibility for one developer or one period of time, usually. Imo, master planned neighborhoods are an optimistic dismissal of the idea that organic evolution of a neighborhood should be allowed to happen, and a massive bet on whatever gets built being great. Often this takes place as a huge cul-de-sac suburb with one place designated for a gas station and a few shops, or as just an isolated parcel where most of the businesses end up being franchises and people drive out to visit other places rather than shopping nearby. In the prairies, these developments build over wetlands on the outskirts where land is cheapest and it's all boilerplate garbage that the developer has decided in advance it's probably everything everyone needs. A sort of "This is where the houses go, this is where the commercial is, here's the rest of the city". Everything ends up looking pretty samey and dull.
In other cases, when it happens in a city, like in Burnaby or Oakridge, it ends up displacing in some way or another way more people than is necessary, because they have a grand vision to replace 10 blocks of housing or something.
I think you're basically describing a typical suburb and I agree those suck. However I live pretty close to the Jericho lands and there's plenty going on here. Both 4th & broadway are nearby with lots of shopping/dining etc. and there are big parks/beaches nearby. I think the neighbourhood will get even better with more residents.
Yeah it's hardly an inactive place; I'm sure as the towers go up some of the single story houses will sell and Broadway will expand. Especially as the new skytrain stations go in
This honestly sounds pretty chill to me. Having residential neighborhoods that are quieter, but still close to downtown and accessible on public transit, seems like a great situation for me. Not everyone wants to live in the hustle and bustle of downtown.
Someone at Westbank is a genius: fund the building of a massive skyscraper project on land that was recently returned to indigenous tribes because of a lawsuit, a project that would never be normally approved because of zoning laws. Then, declare any criticism of the project as racist, thus guaranteeing it will be built. I wonder how much of the money the tribe is actually getting out of this?
It's acceptable to me - none of my business. But it's corporate money building this project, which we should be clear about. It's just built on native land.
At the end of the day you need to pay someone to swing a hammer.
When the City of Vancouver built its own below market city owned apartment at Main and 7th they hired local developer Marcon to build it. Marcon also builds for-profit condos all across the region.
"Corporate money" being involved in the creation of housing is pretty unavoidable.
I guess the point I was trying to make is that the public is being manipulated by the moral framing of this project. The buildings would not be normally allowed in that area, and the proponents of project are using an explicit racial justice narrative to counteract criticism of their violation of norms. I'm agnostic about whether or not the project is good idea, but I think it's generally bad to manipulate people in this way. What I was implying is that the whole thing seems like a really clever scheme by a real estate developer during a time in Canada when indigenous issues are hugely popular. But, maybe I am being too cynical.
The moral framing almost certainly a part of the strategy to get the public to accept the projects. But at the same time, I'm not sure the moral framing (that natives should have more autonomy over their ancestral land) is incorrect, or detracts at all. Is an appeal to ethics really "manipulation" if you agree with the underlying ethical principle? Or is it just emphasizing a point that we have ignored for too long?
> the proponents of project are using an explicit racial justice narrative to counteract criticism of their violation of norms.
Pretty easy to do when some of the criticism indeed sounds kinda racist. Example from the article:
> In 2022, Gordon Price, a prominent Vancouver urban planner and a former city councillor, told Gitxsan reporter Angela Sterritt, “When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building.”
I'm sorry, but does he expect indigenous people to only build log cabins forever or something? Maybe they should also forgo cars and buses and only use horses?
It seems like he's expressing criticism over the racial narrative that this is an "indigenous way of being" building project instead of another corporate development that happens to be built on indigenous land.
Obviously, no one is expecting indigenous people to use ancient building techniques that haven't been used in centuries, but the groups behind the project are making the explicit claim that the project is somehow tied to a racial identity. Criticizing their claim is perfectly reasonable.
The thing is, you don't need racism to make the adjacent residents seem like the people they are, it's just one more reason to build spite towers. They're standard rich boomers who'll show up to every hearing and persistently move the goal posts until any change is impossible, and they're on record doing so in a way that's beyond embarassing.
The answer is that no, there is no zoning in that area because that parcel of land is not subject to City of Vancouver zoning laws, being not part of the City of Vancouver. The adjacent properties are part of the City of Vancouver, and therefore are subject to zoning that the City of Vancouver chooses to impose upon them. That zoning could be removed if city hall so chooses, but Kitsilano NIMBYs would oppose it. But city hall cannot define zoning rules for land that is not within their jurisdiction, so the NIMBYs have no voice. Just like, say, UBC is also not subject to City of Vancouver municipal zoning rules. Nor is Nanaimo. Nor Haida Gwaii.
This kind of begs a sort of “yes and..” line of questioning. Zoning permitting these things didn't happen because nimbys, right, I get that. But, why are the people just outside the reservation nimbys, and the people in the reservation yimbys? What messaging was used to lead to this dichotomy of opinions? I’m not so sure, but the answer to that question would likely make it possible to do such things elsewhere, even without a reservation legal loophole, since most places seem to have mechanisms to issue variances to zoning which would get used if messaging made such things popular.
There are still rules in place, indeed, just not for zoning.
So I don't see how getting rid of zoning rules there suddenly gives those areas any more power to sign sovereign treaties than it would to any other area in the US that decided to have lax zoning rules.
It's not really that complicated of a concept that you can deregulate one specific thing, but keep all regulations outside of that in place.
> Then, declare any criticism of the project as racist
One criticism quoted in the article is this:
> "When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building."
Which is indeed literally racist. Like White can build towers using concrete but other people should stick with small wood structures or whatever. Spoiler: technology is spreading among people around the world, and Chinese, Arab, Japanese, etc. built skyscrapers despite it not being their traditional way of building.
From the Empire State Building to the George Washington Bridge, and the glory that was the World Trade Center—Mohawk people helped build them all.
Mohawk ironworkers have built bridges and skyscrapers for more than 100 years.
Race-baiting manipulation against NIMBY zoning laws. Personally, none of the sides provoke any sympathy.
However, what's important is the law. If they have proved their right to the land in court, that's the only thing that should really matter. And aside from the PR manipulation, a corporation building residential buildings is obviously a positive thing, providing value for everybody involved: their shareholders, land owners and future residents. The only who suffers are their neighbours who tried to prop up their property values by strangling development.
I mean some of the opponents have been obtusely racist in their criticism. One example is imploring the tribes to use "traditional" indigenous building techniques. As if that is supposed to mean they should be building as if they were in the 19th century.
You're being downvoted, but people should look at this through the lens of it being a massive real estate deal rather than as a civil rights issue, which it is not. Of course there's shady stuff going on if you scratch the surface, didn't you see the part where real estate developers are involved? Unless we're making the laughable (and patronizing) assumption that massive urban residential real estate deals are vaccinated from corruption if first nation tribal members are involved.
> people should look at this through the lens of it being a massive real estate deal rather than as a civil rights issue
People can look at it however they please, and each take can have nuance, but the classic "Well you're all dumb if you think someone isn't corrupt here" is not new, not interesting, and not evident, it's just plausible.
No matter what the issue is, there's some pissed off person that thinks they've got the often suspiciously nebulous take that nobodies thought about and serves no purpose but to try cast aspersions at an otherwise novel and probably positive thing. "Don't forget about this hypothetical non-specific negative possibility! Someone could be corrupt guys!"
It's ok to hold two ideas in your head at the same time. On one hand, no process with huge money involved can be vaccinated from corruption. On the other, there's a brutal amount of displacement and wealth inequality in Vancouver that's particularly intense among indigenous people. We want to see the city evolve in a way that brings people who aren't property boomers or literal billionaires into a viable future, and reasons to be optimistic are scarce.
The fact that the PNW is as expensive as the Bay area or even SoCal is a travesty. At least the first nation people figured out how to break the planning commission nonsense and took charge in their own communities. So long as they keep out the foreign hot funny money that made the regular cities too expensive they'll do just fine.
To be fair the PNW still has pretty good weather, gorgeous nature, good infrastructure (natural and man-made) and a varied economy. It'd be weird if it _wasn't_ expensive.
I wouldn’t be so optimistic about this not getting bankrolled by foreign investors, especially if you consider Canadians foreign investors, but they’ll do fine regardless.
It’s a pretty interesting development. I wonder what the legal framework for someone living there will be if they’re not a First Nation citizen?
From the article:
“ But Indigenous nations are accountable, first and foremost, to their own citizens. That could mean temporarily barring access to traditional lands, as in Joffre Lakes. It could also mean maximizing the economic potential of their property, to provide housing and funds to support education, health care and community growth. ”
In terms of land/home ownership, what it has meant in other parts of the metro area, is leaseholds. You can “buy” a property at a slightly reduced cost which will be reclaimed after several decades (100 years?), usually starting from the time of development.
In terms of laws, policing is handled by the local police force, ie. VPD. While there is rhetoric about sovereignty, practically speaking much of the challenging problems are still handled by the Crown’s government and not by tribes.
I remember reading that natives are not allowed to sell tribal lands in Canada
Might not be a huge bar though , they could put it up as rental property which we desperately need in Canadian cities - and their website suggests that's exactly what they're doing
I don’t think they would be limited to rentals given the leasehold titles he mentions as a likely framework. The same is true of national lands or parks — you can buy a property in the Banff townsite, or on Port Authority lands, for instance, but it’s a leasehold title and the land reverts to the crown at expiry.
Leaseholds are very common in Hawaii due to similar ownership, although here it’s privately owned land by native orgs in most cases, because the Hawaiians specifically voted down reservation-like agreements to maintain what sovereignty they have left. It works out pretty good here, buildings are routinely demolished and bigger ones grow in the place. Most of the land like this is in town, commonly Waikiki hotels and apartments are leasehold. We’re still having a very horrible housing crisis here, though.
Really? Seems very different. There are some leaseholds on reservations near my cottage and "owning" one does not mean what you think it means. On a normal property as long as you pay your taxes it's yours in perpetuity, and the value tends to rise over time. With a leasehold it's never "yours" and can be taken away at a future date. The value approaches zero as the lease approaches its end date, since there's no guarantee it will be extended, so the property depreciates over time. This also has the effect of making any buildings on the property fairly dilapidated as the end-date nears, as the buildings can/will be confiscated with the lease (there's no incentive for the owner to maintain them).
Vancouver has sky high real estate prices, particularly in terms of local wages. There is limited land as Vancouver is locked between the ocean and mountains (and the border to the United States). But go look at any aerial view of Vancouver and you'll really see why.
Downtown is high-density. Across the water it's basically all single-family homes with astronomical prices and none of those people want higher-density development, for obvious reasons (ie it will lower prices).
This shouldn't be allowed to happen. This proposed development is on the other side of the water in what is otherwise SFH zoning. That's why some oppose it. NIMBYs strike again.
The housing itself is badly needed and I'm looking forward to that, but beyond that, as an appreciator of NW Coast Indigenous art, I'm looking forward to the public realm art. This is a fantastic opportunity for the Squamish and other MST nations to showcase art from their best and from young emerging artists in their community.
It will be interesting to see if this project ends up being seen as a success or a failure as things evolve, hopefully it inspires zoning reforms if it works out. I expected the article to be race-baity because of the gross comments here but no, it's pretty fair overall and apparently HN isn't above bringing up anti-white rhetoric unprompted.
1. Settlers colonize indigenous lands, drive indigenous people into small parcels and reservations and try to exterminate their culture.
2. Settlers decide to start refusing to build enough housing for themselves because they don’t want to alter the “character of the neighborhood” after… uhh… very much doing that.
3. Indigenous people build housing on their remaining bits of land for settlers, make tons of money off it.
K, yeah, I think I got it.
Maybe there’s a solution for California in here: decolonize!
Who were the indigenous people who inhabited the Bay Area? If they’re still around, push a big decolonizing movement to return some land to them. Place looks like Tokyo in 20 years.
“Okay, okay, we suck, you can have your ancestors land back. Just can you let me reserve a condo when they go on sale?”
Then watch all the Bay Area lefty 60s homeowners suddenly become white nationalists. Their ideology is probably downstream of their home equity.
Different structure though. These folk are preservationists and only decided to fight for the place once the parking lot was going to be replaced. Overall, it's not a bad play, though. 36% profit underperforms the loan over the period, but it's not nothing.
So developer wants to build on land they legally own, indigenous complain and get the city to block development and then to use tax-payer dollars to help them buy it, and then they will turn around and develop it themselves?
Shh. Make sure the tribe’s leadership knows to stay quiet for a while until they can pick up a few more parcels before unveiling their plans to exceed the height of the Burj Khalifa.
I’m obviously half joking here. No intent to be insensitive. Even if they don’t build anything it’s better than a parking lot.
When they rip up the asphalt and find no significant bones or artifacts in the marsh underneath, any plans for a cultural interpretive center are going to turn into a mural and some bronze sculptures in the middle of newly designed Ohlone Towers.
There's no amenities in that neighborhood besides a quiet 4 lane street with some burger places on it. The beach is close by but there's just not that much room to build stuff for all these people to do. It'll be a boring place to live. Vancouver's walkable but the nearest main area is a twenty minute walk up the hill in one way, or a twenty minute walk across a noisy bridge the other way. If you know Vancouver you know that a twenty minute walk to get anywhere is significant. Unrelated, but a mildly interesting tidbit is that this development will be across the street from Lululemon's headquarters.
Everyone is really happy to concede some power to another group as long as that group is seen as completely harmless, and they continue to do that out of guilty, knowing that they completely replaced the other group. It really gets interesting is when the other group starts to gain power and assert its power, as being done here. At some point, tables may turn and said group may become again the top dog. It probably won't happen in our lifetime, but these things do happen over centuries - to the point people actually forget who the powerful group was before.
A simple example: the Tatars in Krimea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Tatars). Once, they invaded and took it over from its original inhabitants (descendants of Greeks and Sarmatians, a very different people). Over a long time, however, they become minority again, specially after they were mostly removed by the Soviets and today they are a minority group (the Eurovision winner in 2016, Jamala, for Ukraine, sang about the Tatars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamala).
The indigenous population is gradually increasing over time, which is a curious thing in a country whose leader who has confessed to presiding over an active genocide against them.
It would take many generations of this trend happening for the Indigenous to become big players, but also not THAT long, maybe a couple hundred years.
I don't believe Justin Trudeau ever admitted to _presiding_ over an _active_ genocide. He was referring to the deaths of those in residential schools. Those were effectively shut down in the 80's - when Mr. Trudeau was still a child.
I think it would be more accurate to say that he acknowledged that there were tremendous harms inflicted by both the government and the church both before and after confederation, and that those harms rise to the level of what he considers to be genocide. There still exist wrongs that are being done to First Nations today (by the Liberal government no less), but there's no way that Mr. Trudeau would categorize those as genocide, full stop.
Also a reminder that as of yet, none of the mass grave sites of the last few years have been excavated, and ground-penetrating radar is insufficient to make a claim of a mass grave site. There is copious evidence of barbarous acts taking place at residential schools, however the media furor over these specific reports were premature, and we simply don't have solid data for these sites.
given the price of real estate in Vancouver and the fact that this is in Kitsilano (one of the hippest / priciest neighbourhoods in the city), I don't even want to know the kind of money involved
This development is being built on the waterfront across False Creek from downtown; it is prime real estate. Given that + being brand new, units will sell far above the Vancouver average. As a guess, studio units in this complex will start at 750k, 1 beds at 1m and 2beds at 1.5m. Maybe higher.
Most people on HN always repeat the sentiment that if you build more housing, prices will fall. I think you're right, these will sell for far above average. We don't have a housing shortage problem, we have a housing turned into a financialized asset problem.
It’s an asset due to its scarcity. If you remove the scarcity, it won’t be an asset. Financial asset managers buy real estate because they trust that silly people who think the demand for real estate is infinite will block new development allowing them to make money.
the thing is that these being available frees up other units, and you need to build enough for this to actually result in falling house prices. Canada and the US are generationally behind on building housing and so this effect will take many projects like this to show up.
Rich people do not pack up and leave in the absence of luxury housing. They settle for the next best unit, and then the people who would've booked that unit settle for their next best unit, and the shit continues rolling downhill. You have people spending thousands of dollars a month to live in Manhattan in buildings originally built as tenements.
The newly developed housing isn’t meant to be the one that is cheap. What gets cheaper is the old housing people left behind to get into the new housing.
And if a city cannot build as fast as people flowing into the city, then there will never be “housing left behind”.
Sure, my point was that City of Vancouver averages are going to be higher than GVRD and that average condo cost doesn’t mean a lot when it includes condos from places like Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Langley and even Surrey.
Sorry, I think I was unclear in that original comment once I read the replies and read it back.
GVRD/Metro Vancouver encompasses Vancouver and surrounding cities, as far east as Langley and Port Moody. The prices decrease quite a bit as you get further away from Downtown Vancouver and the city in general.
“Other cities” in my original comment meant these outlying ones, not ones outside of the GVRD. The prices in False Creek are going to be much higher than the GVRD average.
How is anyone supposed to pronounce this if they're not from Vancouver and haven't been exposed to indigenous culture there? You'd think they'd include an English approximation or a link to an audio recording. I don't think the average person has the time or energy to resolve 3 stacked diacriticals and a consonant juxtaposition.
If only people would read to the end before reacting.
I have no plans to ever visit Vancouver or indeed Canada; I'm interested in how the word is pronounced for the purpose of reading the article. It's not worth it to me to spend half an hour figuring out the pronunciation of a single word. I'm already multilingual and familiar with a range of diacritical marks; it might take other people much longer to put it together. That's why it would make sense for the writers of an English-language article to provide some sort of pronunciation pointer.
> it might take other people much longer to put it together.
Well then they can be upset about it.
> I have no plans to ever visit Vancouver or indeed Canada
That's a shame, it's a beautiful place, but clearly the article is irrelevant to you.
> It's not worth it to me to spend half an hour figuring out the pronunciation of a single word.
Well then you don't have to, and the world continues spinning madly on. Took me about 2 mins though, didn't seem like something to be so stressed about. If you already aren't authentically curious or interested in visiting, then that's your business.
I lived in Connecticut when the Mashantucket Pequot tribe successfully sued for the right to build casinos on their land, resulting in Foxwoods, the first of many casino developments on Native land from coast to coast. It was all over the news. Today, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun are tourist attractions, and the casinos create jobs in Native communities and bring in buttloads of money.
Personally, I hate casinos. I'm not too fond of high rises either. But if Native American and First Nations people are doing things with their land that bring autonomy and benefits to their community, we'd be stupid to object -- and that's before bringing up the treaty violations.
While NIMBYs of all different types (boomers, degrowters wining about "affordability", 'ecologists' and people talking about "character of the area" about some parking lot waste everybody's time) glad to see someone is actually doing stuff
I think this is terrific. It's high time the indigenous people reclaimed their sovereignty. The idea that "When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building" is just ridiculous. Who the fuck are you, white man, to say what is and is not consistent with an "Indigenous way of building"? You aren't living the same lifestyle and building the same buildings that your ancestors were hundreds of years ago, why should they? I say: more power to the (Indigenous) people!
I think the quote is from a white man called Gordon Price.
Full quote to assist you.
"In 2022, Gordon Price, a prominent Vancouver urban planner and a former city councillor, told Gitxsan reporter Angela Sterritt, “When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building."
"White man" can be used in that form when the white man appears to be telling a different culture what they can or cannot do or be.
Five year olds and internet commenters care about things being even-handed and fair.
The rest of the world either settles their matters or employs lawyers to do so for them. Most time settlement is a disappointing serving a crow, hence the glint of involving the courts. How much will that serving of crow cost?
Why do I bring this up? This “replace X with Y” is the ultimate form of an algebraic rhetoric that demands a fully balanced system of mathematical perfection as if this were a reasonable way to go about things.
“White man” is not racist, it is a self-describing short term for Eurocentric supremacy and a quote from Kipling. As such it is not replaceable by Black/Red etc. Everyone can use it in such context as a metaphor, not as a racial reference.
Edit: previously my message included some poor choice of words, which I will keep here for history and an example of accidental bias: “White men are absolutely allowed to use it as a slur towards other white men.”
Feel free to suggest another term for a person of European origin and Eurocentric education who is lecturing indigenous people on how to live. Modern discourse isn’t about physical characteristics at all, even it does have roots in old racial theory. It’s certain views, it’s identity and culture. If someone behaves like in Kipling’s poem, he is the white man, not because of his race, but because of his actions.
Haha, now I got you and apologize for inaccurate choice of words. Those bells didn’t ring, as I’m not American and not native speaker. Of course, everyone can use it.
I disagree. It's an ad hominem point. Comments should focus on ideas. Race based commentary like this is a discredit to one's own argument and character.
You could take the word fuck out of the original comment and it would still have the clear reasoning that Gordon Price as a white person should not be telling an indigenous group that what they want to do is not the "Indigenous way".
Any person, white, black, asian, whatever, can however assess whether this development is in line with the indigenous tradition or something that might distort or endanger it.
Or do you think the same discussion doensn't happen within the indigenous community as well?
Most outsiders lack the understanding of what indigenous way of life entails beyond stereotypes, and are therefor poor judges. Besides, indigenous culture has been distorted and endangered by oppresssion, the least we can do as outsiders is let them reclaim and rebuilt their traditions how they want it.
"indigenous tradition or something that might distort or endanger"
Are certain groups not allowed to change? Why use the word distort or endanger?
We aren't talking about the discussions inside the community. We are talking about people outside the community applying judgements to their decisions and actions.
It's irrelevant to "does this follow indigenous tradition or violate it" point, which is the point discussed in the subthread - not tribal lands/indigenous rights.
Why would Indigenous people have to follow tradition? I believe it is racist (or sexist) to say that a group of people cannot do something because that is not something they've done in the past.
For Mr Gordon Price to imply that a group should not do something because it has not been done before is him trying to deny their agency.
No one said they do. The article provides no background or context from which one could conclude an implication that "a group should not do something because it has not been done before." He didn't say that. The article attempts very poorly to imply that meaning. You've created a dummy to punch and you're punching it. Unfortunately this is all too common. It's called a straw man fallacy.
I wouldn’t call it a slur. To the extent it’s an effective insult, it’s due to centuries of behavior by white men. If someone uses “white man” to call out certain behavior, it might be worth their target considering why they got called out. Maybe sometimes it’s unfair to the white man to be called out, but often it isn’t. For folks who find it troublesome or disturbing to not receive the benefit of the doubt about their intentions as a white man, consider how much benefit of the doubt is given in everyday contexts to pretty much any individual who is not a white man.
Aren't you worried about the consequences of supporting generalizations over a group from the actions of their members? I learned at an early age that that's not OK, but it seems to be changing again, as long as the target is in a specific group.
I wouldn’t call it a slur. To the extent it’s an effective insult, it’s due to centuries of behavior by black men. If someone uses “black man” to call out certain behavior, it might be worth their target considering why they got called out. Maybe sometimes it’s unfair to the black man to be called out, but often it isn’t. For folks who find it troublesome or disturbing to not receive the benefit of the doubt about their intentions as a black man, consider how much benefit of the doubt is given in everyday contexts to pretty much any individual who is not a black man.
Find out what you're complaining about before getting race-baited into hating someone. The context of his statement might have made it perfectly reasonable. This article is obviously trying to paint everyone and their dog as a racist so don't trust it to be open about the context.
I think you need to provide some links with context because the article makes a compelling case that people are trying to block an indigenous group from exercising their agency.
Do we know that it's not a small few wealthy deal makers selling the land out from under people that wanted to preserve it? I'm not Canadian, so I have no clue. But that would be my immediate suspicion based on experience in real estate and movies I saw on TV.
I agree that's absolutely a possibility. Also not a Canadian. But I will point out that superficially there doesn't seem to be opposition to development on the land. The opposition appears to be based on what is being built rather than where.
I am Canadian and lived a literal stones throw from the site in question for 4 years.
The real issue is that Vancouver is full of NIMBYs who want sightlines, low density, and “character” preserved. It’s basically encoded into the zoning laws for the municipality. Those groups will use whatever tactics at hand to prevent density at a scale they don’t approve of from being built.
I couldn't find the context so, given the tone of the article, I think it's a safe assumption that the author isn't being charitable and is trying to mislead.
Hating/liking this project is going to fall on age lines more than racial ones, the age demo of hacker news is likely to almost universally LOVE this project.
Not only am I a white guy, I'm an old white guy. (I'm 59.) Even worse, I'm rich too, so I am solidly in the demographic of the person I was quoting. But despite the fact that I am a rich old white guy, I don't consider rich old white guys to be my tribe. I look at the history of what rich old white guys have done (and in many cases are still doing) to racial minorities and it fills me with deep shame that I am one of them.
So I genuinely love seeing racial minorities stand up for themselves. I particularly admire what the Maoris have accomplished in New Zealand. And I especially love it when it ends up annoying the rich old white guys that the racial minority is starting to do the exact same thing that the rich old white guys have been doing for centuries. Seeing the irony and lack of self awareness lets me tell myself that no, I am not one them, despite the fact that I look like them.
BTW, the flip side of that is, "I am one of them despite the fact that I don't look like them." Which, it seems to me, is what we ought to be striving for.
That’s people’s objection to “woke” views on ethnicity:
You’ve returned to the world of racial essentialism, the most debunked form of racism, where you argue nonsense about what kinds of buildings people should make based on their ancestry. No matter how you dress it up in the language of civil rights, the racialized views promoted by the institutional left (eg, academia, media, and government) are built upon that racism — which we see articulated in your quote.
But if you touch grass, you’d know people consistently build with the best technology available to them — and have throughout history.
> You’ve returned to the world of racial essentialism, the most debunked form of racism, where you argue nonsense about what kinds of buildings people should make based on their ancestry. No matter how you dress it up in the language of civil rights, the racialized views promoted by the institutional left (eg, academia, media, and government) are built upon that racism — which we see articulated in your quote.
If anything, the person you're replying to rejected this kind of crap, they argue (like the article) that it should be the right of the Indigenous Nations to determine on their own what they want to build on their own land.
> Who the fuck are you, white man, to say what is and is not consistent with an "Indigenous way of building"?
Who the fuck are you, white man, to say "It's high time the indigenous people reclaimed their sovereignty"? You're foisting your notions of sovereignty and time unto them, which is racist.
According to CNN being on time and indeed, daylights savings time, are forms of white supremacy. Although prior to being informed of this all I saw when glancing at my wrist was Mickey Mouse. Did not occur to me the rat bastard was out to get me.
I suppose whether I am being rescued by my white saviors espousing this new age philosophy or tormented and infantilized is a subjective matter.
It is important for us to remember not to judge a man until you've walked three full moons in his moccasins. ;)
>Who the fuck are you, white man, to say what is and is not consistent with an "Indigenous way of building"?
A person univolved with the colonization of Canada, not even from there or living there, that still believes that?
>You aren't living the same lifestyle and building the same buildings that your ancestors were hundreds of years ago
And that's bad in a lot of ways too. Not all modernization is for the better. It can turn a vibrant community into a gentrified Starbucks shitscape, for example.
Skyscrapers are not an indigenous lifestyle. I suppose that's not okay to bring up in this context?
If someone put skyscrapers on the last Hawaiian island I'd be pretty upset about it. The entire population of the Earth should be. Can't we leave one thing undeveloped?
But okay, maybe there is plenty of land to go around in Canada that looks the same as this land, so I could see that...
How does any of that relate to indigenous people using granted land to build them?
Does Canada have some law about that?
I guess I don't see why this quote has any bearing for or against the development. It feels entirely out of place in the article. Just seems like an unrelated fact.
In a city completely inundated with skyscrapers, it's odd -- and maybe a bit telling -- that some people become concerned for the first time in their lives only once an indigenous nation decides to build a skyscraper.
There’s been tons of opposition to building up in Vancouver, especially outside of downtown. Opposition isn’t unique to indigenous builders.
What is unique is that nimbys have a new arsenal of tactics to use as to why this isn’t a good idea eg “concrete skyscrapers aren’t the indigenous way so you shouldn’t build your project.”
In a thread full of people with weird preconceptions talking past each-other, this is the most perfectly wrong statement anyone has made.
The people you're talking about would strangle this entire country to death (and have) before allowing a single 3-story building to be built outside of the small areas that were already been zoned for it 80 years ago.
The Canadian Indigenous identity issues tied up in this project are the only force that have ever been powerful enough to bludgeon them into submission, just this one time.
You're making my point. I was responding to this comment:
>Skyscrapers are not an indigenous lifestyle. I suppose that's not okay to bring up in this context?
If people are going to oppose this project, don't do it on the basis of some vaguely bigoted notion that "these skyscrapers don't match the indigenous lifestyle". As if that's the reason the project's opponents are opposing it. It's clearly a smokescreen being deployed because they actually dislike the project for NIMBY reasons (e.g., "it'll block my view", "it'll reduce the value of my nearby properties").
(Whether the commenter I'm responding to actually believes this is immaterial. The article quoted a local government official who basically said the same thing.)
Skyscrapers not being indigenous has no bearing on whether they should be built or not.
I think we all agree on that. Here's what's really bothering me.
How did you arrive at the conclusion that the quote is implication of opposition to this development? Aside from the author of the article not so subtly injecting that implication, with no context, there's literally nothing to indicate that.
I get concerned when anyone builds a skyscraper. It's typically purported to increase density and thereby create affordable housing. What actually happens is that I still can't afford anything in the skyscrapers, even in non major metros, and I'm in the top 1% of earners. I guess affordable only applies to the top half of a percent?
Destroying land to build them, I don't care who's land, is typically in opposition to environmental efforts. So before you say it's not my business, stop and consider that this is everyone's business. And using minorities as a scapegoat through what might be an underhanded deal might be pretty disgusting.
Notice that asking questions is downvoted. Horrifying. Must be someone very rich that wants another skyscraper apartment that the rest of us can't afford, no matter how many lives they ruin.
A modern "Indigenous lifestyle" means a lot of things. There's no contradiction in Indigenous people wanting to preserve their historical traditions, crafts and practices while also adapting to the current state of the world. Most Native people in Canada live in cities now and face issues of racism and generational trauma from colonial government practices like Residential Schools and the 60s Scoop which sought to cut their connections to their culture.
Developing land like this is a way for the tribe to generate revenue and take care of their members, but it's also a way for them to have meaningful input into the development process. They don't have some responsibility to leave the land as a pristine untouched wilderness, they can choose to develop it in a way that aligns with their values.
I visited a museum in the North once where they were talking about preserving the practice of carving giant canoes, to travel south and trade with Europeans. It struck me how this practice was historical and important culturally, but it also arose out of colonial interactions in the past 500 years. Both can be true.
I'm wondering if you were talking to someone else but I can't figure out who.
My question was pretty simple.
How are you guys (commenters) drawing a connection between what the author quoted, and the assumption that the person being quoted opposes the building project?
What context are you using to correlate those?
Here's a logic diagram to help. Assume P1 is true, since that's what he's saying:
P1: indigenous lifestyle is not skyscrapers.
P2: skyscrapers can be built by indigenous people.
C: indigenous people can't build skyscrapers
The above is nonsensical. Your conclusion is in direct opposition to the premise.
Introducing this person's quote to the article was totally irrelevant unless you're aware of some context that is missing from the story.
Sure skyscrapers are an indigenous lifestyle. They build them, invest in them, live in them. Do you think indigenous people in 2024 are going to all go fish for salmon and live in teepee’s?
I remember on TV once this older indigenous guy promoting natural resource development he thought would create indigenous jobs going on about “Back in the old times, my people hunted the buffalo. Now my people hunt a new buffalo, called the loonie”
I don't own the last Hawaiian island, but I'm thankful someone who does hasn't developed it.
If they did and then "undeveloped" it, that wouldn't much help. Right? The last island will have been destroyed for future generations to study and enjoy.
Not being Canadian, I have no clue what the context is. This might be the last of a unique piece of nature, or it could be the first acre of an endless desert. That context changes the meaning quite a bit, doesn't it?
I'm not Italian, but I'd be upset if Italians bulldozed Pompeii.
It's a world heritage site! Some things belong to everyone and are worth preserving.
I'll gladly "undevelop" and take compensation to move if a temple was discovered under my house.
So your comment has no meaning. I sure will "undevelop" my land, and since the law would force me, we can see that society as a whole had voted that I should, in certain cases.
It is simply not your business to tell disadvantaged people how they should exercise their rights. They have agency and can decide for themselves. If this means, some of the nature has to be sacrificed, that’s their business, not yours to decide.
If you care so much, undevelop your own land and restore the nature and the balance. Plant forests over your parking lots and golf courses, erase suburbia and embrace minimalist living. That is so simple.
My property value is dependent on what happens to the neighborhood around me. It's literally my business. That makes the rest of your comment just ridiculous.
It is unfortunate that you did not account for possible development in the neighborhood when you got your property and it is your problem, but not your business. Also it is fun that your protection of nature in the end is just protection of privilege.
I didn't say that. You did. Take responsibility for your own thoughts. Improve your reading comprehension. I'm not so smart as to be impossible to interpret. What does it say about you if you are gaining understanding that is missing from my comments? It says you're a zealot and a liar and more interested in conflict than understanding. Go back. Read again. Read with interest. Otherwise this conversation is truly not your business. Is it?
If the island is privately owned then hard to see how "future generations" will be able to study and enjoy it. Maybe, but probably not, eh? That's the point of it being privately owned. Now if the State of Hawaii were to assert eminent domain, acquire it at fair market value, and then turn it into public park lands as designated wilderness, well that might work for your intent, I think.
The island is owned by the natives. And it's still a tragedy to the entire world if they decide to put skyscrapers on it. It's the last bit of untouched wilderness in a unique ecosystem.
This story doesn't make a case for not telling people what to do. It makes a case for not trusting natives to protect the wilderness.
Or maybe not. I don't have context. I am asking a question.
The critics of this project seem to be outright racist. I don’t think that’s an overstatement.
They’re basically saying that Indigenous people aren’t allowed to participate in the modern world. You’re not allowed to be urbanist if you were “less advanced than the white people” three hundred years ago.
And they’re butthurt about the development not having the need to comply with Vancouver development rules. Yeah, well, sorry not sorry you weren’t able to steal all the land. Nothing is stopping y’all from changing the rules in Vancouver and building something similar.
You might think so but nimby’s hatred of tall buildings is not at all limited to the ones the Squamish nation is building, as evidenced by the lack of buildings this tall. It’d be more racist for them to make an exception to their usual moaning about tall buildings just because it was the Squamish doing the building.
The third picture shows the development projected onto a wider picture of the city. You can see plenty of other skyscapers, some looking similar height or nearly as tall. Just not any on the side of the river the Squamish are planning on building.
I do agree though that NIMBY's will generally whine regardless of the person doing the building. I wouldn't say "[all] the critics of the project are racist" because I don't know all the criticisms, but certainly some of the criticisms in the article had a pretty racist slant to them.
> You can see plenty of other skyscapers, some looking similar height or nearly as tall. Just not any on the side of the river the Squamish are planning on building.
That's kind of the entire point of Vancouver NIMBYism, at least around Kits/Point Grey. The "backyard" for them is basically "anywhere except the downtown peninsula" (the other side of the inlet in the picture).
They won't care too much if someone builds a 20-40 story building on the West End/peninsula. Do the same thing on the west side ([1], off the peninsula) and they'll throw an absolute fit.
[1] The West End neighbourhood and the colloquial west side are a solid 10-20 minutes apart from each other, driving time. Geographically - West End is on the peninsula, and the west side is basically the various neighbourhoods across the inlet (False Creek) from it.
This is Vancouver -- NIMBYs got super upset and managed to successfully downsize a tower despite it being located off a major transit hub (Commercial & Broadway station) and was not historic anything (just a grocery store and associated parking lot).
I'm not saying there's no racism involved with the Kits project, I'm sure there is. But folks here are pretty eager to deny housing to everyone regardless of race. Kits people are also aggressively opposed to low-income housing, any any density in their neighbourhood and are typically accustomed to being successful in this.
I'm not surprised that it took a literal nation to overcome the resistance to any serious development by that particular group of NIMBYs. Score a win for decentralized power.
I don't think there's any racism at all on their part though, as much as the article tries to play that up. They simply hate idea of downtown expanding into what they view as their perfect suburban neighborhood and they are well organized. They always oppose high density development regardless of who proposes it. This has nothing to do with "Canadians" generally, who don't give a shit as a broad group. This is about a small group of homeowners in a particular area of Vancouver.
This development is just what Vancouver needs, and so long as it actually happens the city will be better for it. It's also great to see first nations or whatever we're supposed to call them get a big financial win like this too: By providing what the market needs. The only way to move past what happened in the past is well earned financial success in the present.
I have two predictions:
1) This will have more positive impact on people's ability to afford living in Vancouver than anything the current group of clowns ruling Ottawa do.
2) In spite of the Kits homeowners fears, the expansion of the city through this development will make their property even more desirable and valuable.
How would you feel if they decided to turn it into a landfill or a nuclear powerplant or a massive chemical production facility that didn't have to comply with environmental laws.
It's great they want to build big buildings, but the reality is if you say a group of people are above the law, then they can do whatever they want, including things that would be solely in their interest and in no-one else's.
It’s kind of ironic to speak about environmental destruction and groups of people being above the law in the context of Indigenous history in the Americas.
Not people's perceptions of said cultures. Africa is over 62% Christian as it stands today, and yet the Wakandans of hollywood practice ancestor worship (representing ~2% of Africa). There's irony wherever you look. We can't seem to move past the past when it comes to minorities.
A lot of christians, maybe most globally, also practice veneration of the dead. Sometimes syncretically, but also from an external anthropological viewpoint the communion of saints is indistinguishable from ancestor worship. The christian theological understanding of it is very different, which is probably why we don't use this term for it. But's it's there.
I mean, (the fictional nation of) Wakanda is depicted as a very isolationist country, and it's reasonable to expect that Christianity wouldn't have taken root if foreign missionaries were expelled throughout its history. Tokugawa-era Japan may be the closest comparison, where its isolationist policies resulted in fairly high retention of indigenous religions even through to modern times. Today less than 2% of Japan's population is Christian, whereas nearly 30% of South Koreans are Christian.
Indigenous ways aren't incompatible with modern technology. Matter of fact, when settlers came from Europe with muskets, the indigenous people whom they encountered immediately wanted them, and soon developed particular tastes (flintlocks were good; matchlocks produced too much smoke before firing which would give away your position on a hunt or ambush).
Plants on the skyscraper terraces - sheer stupidity and bullshit, used only for pretty marketing 3D art
If they made those high rises a 5-6 floor buildings instead, with no b/s trees on the balconies but instead planted them in the ground, that would be much more boring, cheaper and much more comfortable to live there.
There are a lot of examples of successful, affordable, pleasant skyscraper developments across the world. The entirety of the Vancouver city core is an example itself. It seems rather prescriptive to declare tower living uncomfortable when so many people enjoy it.
Just look at some rental listings in the South Loop neighborhood of Chicago. You can get a 2 bedroom apartment in a modern glass tower with amenities galore for well under $3,000 a month in the heart of America’s second largest downtown.
Imagine living completely car-free in a neighborhood like that and commuting 10 minutes to get to your downtown job. (Walk, bike, and transit score >90)
I personally think that’s way more comfortable (and physically safe) than a suburban lifestyle where you’re trapped in your car on a stroad or freeway for every daily need.
As far as vegetated skyscrapers, there are widely acclaimed examples like the Bosco Verticale. It’s not a new concept and I’m not sure what the negative is supposed to be. Plants are bad?
What's wrong with plants on the terraces and balconies? How would their presence make it less comfortable to live there? And high rise developments "enclosed in glass"? As the article mentions, that's sort of what Vancouver is known for.
Is it the material you object to or the building height?
I genuinely don't understand your comment. Particularly as a Vancouverite (who can't afford a home).
Not any plants and not any balcony. I'm talking specifically about these newfangled skyscrapers playing pretend that they are vertical forests. So main differences are a) building is big and tall, b) there are dedicated "balconies" for a big plants - shrubs, small trees etc., whole nano garden in every spot, c) these spots are mandatory, not like you are putting some potted plants on your own balcony.
Disclaimer - these play pretend forests are NOT bad per se (the plant part at least). They are just hilariously inefficient way to spend money and space.
The issues I see with them:
1. This additional horizontal space costs money. The plants cost money. The maintenance of the whole thing costs even more money.
2. There needs to be access to them from the apartments (violating privacy), or they are only accessed from the outside, multiplying maintenance costs.
3. What if the plant dies? Who pays for replacement?
4. Unless these islands of plants are hermetically sealed from the apartments, who will pay and deal with water leaks from the plants to the inside of the building, who will deal with mold, insects and so on?
5. What if the wind blows the heavy plant or tree down on something or someone?
6. The space usage is very bad, it's like tens of trees per whole building. A small park beside the building can beat that number by 100 times.
Vertical forests is a case of looks nice on the 3D render, but in practice is a waste of money plus unsafe.
And skyscrapers are simply bad for individual living. Price, infrastructure, related issues. My home city has an issue with chaotic development and there are several parts of the city with 25+ floor housing. Those are cheap, but the are mercilessly mocked by the whole city and no one voluntarily wants to live there if they have a choice and money. Also those are places with the worst traffic jams and parking issues in the whole city, except for the inner center.
PS: I very much like plant in my apartment, small and big. I've lived for years with half of my own room taken by a potted coffee tree growing into the ceiling, so I'm not some plant hater or something.
Oh come on. The rendering shows plants growing on the balcony railings. That's it. Obviously it's way overdone to make the rendering more appealing but none of the other things you said are present. Number 4 is particularly off-base because Vancouver is literally in a rain forest.
>And skyscrapers are simply bad for individual living.
Also bad for individual living: homelessness. Besides, what alternative do you suggest in a city blocked on two sides by mountains while the third and fourth are blocked by an ocean and an international border respectively?
It sounds like your city has some major problems and that is colouring your opinion. Vancouver is widely regarded as one of the most livable cities in the world [0]. That's in large part due to the density afforded by apartment buildings in the downtown core.
As an aside, the city also has stunning views. I'm in a low rise right now, but I wake up to spectacular views of snow capped mountains every day. It's the primary reason I chose this apartment. The people on the other side of my building get to see the Pacific. While the people on the north side of the building get both!
I'll give you the traffic argument though. That needs to be planned for properly and that is one of my concerns with this particular development. It's located squarely at one of the city's major bridge bottlenecks.
Also, as a Vancouverite... 5-6 stories, cheaper to live there, AND more comfortable? Dunno about that.
I've got doubts about cheaper, and 5-6 story buildings in Vancouver always seem less comfortable than a skyscraper (for whatever reason - maybe just that the 5-6 story buildings are mostly old?)
However, having lived here for a year a year now, I have observed a concerning aspect of this re-integration, which is mentioned in the article: First nations aren't just propped back up and re-integrated in society, it goes further in that they are given special rights that go beyond what any other class of canadian citizens have access to. In this case it is exemption from zoning laws, but all over the country it's access to mining, lumber and fishing rights. They are exempted from federal quotas on fishing, cutting forests, etc ...
On moral grounds, I find it questionable to give some citizens special birth rights greater than others. But on more practical grounds, this is creating a great big loophole for the traditional resource extraction companies to circumvent environment regulation by partnering with first nations on projects.