Some aspects of Dehcho Process ‘98% complete,’ says Grand Chief

Cassandra Blondin Burt: “Hello and welcome to Medicine Stories. I’m your host, Cassandra Blondin Burt and today we have an interview with Grand Chief Herb Norwegian from the Dehcho First Nations. Currently there are negotiations happening in Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ (Fort Simpson) for the Dehcho Process and Herb joins us today to talk about that.”

Grand Chief Norwegian: “The Dehcho Negotiations Team, the territorial government and Canada (are involved) — Canada and GNWT are on Zoom. This is quite a system that we’ve had. We’ve been using that for a last couple of years, and we’re getting really good at it, starting to starting to figure out how to really use it effectively.

“And so today and since yesterday, we have people observing — members of the public here in Simpson — coming in and being part of that discussion. So, it’s been an ongoing thing. We’ve been negotiating for years. They go over, somebody said, almost 25 years. But it all started back in the days of when we were organizing. We, of course, saw other regions like in the Sahtu and everybody else going their way and negotiating their own land area issues.

“And it wasn’t long afterwards that show had actually agreed that we were going to go down the road of and asserting our right over our territory. And from there, we were able to bring the new Minister, I think about Jane Stewart then, and we had a long discussion with her on how we wanted to proceed. So immediately, what she did was and in conjunction with the Dene Métis METI, we had set up a small group of people. It was headed by Toronto professor Peter Russell. And the idea there was to actually go into all the communities … they went from community to community to see what they thought should go into, into negotiations on what it would be based on.

“And there was a long, I think it was over, about a year, little year over or so, and they heard from everyone. And from there, Peter Russell put together a report. And from there, some common ground principles were put forward as an assembly. The assembly adopted, I think they were, 19 Common Ground principles based that we’re going to negotiate, based on what the actual people want, continue to hang on to the land, continue to exercise our spirituality, make sure that the water will remain intact, the young people, everyone will be vibrant, and everyone and anything that happens in our territory during the time we’re negotiating, we will be fully involved in making those decisions.

“So, these are the kinds of things that came out of that report, the assembly heard it, liked it, and they adopted and it didn’t take long. Then we set up a negotiations team. At that time. We had Chris Reed, who was our lawyer, helping out, and we appointed him as our chief negotiator. And then we had a team with him, and from there on, a number of things were negotiated, one of them being a framework agreement, which basically lays out how you’re going to negotiate. The ground rules on how you’re going to do that. The second piece to that was the interim measures agreement. The interim measures agreement was an important tool in all of this, because what it did was it laid down, you know, the rules of engagement. If development was going to take place, we would have to be fully involved, and they’d have to talk to them.

“So, in order to protect ourselves from lands being taken away by third parties when we’re negotiating, what we put in place was what’s called the land withdrawal. About roughly about 50% of the natural territory the land was extracted, was taken off the table, lands that were sensitive, you know, burial sites, calving grounds, some of the very significant spiritual areas, those areas were all included in in the land withdrawal.

“And from there it went to the communities, went to our assembly leadership, and then we adopted and then we had an agreement, and then we from there, negotiations took off with our team, using the framework agreement and the interim measures agreement and interim measures agreement created a couple of really good things right off the bat. One of them was to to immediately have a discussion around the Nahanni National Park. The Nahanni National Park was crucial. We needed to we needed to give it full protection, because it was just an interim park, and we didn’t like the way that the park boundary was set up, because it was just a little sliver of park.

“And so, we had a discussion, and we drew out the entire watershed, and that became the boundary, final boundaries of the Nahanni Park. So, we were able to finalize that. The other piece that we also had to also get off the ground, and which were almost complete with land use planning. Land use planning is a major tool, because what you’re actually doing is you’re carving out zones. Some areas would be fully protected … very crucial areas like all the river corridors, shorelines, lakeshores, all these areas would be protected.

“Today, what we’re doing now is talking about lands and governance. You know how government the one big thing that we’re doing right now. We’ve done quite a bit of work on this constitution for the Dehcho government, and we’ve also had a great discussion. And so far, we’re coming down a pretty rosy road here on government, and how we’re going to do that. There will be Dehcho local governments, and there also being a Dehcho government for the entire Dehcho territory. So we designed that, and that we have a constitution. We’re hoping to finalize that here in the next little while.

“The big one that’s going to be very interesting, and we have some ideas on how to approach it is the amount of land that the Dene will retain. At one point about 10, years ago, Canada and the NWT came to us, and they, I think they offered us something about roughly 30,000 to 40,000 square kilometres of land our people didn’t respond to it. They just tabled it, and it never went anywhere. And when we when, when I came back as grand chief, I was instructed to bring negotiation back to the table because negotiations were suspended because there was no decision on the offer back then when they held an assembly in Wrigley.

“And so then the federal government table did nothing really happened. So, when I came on board there about four years ago, I got instructions to bring negotiations back to the table, and so immediately, by doing that, I also mentioned that I needed to bring a whole team of negotiators. And George Erasmus was on at that time, and he had left because of some personal issues that he had to deal with, but he’s back on now. Had been for almost two years, a little over two years, I believe it. So, we’ve got everything set. So now the tables are set. You know, everything is on the table. Now we’re negotiating. We’re like, see what’s the land use plan? We’re probably about 98% complete.

“The AIP, the Agreement in Principle, we have something like about 54 chapters. I think just about every one of them is almost concluded. So, the other big piece, of course, is land, the amount of land that we’re going to keep for ourselves. Now, the thinking back about 8 or 10, years ago, that if the Dehcho Dene were going to keep land, retain land for ourselves, it has to be one contiguous piece, rather than just scattered little islands. Meaning that the communities would have to be all connected for better management and better for better support for each one another. So, that’s what we’re looking at. The instructions that we got is that the Dehcho we would have to, we would have to make sure that we have about, roughly about 80,000 square kilometers of land in order to fully take care of ourselves.

Cassandra Blondin Burt: “Interesting. That’s about twice the amount that was offered originally.”

Grand Chief Norwegian: “Yeah, so that’s where we’re at. We’ve got instructions to look at that, and so we need to now go to communities and figure out what areas we’re looking at, you know, because it’ll mean looking at fish lakes or looking at corridors, you know, we need to be looking at areas for economic development, you know. So, there’s a whole series of things here that would take into effect. So, it’s going to be exciting, as I said, because you’re seeing 80,000 square kilometers…

Cassandra Blondin Burt: “But to take care of yourselves, to be self-sustaining?

Grand Chief Norwegian: “So, we would be become a major corridor. The 80,000 square kilometers that we would retain — and we say retain because we haven’t given up anything; land was never surrendered or relinquished — and so, what we will do is that we will talk about this piece of land. This is what’s going to sustain us. This is what we need. Because what we’re looking at also is that if communities are actually they have their little coming community boundaries.

“What communities are also going to require 100-year expansion? Communities are going to be expanding, and they’re, you’re going to need large pieces of land. You know, we could very well be kind of like the Incas and the Mayans in the future, and we’re going to need large pieces of land.

“So that’s the kind of thing that we’re looking at, and it’s, you know, just going down that door and opening it up and walking In and looking at all the possibilities are just empowering.”

Cassandra Blondin Burt: “Mahsi cho for tuning in to Medicine Stories here on CKLB Radio 101.9 FM, the Voice of Denendeh.”

Separately, Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ Chief Kele Antoine told CKLB:

“We take our responsibility at the negotiation table seriously, but we are equally clear that the final say does not belong to negotiators … it belongs to our people. The non-binding and without prejudice nature of this work is critical, as it ensures our rights and positions are fully protected while we explore options. Our role is to move this forward in a way that respects that authority and allows our people to make the final decision.”