The Heiltsuk Nation in B.C.’s Central Coast has voted to approve a precedent-setting structure.
Sixty-seven per cent of the 725 Heiltsuk residents who voted approved a written constitution following almost 20 years of growth and session, six months of in-person and on-line neighborhood engagement and a two-week voting interval, which ended on Thursday evening.
The nation stated the structure means it may “reclaim its energy.”
“This can be a monumental day for our Nation, marking a foundational step towards self-determination,” Marilyn Slett, elected chief of the Heiltsuk Nation, stated in a press release.
“The brand new structure assists us within the reclamation and affirmation of our energy and to make legal guidelines that meet the priorities and desires of our individuals, from citizenship to land administration. It permits us to control past the Indian Act and in accordance with our ǧvi̓ḷás. It additionally creates authorized readability and certainty for our Nation and people we select to do enterprise with.
“Questions on decision-making and regulation might be resolved inside our Nation, not outdoors of it.”
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Yím̓as Frank Brown, a hereditary chief of the Heiltsuk Nation, stated they’ve by no means ceded, surrendered or extinguished their inherent proper to control the Haíɫzaqv individuals and their territory.
“The Haíɫzaqv Structure is precedent-setting as a result of it affirms that we’ve all the time had the suitable to control ourselves and we’ve by no means relinquished this proper,” he stated.
“That is our ǧvi̓ḷás in motion and is an affirmation of our inherent Indigenous authorized traditions, by us, for us.”
The written structure lays out a authorized framework, from founding provisions and rights and tasks to authorities construction and law-making, the nation said in an e mail.
It additionally enshrines one of the best apply of co-operation and collaboration between historical types of governance just like the Yím̓as (hereditary chiefs) and W̓úm̓aqs du M̓ṇúyaqs Council (Ladies’s Council), and elected tribal council officers, by means of new shared law-making, decision-making and advisory councils.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders from throughout the province might be invited to a ratification feast in Bella Bella on Might 30.
Solely as soon as it’s handed by a referendum and upheld in ceremony will it come into impact, utilizing each inherent Indigenous regulation and a democratic course of.
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