A book by a retired UBC professor and a Tŝilhqot’in Chief tells the story behind a landmark title case.
The Tyee: As Chief Roger William speaks about the 1864 Tŝilhqot’in War, it strikes me that he could as easily be talking about the Supreme Court of Canada decision that followed 150 years later, granting Aboriginal title to the nation for the first time in Canadian history.
In Alert Bay, a community garden is not only feeding the community, but empowering youth.
The war unfolded over less than 16 weeks when Tŝilhqot’in warriors fought back against a road-building crew that mistreated nation members and abused women in the community.
“The government was so concerned about Tŝilhqot’in because if the Tŝilhqot’ins get away with this, then there’s going to be uprising from First Nations all over in B.C.,” the Chief of Xeni Gwet’in First Nation, a community within the Tŝilhqot’in Nation, says.
Like the other chapters in Lha yudit’ih We Always Find a Way: Bringing the Tŝilhqot’in Title Case Home, the book William co-authored with retired University of British Columbia professor Lorraine Weir, who taught in the English department, the Tŝilhqot’in War is a story about fighting back and ultimately prevailing. It culminated in the deception and eventual hanging of five Tŝilhqot’in Chiefs. Over the past decade, the chiefs were exonerated, first by B.C. and then by Canada.
Lha yudit’ih, published by Talonbooks, weaves together first-person narratives about the war and other effects of colonization — including smallpox, residential school and resource extraction — like the spruce roots in a traditional Tŝilhqot’in basket, forming a vessel that holds the nation’s most recent triumph: the title case, which celebrated its 10-year anniversary on June 26.
The book, at roughly 500 pages, is a “cross-cultural conversation,” Weir writes in her introduction. It began following a chance meeting with William in 2012 and took a decade to complete, the work straddling the landmark court decision in which William was lead plaintiff, as well as a Chief and employee working on the case for the nation.
As a First Nations Chief and a professor emeritus, William and Weir are both gifted speakers from profoundly different backgrounds. Our conversation includes their varied reflections about the book and purpose in making it. It has been edited for length and clarity.
The Tyee: I wanted to start by congratulating you, first on the book and also on the recent 10-year anniversary of recognizing Tŝilhqot’in title. At what point did you know that this was a book about the title case or was that always the plan?
Chief Roger William: That was always the plan. There are stories in there that I never knew. Lorraine was able to connect with some members who trusted her and there’s some of them that surprised me. It’s their own story, their own reality. What title means to them and their life story. I think part of that is healing.
The Tŝilhqot’in Nation, we’ve been driven apart from the smallpox to the Tŝilhqot’in War. It’s an impact that we’re still struggling with today. Some of our young people don’t really understand their struggles. They hear the stories. They’re really angry with the Catholic Church, angry with government, but at the same time they want to learn. The title case brought the Tŝilhqot’in people back together.
B.C. and Canada never wanted to give us title. We had to go fight for it. We had the five years’ trial. We had to force them to recognize our title. I don’t believe one bit they want to settle with us. We may be back in court again. There is some good stuff that is happening, but certainly it’s not fast enough. Our people’s expectations are night and day now. What our people think we should settle for and what’s coming down is two different things.
I am excited. To me, this is a good problem. We can work with this. But if we try to fast-track it, if we try to take shortcuts, our people are going to turn it down.
I saw photos of you walking in the Nemaiah Valley with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau the other day. How is that relationship, 10 years after the title decision?
William: I like the energy. I like their ministers, the prime minister. The energy is good. I can feel the energy in meetings and that feels like an uphill battle. But when we were celebrating, the language that they spoke with, the understanding that they spoke with, the time that the prime minister took with people, Elders, youth. He didn’t just take pictures. He was talking to them. It was good to see. He even rode horses, too, him and his son.
Lorraine Weir: And you gave him a copy of our book. We have a wonderful photograph of that. He had very nice things to say. I really appreciated that.
Weir: Roger was very, very clear not only that the book was going to be on the title case, but that the relation between the smallpox and the Tŝilhqot’in War and the residential school — all of the struggles of colonialism that are the rationale, really, for the title case — those histories were going to be front and centre in the book. They are, but people shared with me so many different kinds of stories. I thought, “How am I going to integrate this much material into a narrative that’s focused mainly on a settler legal case?”
It was only gradually that I realized what people were teaching me in providing all of these different kinds of stories, all of the different personal narratives of healing that you see all the way across Lha yudit’ih. I realized that some of these people were teaching me how to do the job that Roger had asked me to do. Those teaching stories are all the way through the book.
For me, it was a deeply spiritual experience. To teach non-Indigenous and other Indigenous Peoples about not just who Tŝilhqot’in are, not just the settler-style history, but in the deepest sense who people are, why they had done this, how violated they had felt being forced to encounter the settler court system to defend what had always been theirs and what had never been ceded — it was a deeply emotional and sometimes very challenging experience. It’s about the title case, but it’s about the story of the people who had to do that.
Hearing those stories directly from community members made it very raw and immediate. I wanted to ask you about the decision to include their stories in their own words.
William: Lorraine and I discussed a lot, into the wee hours in the morning, on what should go in and what shouldn’t. There was a lot of debate. I guess, for me, it’s exciting because Lorraine is not from Xeni, she’s not Indigenous. She’s writing what our people are talking about. Here’s an unbiased person, an educated person, a professor, who is listening to us. That’s what I get excited about, is reading her perspective of what she heard.
Weir: I know Roger has, over the many years of the title case, worked with many academics who do present themselves as unbiased experts. I don’t see myself as unbiased. Not at all. I see this as a work of love.
When Roger asked me to write the book with him, I certainly felt confident in my knowledge of the settler legal side of it. When he made his next request that I work with the community, that was probably the most important decision — I’ve never said this to Roger before, so he may disagree — that Roger made. It affected the whole course of the book and, in my experience, profoundly.
I was quite deliberately taught specific stories in order to form me in particular ways. That was part of the work of the book. To me, that has everything to do with learning to pay the closest possible attention to what people were saying, how people were saying it, what their intentions were and then, in the process of weaving it all together, to place different texts in a way that created a trajectory so that readers totally unfamiliar can make some sense of the book.
Many of the people made the choice to share experiences of great pain and great resilience out of, I think, a deep hope that readers would find it in themselves to really pay attention and to really be changed by the book. That’s what I would wish for the book — that readers really pay attention, because so much effort went into sharing by all the contributors. That this was genocide, and recovering from genocide requires dealing with excruciating pain, as well as imagining a changed future, which the title cases is part of creating and recreating for people.
So, I’m not unbiased or objective. I stand in the middle of what I was taught and feel very privileged.
What has the community response been?
William: Some people are still looking at pictures. I think some of them are reading it. I think a lot of them are just reading their family’s info.
Weir: But you know who’s read the book? Your daughter and people of her generation. This makes me so happy. People who are in their 20s, early 30s, have worked their way through every page and share their thoughts and their views with me. That is a wonderful thing that the book is for those generations and the changes they’re going to make through their work.
Chief Roger, in the book you speak about the 1997 Delgamuukw decision and acknowledge “all the other First Nations across B.C. and Canada.” I’m curious if in the last 10 years you’ve observed other First Nations take what you achieved and carry it forward in their own title cases.
William: A lot of First Nations have been taking advantage of the title win to get a better agreement. You look at Haida, they’re doing the title agreement, they’re negotiating with B.C. and Canada. So there’s that connection there, that they want to work with us, learn from us, and we want to work with them to learn from them.
I think success of the title win gives me more confidence. It opened the door not only in Canada, but worldwide, internationally. Even at the United Nations level, where our nation has been hitting those meetings. There are even small communities internationally that have been watching the case and celebrating when the title win came down. They’re using that info and trying to make it in their area.
A Groundbreaking Indigenous Rights Decision, 25 Years Later
Reading about the Tŝilhqot’in War and all the other stories, right up to the court case, there’s a feeling in the book of fighting and coming back stronger. Do you feel like that describes the Tŝilhqot’in Nation?
Weir: I’m thrilled that you’re describing the book that way. I cannot tell you how many hundreds of hours went into trying to create what you’ve just described. One of the many ways in which settler history does an injustice to Indigenous Peoples is to focus on the catastrophes as end points.
William: The Tŝilhqot’in warriors is a huge reason why we want Aboriginal title. How those warriors were able to do what they did is because they know Tŝilhqot’in law. An Elder was asked in our community, “What is Tŝilhqot’in law?” That Elder spoke in Tŝilhqot’in, saying, “It’s just like this trail here, this road. As soon as we get off that road, then we get weak. That road is not easy. That road takes us to the spiritual world. We die on that road. There are some roads that leave the main road, that could be better. But when we do that, then we get weaker. Then we’re thinking about ourselves, not about us as a nation.”
In moving forward, the Tŝilhqot’in people will feel that foundation that we all go by, that Tŝilhqot’in law. How we get there is always the exciting process because a lot of our young people want to learn.
Amanda Follett Hosgood, The Tyee
Amanda Follett Hosgood is The Tyee’s northern B.C. reporter. She lives in Wet’suwet’en territory. Find her on X @amandajfollett.
Are you part of The Tyee’s critical 1%?
Thanks for reading this article from The Tyee. I hope it added something to your day. If we haven’t met yet, The Tyee is an independent, nonprofit news outlet based in Vancouver, B.C. We’ve been around since 2003 and our team publishes original in-depth articles every single weekday.
You are able to access all of The Tyee’s articles — free of charge — because our nonprofit newsroom is supported by thousands of supporters of independent journalism. We call them Tyee Builders, and they contribute an amount that works for them.
Why do we call them ‘Tyee Builders?’ Because they literally help build The Tyee. As our reader contributions grow, we invest all of it back into more original journalism, and adding more talented researchers, writers and editors to our team.
Only about 1% of people who regularly read The Tyee contribute financially, but amazingly, that’s enough to cover half of our total budget. Just 1% of people chipping in means that the other 99% get to enjoy open access to fact-based journalism published by a trusted, independent news organization.
Public interest journalism is vital for our democracy, but the sad truth is that newsrooms across Canada are struggling, and laying off more and more journalists each year. Support from our readers means that we can keep our newsroom staffed, resourced, and showing up every day with new original stories that you won’t read anywhere else. It also means that we are accountable to you first, not shareholders (we don’t have any) or corporate backers (we don’t have any of those, either).
– Jeanette Ageson, publisher