Hereditary chiefs skating on thin legal ice

I will be the first to admit this will not be a journalistic masterpiece, but I will share some of my insights into what many people may have overlooked.

Looking back at information sent to me by readers, we now can say one woman was successful in unseating at least 4 Hereditary Chiefs. I will not name her, as I do believe most Wet’suwet’en members can figure that part out on their own.  Let me first point out that these incidents all happened after Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, [1997]

The first I was told was Chief Gwen’U, based on what we were told caught a woman stealing potlatch money, he confronted her about it, and the rest is history, he then became the accused. After that the same woman was involved in stripping 3 more traditionally appointed Hereditary Chiefs. It blows me away how crown counsel so blindly missed the obvious, and how they were so bent on sending Stan to jail, they never listened to his side of the story.

Not a bad batting average 4 Chiefs by one person, and it would be hard to not bet that she had a lot to do with who became the replacements, as she still sits in a position of power with the Office Five.

OK, I had to tell you that story in order to be able to tell you the next story. Based on two precedent setting Federal Court challenges Chief Woos and Chief Smogelgem (Frank Alec and Warner Nazeil) and possibly a number of other self-proclaimed Hereditary Chiefs might fall into the category of “The Court was not satisfied that (the Hereditary Chief) could fairly and adequately represent the members of the Tribe.

OK I am referring to the “Yahaan (aka Wesley) v. Canada (Attorney General), 2017 FC 725, Federal Court (Barnes J.), 26 July 2017”

“The applicant Yahaan purports to be the Head Chief (sm’oogit) of the Gitwilgyoots, one of the nine tribes that constitute the Coast Tsimshian Nation in northwestern British Columbia. Two Indian bands – the Lax Kw’alaams and the Metlakatla – have consistently represented the section 35 interests of the Coast Tsimshian Nation in dealings with the Crown, including consultations relating to the Pacific Northwest LNG Project planned near Prince Rupert. The current leadership of the Lax Kw’alaams and the Metlakatla, along with a clear majority of the Coast Tsimshian people, supported the LNG project on certain conditions. Yahaan and his supporters objected to the project and, over the objections of the Bands, occupied Lelu Island (the proposed site of the project).”

The first thoughts that come to mind are of Freda and her banditos up on the Morice River operating under the name of “Unist’ot’en” then the last line of the ruling “The judicial review application was therefore dismissed on the basis that the applicant lacks the necessary standing to bring it in a representative capacity.”

Remembering the main takeaway of that court case is that if your credentials as Hereditary Chief get challenged, the courts will rule that they cannot take the claim on that Hereditary Chief status seriously.
Without question any legal documents signed by fake chiefs, in particular chiefs where more than one person alive today makes the claim they are that chief, the court will not take their signatures seriously if they are challenged.

Bear with me we have a few more twists and turns, and in particular another B.C. Supreme Court case, in particular Gitwangak Indian Band v. Davis, 2017 BCSC 744 (CanLII)  but before we do we want to bring your attention to this one, keeping in mind the court case we just looked at, and that Frank Alec was front and center of the negotiations that took place between Canada, British Columbia and the Office Chiefs. If this decision is challenged in court, it’s already obvious that there is a massive chance they would be thrown out, and the signatures could be seriously in question.

Next we found a story “Security Camera Captures Heavily Armed RCMP at Wet’suwet’en Cultural Site”

If ever there was press that knows how to turn black into white and bullshit into 24k Gold you would have to pick this rag called the Tyee, the above story is no exception. But I will steal a quote from it, as it’s a comment attributed to one the fake chiefs Frank Alec who used the stolen title of Chief Woos.

“The building, a smokehouse that will soon be used to process fish, was built this spring at the request of Gidimt’en Clan Hereditary Chief Woos. It is on the Morice River about one kilometre from the Morice West Forest Service Road, not far from the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre where conflict between Wet’suwet’en members and pipeline builders began a decade ago.” Excerpt from the Tyee

This smokehouse incidentally is in violation of the Supreme Court Injunction granted last December and was built INTENTIONALLY right on the path of the CGL Pipeline. So a man who stole a Hereditary title, now instructs others (not at all necessary that they are or are not Wet’suwet’en) to go ahead and break the law.

How many times has the law been broken and for purely racially motivated reasons the charges were dropped based on a lack of evidence, wow, who believes that? I cannot prove it but I am seriously mumbling something about illegal political interference.

We must ask the question, without consequence of breaking the law, does the law even exist? Is our Supreme Court a joke, do their ruling constitute a joke? Dropping the charges has only proven to encourage the hooligans to break the law.

Now let’s get back to that B.C. Supreme Court case. We keep hearing from environmentalists that Hereditary Chiefs have the final say, yeah I know they would have said the same about band counsels if the bands opposed the pipeline and the Chiefs wanted CGL, yes I am fully aware they are playing the Wet’suwet’en to the hilt, and the fake chiefs keep dancing with the devil.

However the Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

“It is clear then that the Band Council has legal authority over the Band… The Band Office is on Reserve lands and those lands are subject to the Indian Act and the Band Council. There is no evidence in this case of any lawful possession by others under the Indian Act. In addition, our Court of Appeal has recognized that the granting of an injunction does not prejudice such hereditary claims.” Mr. Justice Punnett

Now you know why the Office of Wet’suwet’en is in Smithers, and not where their forefathers came from, they are afraid to have them in Witset, and want to govern Witset from the new building they bought formerly known as the Lake Kathleen School. Imagine the largest Wet’suwet’en community and they do not dare to have an office there, something is very telling about this.

Based on the judgement above Hereditary Chiefs hold no privilege of power on a reserve, now they want the Federal Government to hand over that power by signing new agreements that must be contested should the Federal negotiator grant them that right. They already signed an agreement that Federal and Provincial negotiators to exclude elected representatives from negations in violation of the above Supreme Court decision.

At very least there is now legal grounds to challenge any agreements made by the Hereditary Chiefs.

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