B.C.'s Nisga’a take first steps toward private land ownership

In 1998, Nisga’a leader Joe Gosnell declared he and his people were “no longer beggars in our own land.” An historic treaty awarded them self-government, removing 2,000 square kilometres of northern British Columbia from the controlling reach of the federal Indian Act.

In October, the Nisga’a will take another momentous step on the road to full self-government, when a new Nisga’a law takes effect allowing for private land ownership on parts of their territory.

The law punches a hole in an economic and legal barrier that has stood for 130 years, ever since the Indian Act swept all aboriginal reserve lands under the authority of the Crown.

The Nisga’a will become the first aboriginal government in Canada to allow individuals — native or non-native — to own homes, raise mortgages and buy and sell property on First Nations land. Mitchell Stevens, the new Nisga’a president, has said it will transform the fortunes of the Nisga’a nation and its 6,000 citizens, forever.

Many First Nations leaders are wary of the Nisga’a experiment, nervous that private ownership would diminish what little land base native communities have left. But a small handful of supporters believe the Nisga’a are setting an example that other First Nations should follow.

Manny Jules, a former chief of the Kamloops Indian Band in B.C., has argued for years that property holds the key to unlocking prosperity, and solving the social problems that plague so many native communities across the country.

In 1988, Mr. Jules led the first ever amendment to the Indian Act, winning the right of native bands to collect property tax from commercial developments on reserves. He now has his eyes on a bigger and far more contentious prize, a national law giving all First Nations what the Nisga’a will soon have, true private property rights on their land.

Mr. Jules calls the hidden human capital of the country’s more than 600,000 status Indians, together with the 2.6 million hectares of reserve land they occupy, two of the “great untapped resources in Canada.”

A study by the First Nations Tax Commission, the agency that helps band governments collect commercial property tax, found that if private ownership rights were introduced to 68 First Nations in B.C., property values on those lands would increase by $4-billion over 15 years. Mr. Jules says that number would triple if applied across Canada. Today, however, he says those billions of dollars in assets are merely “dead capital.”

The great potential of Canada’s native communities can’t be fully unleashed, he says, because unlike the Nisga’a, the vast majority of First Nations don’t own their land — a fact not well understood by many aboriginal people.

“The reserves are owned by the federal government,” says Mr. Jules. “We are in a ward relationship with the federal government.”

While native people, like all Canadians, are free to buy and sell property outside reserves — about half of all status Indians already live off reserve — no one, not even band members, can hold title to homes or land on reserves.

Many reserve residents have “certificates of possession” to their homes, but these can only be transferred to fellow band members, which limits their value. And because certificate holders don’t own title to their property, most banks won’t grant mortgages on more than 10% of its value.

Mr. Jules says such constraints not only hamper the development of job-and-revenue generating activities on reserves, they also dull the entrepreneurial spirit of First Nations.

Calvin Helin, a Tsimshian native and Vancouver lawyer who heads the Native Investment and Trade Association, a free market aboriginal advocacy group, calls native reserves “federal fantasy lands” where “all the wealth comes in from the federal government.” Yet, federal spending isn’t enough to raise many reserves out of what Mr. Helin calls their “horrendous poverty.”

The Assembly of First Nations says native communities require the construction of 7,000 new homes every year to meet their housing demands. Ottawa, meanwhile, only guarantees the construction of 2,000 homes a year.

Mr. Helin says First Nations could supply their own housing needs and more if they had the freedom to fully leverage their land. Many reserves, particularly those on the fringes of Canadian cities — such as the Kamloops band, the Whitecap Dakota First Nation near Saskatoon, or the Kahnawake near Montreal — have highly lucrative land assets.

“But what’s the point of having assets,” says Mr. Helin, “if they’re of no value to you?”

The solution, says Mr. Jules, is for Ottawa to transfer land title on reserves to First Nations governments, which could then make all, or pieces of, their lands available to private ownership, or what is commonly known as “fee simple” ownership.

Mr. Jules says the legislation should be optional, allowing First Nations that prefer the status quo to keep their land title in the hands of the Crown. In fact, some First Nation leaders and experts say private property rights would be a disaster for native people, threatening access to their cherished reserve territories and ruining the most critical source of their collective identity, their land.

Private ownership “goes against the customary laws and the collective rights of indigenous people. It’s another way for us to lose more land,” says Ellen Gabriel, a community leader at the Kanesatake reserve in Quebec, who was the spokeswoman, 20 years ago, for native protesters during the Oka standoff.

Mr. Jules knows there is deep suspicion among First Nations about his plan.

“The private property solution isn’t going to be embraced by all communities,” he says.

“If people want to remain under the existing situation, let them be free to do that. But I’m tired of being a ward of the federal government. Our people are tired of being poor. How are we ever going to break that cycle? By creating our own economy, so that we look after ourselves.”