What’s the rush to find a new, simplified way to reconcile aboriginal land claims in B.C.?

Dr. Perry Kendall, our articulate provincial health officer, offers some answers in the most detailed study of aboriginal health yet attempted here.

On the plus side, “Status Indian” life expectancy has risen since 2001, to about 74 years compared to 80 in the general population. But diabetes is getting worse, as is infant mortality. Youth suicide has declined since 2005, but remains at a rate four times higher than non-aboriginal youth.

Work continues to determine childhood obesity rates, but diabetes is on the rise in the general population too, no surprise given the diet and entertainment trends for all young people.

More than twice as many houses needed major renovation by 2006, compared to 10 years earlier. Alcohol- and drug-related deaths have declined, but HIV/AIDS is still getting worse, contrary to the rest of B.C. Tuberculosis is back. For the hardest cases, mentally ill injection drug users, he advocates “low-tech, high-touch outreach” and even supervised heroin treatment.

Overall, Kendall’s prescription isn’t for more program money or hospitals to hold the sick. He’s more interested in the “Third World” barriers to things, like getting bank capital on reserves.

He looks at the suicides, for instance, and sees clusters in a small number of communities.

“And that relates very closely with, do they run their schools, do they run their police, are they engaged in treaty negotiations, how many controls do they have over their economic and political and cultural life,” Kendall says.

This idea doesn’t surprise George Abbott, B.C.’s new aboriginal relations minister. He comes to the job from health, and in an interview he noted earlier Harvard University research that established the same thing — self-government is good for you.

Hence, Abbott is waiting anxiously for the outcome of the First Nations Leadership Council consultations on new legislation to recognize aboriginal title across B.C. His government sees it as a way to settle resource claims without the tangle of lawsuits and complicated federal-provincial treaty talks.

Bob Simpson, the NDP’s new aboriginal relations critic, wants the rest of B.C. to have its say as well, and more details than a six-page discussion paper released this spring. That will happen, Abbott says, but not until aboriginal people conclude a summer of hearings on the proposal to organize more than 200 Indian Act communities into about 30 indigenous nations, similar to what existed before European settlement.

“First and foremost, we have to listen to First Nations’ voices on whether from their perspective the 30 indigenous nations concept flies,” Abbott said. “So it would be premature, I think, to set out a broader consultation process around the issue like reconstitution of indigenous nations, before we have heard from all of the First Nations in B.C. and heard from First Nations leadership about whether we should take that concept further.”

So will it fly? In a video promoting the new deal, Sto:lo Chief Doug Kelly predicts that “in some cases” it will, where language and culture are shared and territories overlap. Presumably he’s talking about his own region, where the Sto:lo historically enjoyed regional hegemony in the Lower Fraser River. The Haida Nation is another historic military power that’s ready to move ahead.

Kelly is now a top executive with the First Nations Summit, specializing in fisheries. He exercises power the modern way, part of the small group of senior leaders whose influence grows.

What seems likely emerge here is a pilot project or two, to demonstrate the healing effect of self-government.

Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter and columnist for Black Press newspapers.

tfletcher@blackpress.ca