VICTORIA – Three years after an agreement-in-principle was reached, the Yale First Nation treaty is almost ready to proceed to a referendum by community members.

Roughly 150 people should soon get to vote on the acceptance of a critical 1,600 hectares of provincial Crown land in the heart of the Fraser Canyon, where only about 80 people live in the original settlement today.

The essential fisheries deal was signed in May of 2006. At the time, Yale Chief Robert Hope noted that it had been 198 years since his ancestors met Simon Fraser on his first trip down the river that defines British Columbia. In 1808, there were 1,000 Yale people to meet the British explorer.

“We call our treaty a fish treaty,” Hope said. “Fisheries are our life, very important to us.”

The treaty grants year-round set-net and dip-net fisheries at key sites, and an “economic fishery” alongside commercial fishing, should that ever be seen again in this most vital of B.C. salmon passages. This immediately set off a vicious dispute over fishing spots that have sustained life (and warfare) for thousands of years, in particular a place called the 5-Mile Fishery Reserve.

The Sto:lo Tribal Council claims this spot, as well as others in New Westminster. Needless to say the most hotly contested territorial claims in B.C. are along the lower Fraser River from the canyon down. The Sto:lo and Haida were among the main military powers before European contact.

Just over a year ago, Sto:lo Grand Chief Clarence Pennier described some reserve areas awarded to the Yale in the treaty as “confiscated” and “hijacked” by bureaucrats working for Chilliwack MP Chuck Strahl, now Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs. The Sto:lo also claim a tribal and cultural connection to the Yale people (read: conquest), a notion that does not please the Yale chief.

The Sto:lo are not in treaty talks with the Crown. But earlier this year, they scored a victory in one of the many “specific claims” disputes under the federal government's Indian Claims Commission. It ruled that the 143-hectare Kuthlath Indian Reserve #3 in the canyon belongs not to the Yale but to the Shxw'ow'hamel, a Sto:lo member band, in a dispute dating back to 1918.

Sto:lo vice-president Tyrone McNeil issued this statement in June: “In 1879, Commissioner Gilbert Sproat of the joint Indian Reserve Commission made a solemn promise to the Sto:lo to set aside a reserve known as the 5-Mile Fishery Reserve…. Despite this knowledge, government has plunged headlong in treaty talks with the Yale Indian Band for cash, salmon and land.”

In an interview Friday, B.C. Aboriginal Relations Minister George Abbott said the canyon dispute has finally been resolved, and once the land deal is finalized and the text is initialed by all three parties, the treaty can proceed to a community vote. As with the proposed Recognition and Reconciliation Act this spring, first aboriginal people get to decide. If they accept the deal, the rest of us get to pay the bill and have our say in the next provincial and federal election.

The bill for Yale is substantial. In addition to a cash settlement of $12 million for 150 people, the Yale treaty covers mineral rights, forestry and taxation. As with Tsawwassen and Maa-Nulth, the Yale give up their tax exemptions and own their lands in fee-simple.

It’s ironic that this fragile peace arrives in the Fraser Canyon, just as sockeye salmon stop arriving. Up as far as the Nechako and Quesnel Lake systems and the legendary Adams River in the Shuswap, the lake-linked habitat of the sockeye is all but still. It’s the worst return in recorded history, an apparent total loss on some creeks.

More on that next week.

Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter and columnist for Black Press and BCLocalnews.com.

tfletcher@blackpress.ca