VICTORIA - When the Prince George-based Lheidli T'enneh natives rejected a proposed treaty earlier this year, post mortems suggested that their own leaders had not worked hard enough to explain and defend it.

No one can fairly say that about Chief Kim Baird, as the Tsawwassen First Nation approaches its own treaty vote a month from now.

Baird has been campaigning hard for ratification, taking on critics on and off the reserve.

"It is a little disheartening that there is so much opposition to my efforts to raise my community out of poverty," she told a meeting of the local business association earlier this year.

"I wish local politicians would have spent some of their energy helping us instead of fighting us."

She's even challenged the supposed "sacred" status of agricultural land, some of which will be removed from the provincial reserve to settle the Tsawwassen land claim.

"To assume we're going to devastate the ecology is almost offensive," she told a panel of critics at an urban land use forum. "To be held up as the final gatekeeper for the end of the world is a little much."

About 200 hectares of agricultural land would be coming out of the reserve as part of the proposed settlement. A tract of equal size would be left in.

"It is a tough sell for me to get my community to accept only half of the land coming out," Baird said.

The deal was a "huge compromise" for all sides, she told the forum, and that's become her persistent selling point.

She's also had to fend off critics from within, including a challenger in her bid for a fifth term as band chief.

Baird won reelection, but suffered a setback when band members rejected the first draft of a proposed membership code setting out provisions for the coming treaty vote.

She blames herself for the loss, saying the code wasn't well explained. A second vote has been scheduled for early next month and this time she expects it to pass.

All that is prelude to when the treaty itself comes up for a vote later in the month.

The band will set up advance polling stations for significant concentrations of members living off the reserve in Vernon and Bellingham. Mail-in balloting will be allowed as well.

The main balloting is set for July 25 on the Tsawwassen reserve itself.

About 220 natives are thought to be eligible, but treaty rules require that they be enrolled to cast a ballot in the ratification vote.

The band council set a goal of enrolling at least two-thirds of those eligible, and Baird says "we're confident we can make that."

Ratification is by 50 per cent plus one. Thus 111 "yes" votes would be needed to carry the day if everyone turned out; a mere 74 might be enough if only two-thirds of those eligible were actually enrolled and voting.

Baird figures she and the other band leaders "have a lot of work ahead of us" over the next few weeks.

She has already started the process of going door to door, family to family, explaining the proposed terms and answering questions.

One can gauge the tone of her pitch from a recent letter to the editor of the Delta Optimist: "The Tsawwassen community can take control of its own destiny by voting in favour of the treaty ... ushering in a new era of reconciliation and economic opportunity."

Wishing her luck from the sidelines are the B.C. Liberals, the federal Conservatives, and others with hopes for the treaty process.

Tsawwassen could be the breakthrough, the first treaty under the 14-year-old, $1 billion-and-counting process.

But the proposed treaty has plenty of enemies as well, including critics of the plan to remove land from the agricultural reserve.

There are those who say the settlement is overly rich -- $120 million officially, though some estimates say two or three times as much.

There are also those who say the terms are not generous enough.

Some native leaders would be happy to hear a "no" from the Tsawwassen First Nation, because that might well sink the treaty process and force Victoria and Ottawa to improve the offers of land, resources and autonomy in future negotiations.

Baird, wisely, resists any suggestion that this treaty will impose a "precedent" on other aboriginal people. "We tried to do the best job we could for our community," she says.

The vote will tell whether her community agrees. She thinks they are coming around. She notes, too, that the dissenting voices from the neighbouring non-native community appear to have quieted in recent weeks.

"I don't want to sound overly optimistic," Baird told me when I caught up with her on Friday. "But I am cautiously optimistic."

If her estimation is borne out, the outcome would surely usher in a new era for the Tsawwassen people, and maybe for the rest of British Columbia as well.

Vaughn Palmer
published on 06/23/2007

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