Talk:First Nations Government (Canada)

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[edit] Title re Wiki name conventions

This is an important article which I didn't know existed, but in fact recently made comments that it should; one reason being to distinguish or describe the difference between Indian Act-derived governments and structures and traditional governments (see dab lines at Squamish Nation and Skwxwu7mesh, and those articles' respective talkpages and those linked off them. It never occurred to me to look for a title with "(Canada)" in it, as "First Nations" is entirely a Canadian term to start with so the "{Canada)" part isn't really needed IMO. Other than that, Wiki article naming conventions would seem to indicate that the title here should be small-g, i.e. First Nations government or First Nations governments, as there is no one "First Nations Government", which would mandate/validate a capital-G. So I recommend this page be retitled, or rather turned into a redirect - no normal move procedure is required because there are only six pages which link to this page. So far, that is. In the opening line of the many BC First Nations government and tribal council stubs I've been creating/revising this last week, I've used the phrase "Such-and-so Nation is a First Nations government in the Canadian province of British Columbia", and have been linking only "First Nations" rather than "First Nations government", which I would have preferred to do if I knew there'd been an article by that title, or close to it anyway; as there's also a category Category:First Nations governments in British Columbia this seems more than appropriate; and it may also be in that/this article where the distinction between Indian Act-derived govenrments and traditional govenrments can be discussed; for now the idea is that the non-government articles (e.g. Skwxwu7mesh) which are history/ethno/people/culture articles will discuss the traditional government, while the ones bearing "Nation" and "First Nation" in their titles would be for Indian Act-derived governments; often they're the same thing, de facto if not de jure, but the distinction is an important one for various reasons to lengthy to go into here. Point is this article, under any title, should be a "core" article in terms of explaining FN government, and also core within the BC and Canada Wikiprojects; gut it is especially important in order to explain the varying usage of "First Nation(s)" to non-Canadians, i.e. on the one hand as a generic ethnic term equivalent to Native American, and on the other to describe an individual group of people, and somewhat separately, the band government (or in some cases, the tribal council government). It's also important as a way of clarifying the distinction between the system imposed, and the system inherited and/or strived towards...More on this later after I read the article and make any wiki formatting and such that needs doing, and also to find out what's in it....Skookum1 09:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

This will be tricky because is "Government" and "governance" the same thing? Is "Government" only related to colonial settler governments imposed on the people. Is the hereditary clan chieftainship system a "government" by settler standards. Either way, "First Nations Government" is redundant. "First Nations governments" would be better with information about the Indian Act institution, and that kind of stuff. (Although the Indian Act page should be fixed up too.) OldManRivers 03:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Note that Indian Act-derived governments are the only ones in Category:First Nations governments in British Columbia; I didn't place Chiefs Nicola or Maquinna or Hunter Jack there, for instance, and in each of their cases "governance" is definitely the operative term, even if "chief" isn't right either, in techincal native-culture terms. This is why I've been painfully aware of distinguishing the Indian Act governments in that opening line of the new stubs as well as from the non-Indian Act aspect of natives societies and the communities the band governments are only legal reflections/fictions of; that I understand, which is why the separate ethno/history/people articles vs. the band-council/institutional context of the ones with "Nation" or "First Nation" in the title, and Category:First Nations governments in British Columbia. And it's not like there's one formula for non-Indian Act governance either, and your comments about "ownership" elsewhere, while agreeably the standard generalization, don't match up in all cases, as with some St'at'imc land customs I know of. Anyway, the point of the First Nations governments in British Columbia article proposal, is to document/describe the means the Indian Act governments came into being, including the non-ceded status and the whole rest of it, and this would be apposite to the native/aboriginal perspectives; that's why the line "First Nations government" was included; so the whole of it could be redlinked to the "FN govts in BC" article. Because people looking up a First Nations community who aren't from Canada need to have it explained, and it's a fairly complicated issue, as well as a detailed history (the Indian Act, the anti-potlatch laws, the nature of the Indian Agent - nb I'll be doing an article on Gold Commissioner, often synonymous with Indian Agent). Anyway, further point was that the article in question was written from a Canada-wide basis; but here in BC it's a different constitutional/historical situation entirely, so deserves special treatment; adapting what's there in the "Canada" article is needed, but the page needs retitling and, if BC isn't more split off, more discussion of the particular non-treatied situation and the reserve commissions (Vowell, O'Reilly etc).Skookum1 06:37, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I remember back during the Vancouver Peace Movement's heyday in the early-90s, there was a younger First Nations woman - Kwakwaka'wakw I think - at one gathering (one of endless small colloquiums that lay behind the big marches) who spoke very eloquently about self-government, that that was the real and necessary meaning of "self government". Likewise self-determination. That was the only meaningful government, and once governing the self was found in each of us, natural self-determination of the community follows. I wish I was eloquent about it as she had been, but you would have had to hear her. The idea she stressed was that self-government ultimately wasn't about independence in the usual political sense, but a community peace reached when we learn to govern each of us ourselves. This all said in the context of the peace-movement climate of "building a new world" (it was very post-60s, those couple of years, until the bitterness of the Solidarity Crisis...).Skookum1 06:41, 29 January 2007 (UTC)