Under Cover of Harvest

Only liberals appreciate the United Nations. No despot, no radical of any stripe, wants to be told what to do by an organization whose councils are dominated by liberal democracies.

Liberal democratic nations who have cheerfully adopted the United Nations Declaration On the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as a guide to the interpretation of the laws of their countries with respect to Indigenous Peoples whose land they stole tend to feel pretty good about themselves when sitting across the table from hater nations like China and Russia.

That good feeling was tested in British Columbia recently when the Lilwat and N'Quatqua First Nations, after repeated attempts to negotiate with the provincial government about a harvest celebration at Joffre Lakes Provincial Park, announced that the Lakes would be closed until September 30, leaving B.C. Parks to cancel over a month of camping reservations (a not insignificant revenue loss), lay off staff hired to clean up after those campers (a not insignificant wage loss) and of course the inevitable scramble to get the drones out to see what the Lilwat and N'Quatqua will be getting up to under cover of harvest.

Though I fully expect the Lilwat and N'Quatqua to stay true to their intentions and celebrate the harvest, I am hoping they take repossession further and leave some sustaining mark on the park in the way some think they are doing with public art, which is often determined not by those who live and work in an area, who have a deeper understanding of it, but who abide by that happiest of monsters: majority rule.