The World Is Our Witness: The Historic Journey of the Nisga'a into Canada

David Mardiros is a lawyer and anthropological consultant in Terrace,
British Columbia.

The Nisga’a Final Agreement is the first treaty concluded with a First
Nation in British Columbia in a century. The agreement is complex and
controversial; neighboring First Nations and the provincial Liberal
Party have initiated court challenges seeking to strike down or limit
many of its provisions. This book, written by the chief negotiator for
the federal government, reviews some of the 130-year history of the
“Nisga’a Land Question” culminating in the negotiations that
brought the agreement into effect on May 11, 2000.

The focus of the book is largely on the negotiations that took place in
the four years before the agreement came into effect, but the historical
overview provided by the author discusses efforts by the Nisga’a
Nation to gain recognition of their rights through more than a century
of petitions, court cases, and hard bargains with colonial authorities.
While all parties to the agreement acknowledge that it is not perfect,
the book’s discussion of the process that took so many years to bring
an agreement to fruition are a salutary lesson for those who would like
to tear up the treaty and start again.

The style of the book is informal and anecdotal (the assistance of a
ghost writer is openly acknowledged), and provides a nontechnical, quite
personal view of the process. Nonetheless, it should appeal to a general
audience as it contains a useful discussion of the basic provisions of
the treaty on land and resource management, citizenship, and minority
rights. These provisions are described much more clearly than in the
agreement itself, a document made up of two large volumes written in
language that is less than accessible to a general audience. The book
states the aim of the agreement, provides some clear responses to many
of the critics of the treaty, and discusses how it can be final, even
though some of its provisions are subject to future negotiation. The
apparent paradox is explained in the context of what the treaty is
really all about—the establishment of a relation between governments
and nations, each of which is sovereign within its own sphere of
influence and jurisdiction.