Richard Desautel: The Aboriginal hunter who “revived” his people in Canada | International

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Friday that members of the Sinixt people can hunt in their ancestral territories located in the southwest of the country. The verdict overturns a historic claim by the Canadian government, which in 1956 established that the indigenous group had disappeared. The vast majority of Sinixts currently live in the Lakes Tribe, a nature reserve in the northern United States, a few miles from the border between Washington State and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Smallpox, mining and the arrival of settlers precipitated their displacement. According to the ruling, if an indigenous group located outside of what is now Canada’s territory can prove its ancestry in the country, it is constitutionally protected. “An interpretation of the law that excludes indigenous peoples who have been forced to leave the country risks perpetuating the historical injustice suffered by these peoples,” the court’s final decision reads. The legal victory, after a decade in court, was caused by a hunter.

In October 2010, Richard Desautel, a Sinixt from the Lakes Tribe reserve and a United States citizen, hunted a deer near the town of Castlegar, British Columbia. Desautel himself called provincial authorities to report this incident. He was charged against him because British Columbia’s wildlife law states that only residents of the province who belong to a federally recognized Indigenous group can hunt without permission. Desautel thus begins a legal battle. “My goal was to go to Canada, like my nomadic ancestors, and not have this invisible border that prevents me from hunting there,” he told a British Columbia court.

In 1956, the federal government stopped seeing the Sinixts as an indigenous Canadian group, depriving them of all rights. Ottawa has this power under the so-called “India Act”, a mechanism that since 1876 has regulated the activities of indigenous communities. Historians note that the Sinixts settled for at least 5,000 years in the territory that now encompasses parts of British Columbia and Washington. Smallpox, mining, and the arrival of missionaries and settlers of European descent prompted most members of this city to settle in the United States at the end of the 19th century. The few people who decided to stay in Canada settled in the Arrow Lakes reserve, living with other indigenous peoples. According to the Canadian government, the last Sinixt recorded at Arrow Lakes died in 1953; three years later, Ottawa declared this group extinct in the country.

In 2017, a trial judge found that Richard Desautel was “exercising his traditional right to hunt for ceremonial purposes, a constitutionally guaranteed right”, so that “the application of the Wildlife Act has undermined unjustified way to this right ”. Desautel won again before the Supreme Court of British Columbia and the Court of Appeal of that province. The provincial government then decided to take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada in October.

This Friday, the body ruled in favor of Desautel (seven votes to two), stressing that hunting in the Canadian part was an activity for the Sinixts before and after the arrival of the Europeans, so they have the right to continue to practice it in their ancestral territory, as can other recognized indigenous groups. The decision sets a precedent, since individuals belonging to an indigenous people whose presence in Canada dates before the arrival of Europeans can exercise a right, even if they are not Canadian citizens or reside in another country.

After hearing the Supreme Court ruling, Desautel told the local newspaper Nelson star: “It’s not just something for me. It is for my family and for future generations. The door has just opened ”. An estimated 3,000 members of the Sinixt people live in the United States. In Canada, the figure is difficult to establish, so much the descendants of this group who did not travel south of the border – and who left the radar of Ottawa – were integrated with other aboriginal communities.

Subscribe here to bulletin of EL PAÍS América and receive all the informative keys of the current situation in the region