Originally Posted by
kertejud2
You're focusing on the endpoint you want and glossing over the important parts. Right now you've offered to give the nations nothing, and in return they give up everything else they have.
The Crown "owns" the land (technically they don't, really), but still has to buy it back when they need it. And not in the typical expropriation way, but in very expensive ways (I refer again to the local example of the Ring Road land purchase deal). It's private property unique in the Canadian landscape.
Also thinking locally, what kind of system would be agreed upon where some people get the Grey Eagle Casino land, and others get some random gravel pit in the middle of the reserve? Expand that to the other money-making powerhouses of reserve land (North Shore in Vancouver, the Shushwap holdings in the BC interior) or the political nightmares of places like Awkwesasne, you're not going to get much support. The collective earning and bargaining power of reserve land is worth exponentially more than individual parcels of land in no small part because the land has protection no other private land in the country does. When you consider how many nations are currently involved in legal battles over the actual land they feel treaties (that are Constitutionally protected, mind you) entitle them to, you are going to have a hard time getting much buy-in for what land they'd be getting privatized. That's a big part of what the current issue is about: The land the Wet'suwet'en claim is significantly different from the reserve land they have, and it is buoyed by the fact the land in BC is unceded so it is much more of a grey area of what land you would be privatizing.
I think it's pretty evident you have no concept of the scale of the problem, which is why you're so dismissive about it. It's 634 problems, where you want people to give up something without giving them anything in return.
They don't care about your endpoint. Maybe you should find out what their desired endpoint is.