Turtle Island Native Network
http://www.turtleisland.org

October 23, 2001

RE: PROTECTION OF SKWELWEKWELT LANDS

Tourist developments work to displace aboriginal people
from their lands.

by
Rodney Bobiwash

Director – The Forum for Global Exchange

Center for World Indigenous Studies Canada

P.O. Box 19001

360-A Bloor St. W.

Toronto, ON

M5S 1X1


October 23, 2001

The Honourable Jean Chretien

Prime Minister of Canada

Office of the Prime Minister

80 Wellington St.

Ottawa, ON

CANADA K1A 0A2

HARD COPY TO FOLLOW BY MAIL

Dear Mr. Chretien,

RE: PROTECTION OF SKWELWEKWELT LANDS

I am writing you on a matter of great urgency regarding the protection of
Skwelwekwelt lands in British Colombia. The people of the Shushwap Nation
and their supporters have established a Protection Centre on their
traditional lands to protest the expansion of the Sun Peaks resort in their
traditional lands.

Since the Protection Centre was established they have been harassed by the
BC Ministries of Highways, Environment and Forestry, and the RCMP. There
are numerous documented instances of this including the arrest of two
Elders and two men by the RCMP; the digging of four massive trenches on the
road to Mt. Morisey, restricting access to the land in August 2001; the
demolition of the home at the Protection Centre on August 26, 2001, leaving
three people homeless; and most recently the issuance of a trespass notice
given the protestors until October 24, 2001 to remove themselves from the
area.

All of this has been done despite the fact that the Secwepmc have never
surrendered this territory under treaty, sold or leased this land. The
actions of the British Colombia government in support of Delta Hotels Chain
and the developers are a clear contradiction of the basic constitutional
protections offered Aboriginal people in Canada from as early as the Royal
Proclamation of 1763, which set out clear directions for the process of
land alienation from Indigenous people.

These have been affirmed in a number of later and contemporary pieces of
legislation and court decisions, as you know from your tenure as the former
Minister of Indian Affairs.

Further to this there are a number of directives and policies recognized in
international law that development projects must not displace aboriginal
people and must not be carried out without the Prior Informed Consent of
the people whose territories and resources are affected.

This year as the United Nations Environment Program has designated 2002 as
the International Year of Ecotourism, it would seem that Canada might be
more sensitive to the rights of Aboriginal people where tourist
developments are taking place on their lands.

Aboriginal people are often at the crux of both eco and cultural tourism
and often it is their lands and communities that create added value for
foreign guests. If Canada will not honour it's obligation to the Secwepmc
people in this regard, taking up it's fiduciary obligation to protect their
lands as required under Canada's Constitution Act, then this must surely
become an item for discussion at the various forums organized around
eco-tourism in 2002 by the World Tourism Organization and by UNEP.

It must also be brought to the attention of the Indigenous Working groups
of the UNHRC, the Convention on Biodiversity, and the Commission on
Sustainable Development. These arenas deal with the intersection between
Indigenous rights, human rights, development and the environment and while
Canada aspires to be a leader in these, her actions in regards to the
Secewepmc and their struggle against the Sun Peaks development will
indicate if Canada is at all deserving of this role.

I urge you in your capacity as Prime Minister to use all resources at your
disposal to ensure that the province of British Colombia honours the
territorial rights of the Secwepmc people; that you instruct the RCMP, as a
federal police force, to cease and desist from aggression against the
Skwelkwekwet Protection Centre and the defenders of the land there, and to
desist from enforcing arrest warrants there; that you, and Minister Nault,
intervene with Premier Campbell and the Delta Hotel developers to ask that
they respect the territory and the people, that they restore access to the
site, and that they negotiate with the Secwepmc in good faith in an open
and transparent fashion.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. A favour of a reply is
requested.

Chi Meegwetch,

Rodney Bobiwash

Director - The Forum for Global Exchange

cc:

Chief Arthur Manuel, Shushwap Tribal Council

Shkwelwekwelt Protection Centre

The Hon. Robert Nault, Minister Indian Affairs, Canada

Premier Gordon Campbell, Premier of British Colombia

Inter-American Human Rights Commission, OAS

Chair - UNHRC

NGO Committee Indigenous People's Forum, United Nations

International Indigenous Caucus on BioDiversity

NGO Caucus on the International Year of Ecotourism

Dr. Rudolph C. Ryser, Chair, CWIS

A. Rodney Bobiwash
Director - The Forum for Global Exchange
Center for World Indigenous Studies
P.O. Box 19001
360-A Bloor St. W.
Toronto, ON
M5S 1X1 CANADA
www.cwis.org
"Promoting Consent and Cooperation Between Nations Througb the Application
and Promotion of Indigenous Knowledge"


BACKGROUND

Subject: Tourism:

Do We Need the International Year of Ecotourism?

Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 13:56:08 -0400
From: Julie Trupke

FOR MEDIA USE:

Do We Need the International Year of Ecotourism?

By Anita Pleumarom, Tourism Investigation & Monitoring Team

The first flush of ecotourism is running into trouble. Claims that we can
protect nature, benefit local communities and also bring national revenues
to the South are faced with a different reality on the ground. From
Thailand to Belize, ecotourism has opened the doors to more forest
destruction.

Indigenous peoples in affected areas have been forced out of their
traditional lands in some cases. Reports are also growing that such
"tourists" are illegally collecting forest plants with potential medicinal
value for the biotechnology industry.

So when the United Nations proclaimed 2002 as International Year of
Ecotourism, many NGOs who have been monitoring tourism impacts went on the
alert.

In October this year, an international coalition of environmental, human
rights and indigenous peoples groups launched a call for a fundamental
reassessment of the UN Ecotourism Year 2002. They also denounce the lack of
transparency and failure to meaningfully involve indigenous peoples and
Southern organizations in ongoing preparations.

"We are extremely concerned that this UN endorsement of ecotourism in light
of all the fundamental problems related to the industry - in many cases
another greenwash - will destroy more biodiversity and harm even more local
communities," said Chee Yoke Ling, a representative of the Third World
Network based in Malaysia.

"I really think this is going to be worse than the launch of package tours
to the Third World," commented Nina Rao from India, Southern co-chair of
the NGO Tourism Caucus at the UN Commission for Sustainable Development
(CSD).

The UN General Assembly had adopted a resolution (A/Res/53/200) in November
1998 to prepare for Ecotourism Year 2000. The UN Environment Programme
(UNEP) and the UN-affiliated World Tourism Organization (WTO) are to
organize activities and projects around the event, and one highlight will
be the World Ecotourism Summit, to be held in Quebec, Canada, in May 2002.

Critics argue the UN has given approval and is making preparations for the
Ecotourism Year, without proper examination of the nature of the ecotourism
industry and its many negative impacts on the tourist destinations.

A letter to UNEP's tourism programme coordinator, Oliver Hillel, signed by
more than 20 groups from the South and North, says, "Too often,
international agencies have used the South for misguided and outright
destructive development experiments, and . we oppose the idea that the
International Year of Ecotourism serves as an instrument for ecotourism
experiments in developing
countries, which are likely to cause more harm than good."

The coalition letter vigorously questions claims that the ecotourism
approach rectifies the economic inequalities, social injustices and
ecological problems associated with conventional tourism. Rather, it warns,
such developments have "opened opportunities for a whole range of investors
to gain access to remote rural, forest, coastal and marine areas", and "more
encroachments, illegal logging, mining and plundering of biological
resources occur, including biopiracy by unscrupulous and corporate
collectors."

In the letter, the groups also point out that "governments are utterly ill
equipped for the International Year of Ecotourism" and often "promote all
forms of rural and nature tourism as ecotourism, while frameworks to
effectively scrutinize, monitor and control developments are poorly
developed or non-existent."

Ecotourism promoters primarily target indigenous peoples and their lands,
ecosystems and cultures, and this has especially attracted criticisms from
indigenous and Southern rights activists. Deborah McLaren, the coordinator
of the US-based Rethinking Tourism Project that works for protection and
preservation of indigenous lands and cultures expressed worries, "that much
of what passes as 'ecotourism' is designed to benefit investors, empower
managerial specialists, and delight tourists, not enhance the economic,
social and ecological health of the host communities."

Rodney Bobiwash, director of the Forum for Global Exchange's Center for
World Indigenous Studies stressed the need for a broader vision of
indigenous concerns: "More than anybody, indigenous people realize that the
discussion of tourism must be situated within a larger discourse
encompassing the discussion of environmental and habitat protection,
sustainable development, traditional knowledge, intellectual property
regimes, biological diversity, access and benefit sharing, biopiracy and
cultural property."

"Any discussion carried on without consideration of the cumulative impact
of all of these processes will not only lack credibility but will also
limit the opportunities for indigenous participation in the discourse," he
said.

The Ecotourism Year is clouded with questions and doubts since its
priorities and objectives are far from clear. Critics ask, for example,
what will happen if this initiative suggests that all UN member countries
should encourage ecotourism projects in rural and natural areas and many
thousands of communities around the world end up competing with each other
for a share of the tourism market? ".who will take responsibility, when
ecotourism
initiatives make investments based on miscalculated demand and later face
decline, local businesses go bankrupt and entire communities are pushed
intom crisis?" ask the groups in the letter to UNEP.

Another scenario is that the event will encourage all holiday-makers to
become ecotourists, resulting in hordes of travellers invading villages and
protected areas, rather than staying in the existing tourist centres.

Surely, such development could not be called "sustainable" and would have
more undesirable impacts to add on to the vast problems already found in
existing organized tourism.

The letter goes on to warn that ecotourism programmes that are promoted as
part of the economic liberalization and globalization wave are likely to
make matters worse. It states, "As supranational institutions such as the
World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization are pressuring
developing countries towards trade and investment liberalization, national
and local governments are increasingly disabled to plan and manage tourism
- and ecotourism - on their own terms."

It emphasizes that local concerns are at odds with the interests of "the
corporate tourism industry, (which) aggressively pushes for
non-intervention in companies' decision-making processes to expand their
business and maximize their profits."

"As nature-based tourism is presently seen as one of the most lucrative
niche markets, powerful transnational corporations are likely to exploit
the International Year of Ecotourism to dictate their own definitions and
rules of ecotourism on society, while people-centred initiatives will be
squeezed out and marginalized," says the coalition letter.

With the services sector under tremendous pressure in the World Trade
Organization to be opened to foreign corporations, there are signs already
that tourism in the South, a major service industry, is eagerly targeted by
transnational corporations.

Meanwhile, the NGO coalition's concerns have also been discussed within
World Bank circles. One official, Kreszentia M. Duer, acknowledged that "if
we don't take a strategic position on tourism development., small-scale
efforts for community-based tourism will always be overwhelmed by the
powerful interests of big business and the enticements of the big pay-offs
they can offer to government officials."

"Without organizational efforts.and a multi-pronged, strategic approach,
community-based tourism will tend to remain ad hoc, piecemeal, and micro,"
she concluded, adding, "The 'International Year of Ecotourism' will be
little more than rhetoric, unless these challenges are addressed directly."

The debates around the Ecotourism Year have been heavily overshadowed by
politics and a serious conflict of interests has evolved. Critical NGO
observers complain that corporate industry and large nature
conservation/ecotourism organizations have colluded to lobby for the UN
endorsement of ecotourism and now want to exploit it for self-serving
purposes (e.g. to get free promotion or funding for their projects), while
voices that question the interests of the protagonists are excluded or given
only cursory treatment.

It is conspicuous, they point out, that only certain environmental NGOs and
The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) have been allowed to play a key
role in the preparations - exactly those organizations that have been
strongly criticized by grassroots-oriented and indigenous groups for
ignoring local people's concerns.

"In our experience, large nature conservation and development organizations
do not respect (local people's) right," says a statement presented by a
spectrum of indigenous peoples representatives and NGOs to more than 150
governments at a meeting on the Convention on Biological Diversity in
Nairobi, Kenya, last May. "For example, several activities undertaken by
the Ecotourism Society, Conservation International and IUCN do not respect
the rights and interests of Indigenous Peoples and
local communities, particularly in regard to Year of Ecotourism activities,
and often threaten cultural and biological diversity."

Initially, the UN invited all concerned parties "to exert all possible
efforts on behalf of the success of the Year" (Resolution 1998/40). But the
question arises, success for whom? If the charges turn out to be true that
only certain parties will reap the major benefits of the Ecotourism
Year,the UN's integrity and its proclaimed mission to primarily work for the
well-being of the world's poor and disadvantaged will surely be put in doubt.

Given the great contradictions and ironies surrounding this UN programme,
the already shaky image of ecotourism may further deteriorate, to the point
that the grandiose Ecotourism Year scheme collapses like a house of cards.

Is it worth all the energy and money that the UN can ill afford?

For more information on the Campaign on the International Year of
Ecotourism, please contact: Tourism Investigation & Monitoring Team at

And visit www.twnside.org.sg/tour.htm



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