The Ch'íyáqtel First Nation near Chilliwack, British Columbia, is tiny. The Band counts 731 members, some 58% of which live on Ch'íyáqtel lands. Their Reserve lands, adjacent to the city, are not large.
But they are growing.
In late October at Tuahiwi marae, Ngāi Tahu hosted the third of four national hui requested by the Late Māori King Arikinui Tuheitia.
That self-determination is grounded in their nations’ authority over their own land.
Ch'íyáqtel Chief Derek Epp said that, in 1990, transfers from the Canadian central government made up some 90% of his tribal council’s operational funding.
Now, only some 10% of tribal council revenue comes from Ottawa. Ninety percent is generated by economic activity on Ch'íyáqtel land, where the band has tax, zoning, and regulatory authority.
Their small tribe developed a zoning plan. They impose taxes to fund infrastructure including roads, water, sewerage, streetlights and other services.
Being able to fund infrastructure through taxation on their own land enabled growth. “We’ve gone from having about a couple hundred homes … to creeping up to four or five thousand homes on our Reserve.”
It is simplest to think about Ch'íyáqtel’s tribal council and its reserve lands as being like a small local council and that council’s territory – but with a few more powers than New Zealand’s local councils have.
If Ch'íyáqtel provides potential residents with better value-for-money for their local taxes, or simply outpaces Chilliwack in enabling more affordable housing, it can attract tax-paying residents.
Chief Epp expects eight to ten thousand non-members living on their Reserve in the next five years. Those tax-paying residents will help further Ch'íyáqtel economic self-determination.
That friendly competition between local councils is hardly beggar-thy-neighbour. In New Zealand, it’s often been rescue-thy-neighbour. If Lower Hutt had not enabled a lot more housing growth when Wellington Council maintained tight rules against building, the entire region would have been far worse off. And post-earthquake Christchurch would have been a worse disaster if people could not have found new homes in Selwyn and Waimakiriri, which enabled building when Christchurch would not.
Economic self-determination means Ch'íyáqtel is no longer dependent on the government but rather is economically self-sufficient.
But it has been a long path. Over the course of two decades, the tribal council built up administrative capacity and took up real authority over their own land.
Chief Epp said they now move at the speed of business, and faster than other governments.
They are using the fruits of that self-sufficiency to plan for the seven generations ahead of them.
The English translation of Ch'íyáqtel is “the place of the fish weir”. The river through their lands once teemed with fish, and their village had fish-weirs for catching them.
Economic self-determination means they have had the resources to restore watercourses, to bring back the salmon, and to see a future where they will again have fish-weirs. Not by begging other governments or pleading to regional council, but by having jurisdiction to protect the waterway, and the economic resources to restore it.
They are also using those resources to buy back Ch'íyáqtel’s traditional lands and bring them under their jurisdiction and tax authority.
Chief Epp explained that unity, for tribes within his broader Nation, meant supporting each other’s aspirations and autonomy.
I was privileged to have been invited by Ngāi Tūāhuriri Upoko Te Maire Tau to attend, to hear what the Canadian leaders had to say, and to provide a few words about what I thought it could mean here.
Māori freehold land is constrained by title structures that often do not work, is unrated and unloved by local councils, and consequently hard to improve, develop, or restore. Some five percent of the country is so-encumbered.
Iwi autonomy over that Māori freehold and reserve land, in place of council autonomy, could help solve a few problems.
New Zealand has a housing crisis, with Māori more affected than others. Ch'íyáqtel has been able to use its autonomy to deliver housing both for its members and for the broader community. So have the Squamish at Sen̓áḵw. It could work here too.
The government has made regional development a priority. Recognising rangatiratanga could enable discovery of innovative solutions for Māori freehold land in the regions.
It did not happen overnight in Canada and would not here either. But we can learn from the institutions Canadian First Nations built to support First Nations autonomy.
Ch'íyáqtel, with fewer than 800 people, manages local taxation, zoning, and infrastructure for its members so successfully that it is also helping to provide housing for its broader community: doing rangatiratanga.
It seems a far more beneficial approach for everyone.
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