March, 2014 Newsletter
Marvin Williams - Indigenous Planning Facilitator Report
Both meetings were very successful. In those meetings it was decided that the treaty department needed to include LBN members that lived off reserve, so we are in the process of holding treaty meetings off reserve, we started with Vancouver and then Prince George, as well as the forum in Woyenne. We are planning meetings in Fort Babine, Tachet, Smithers and Old Fort,
We are also doing research work as we have made field trips to Vancouver and Victoria.
In the Vancouver trip we went to the following.
Union of BC Indian Chiefs Office, as we met with Head researchers to discuss archival holdings and other resources at the UBCIC Office, some interesting discussions with their researcher and staff.
Specific Claims West and we learned more about being a researcher, improving our skills as researchers, learning stuff like finding minutes of decisions for Lake Babine reserve holdings and references from the old Indian land registry Blue Books that are at Indian Affairs.
Surveyor Generals Branch, meeting with Steve Minnie to learn how the Natural Recourse Canada website operates, their computers was not working up to par so we were not able to learn as much as we wanted.
University of British Columbia, we went for a tour at the UBC museum to view art work and artifacts from all first nations in B.C. and we learned of the importance of preserving these artifacts, because it will tell our history as first nation’s people
In the Victoria trip we went to the fallowing
B.C. Archives, we were able to find some maps of the Lake Babine Nation territory, and we viewed some files on Babine Lake that will be sent to us at a later date.
B.C. Legislature-Library, we found some information on the Babine River and Babine Lake that will help us in our treaty process, information about mining companies, and we some newspaper articles also.
Surveyor General’s Vaults, we were happy to get additional information on the Tachet/Topley Landing area that will help LBN in the Topley Landing Tribunal, there were a lot of files that we needed to go through, however we did not have enough time to go through everything.
Genealogy and Maps, I also completed an old map of Old Fort, a map of LBN members that lived in Old Fort in the 1930’s to the 1960’s, we are hoping to do this for all the other villages in the LBN territory, villages like Pierre Creek, Sunny Side, Donald’s Landing Tachet and Pendleton Bay, Fred Williams did Fort Babine that we need to put into map form. And I also worked on some genealogy using the diocese book that we have in the treaty office,
Working with UNBC, we have Tony Donovan of UNBC working with us in digitizing audio and video cassettes that are stored at the UNBC; we feel it is very important to preserve these tapes for future use, we are also meeting with the UNBC on a regular basis, they will help us in training as well as working with us in areas such as archeological digs in our territory. Well that concludes my report, I would like to thank the late Joe Michell for always being there for me and the other staff of the Lake Babine Treaty, he is a great man that is sorely missed, RIP Joe. Thank you for your time.
Marvin Williams- Lake Babine Treaty
