Wuikinuxv Nation Comprehensive Community Plan

Draft May 2016 Draft for Wuikinuxv Community discussion Draft not for general public distribution Table of Contents Introduction ...... 4 Development of the CCP ...... 4 Purpose of a CCP ...... 4 CCP and other Strategic Plans ...... 2 Getting to Fundamental Issues ...... 2 Starting with the end ...... 3 For Those Living in the Village or For Those Living Away ...... 3 Comments ...... 4 Priority among Issues ...... 4 Next steps 2016-2018 ...... 4 Implementation ...... 4 Vision ...... 2 Issue—Mental Health ...... 2 Desired outcomes ...... 2 Issue—Education and Careers ...... 4 Issue—Being a Community ...... 2 Issue—Being a Wuikinuxv Community ...... 3 Issue—A Sustainable Wuikinuxv Community ...... 4 Issue—Emergency Preparedness ...... 5 Issue-Governance and Independence ...... 6 Issue-Economic Development ...... 7 Issue—Environment ...... 9 Issue—Youth ...... 10 Issue-Housing ...... 11

Acknowledgements

The project Team thanks and acknowledges everyone who contributed to the Wuikinuxv Comprehensive Community Plan through meetings, submitting ideas in conversation, email or online. Funding for phase 1 gratefully received from the First Nation Infrastructure Fund, Indian and Norther Affairs.

Community Coordinators Andrea Walkus Hope Johnston

Project Coordination Tony Wong

Oversight Wuikinuxv Chief and Council 2015, 2016 Rose Hanuse Hackett Fred Anderson George Johnson Frank Hanuse Rick Shaw

Administration Doug Brown Robert Duncan

Introduction The centre of the Wuikinuxv universe is Oweekeno Lake. For more than 10,000 years the rich waters and land provided the Wuikinuxv with a diverse variety of foods and materials to build communities across the homelands. In modern times our territory is known as Rivers Inlet in the Central Coast region of the province of British Columbia in Canada. Our history here is unbroken and we have never ceded our land or Aboriginal Rights or Title to what we own.

This document summarizes discussions at Wuikinuxv Comprehensive Community Planning (CCP) meetings. It is intended this document be circulated for comments and further discussion. As the CCP process precedes this document will evolve into the Wuikinuxv CCP that expresses the collective vision of the Wuikinuxv people. The CCP will be the strategic plan for the community to achieve a sustainable, healthy and prosperous future for the Wuikinuxv.

Development of the Comprehensive Community Plan The CCP is a product of community input at meetings held in communities where Wuikinuxv live. Meetings were held in Wuikinuxv, Campbell River, Nanaimo, Vancouver and Shearwater. The CCP will come to other communities too including Port Hardy. In each round the plan will be reviewed, added onto and improved. The CCP will never be finished, as high priority issues are taken care of, other issues will be identified and solutions developed. The Wuikinuxv CCP is a product of community ideas steeped with deep and probing discussions by the community for the community.

The Wuikinuxv CCP will include input from all community members no matter where you live and Wuikinuxv of all ages. Youth have ideas and youth specific needs. The CCP will be a means of documenting these so young people have the opportunity to shape their own future.

Purpose of a CCP A CCP is a tool to deal with issues the community faces. It is also lays out a strategy for achieving a more self-sufficient, healthy and prosperous community. It is also a tool for realizing dreams one step at a time. Finally a CCP can help match funding opportunities to community priorities.

At one of the first Wuikinuxv CCP meetings participants said issues tend to be intertwined and do not fall into neat, separate categories. For this reason this CCP is organized by “issues”. There are many important issues and the order in which the issues are presented does not imply one issue is more important than the next. The CCP wheel, left, describes some of the many factors involved in each issue. To the wheel we would add “education”.

Source: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada “CCP Handbook: Comprehensive Community Planning for First Nations in British Columbia”

CCP and other Strategic Plans A CCP does not replace other strategic plans that Wuikinuxv may have or develop. A CCP is the high level, general plan. It is comprehensive and covers all the issues related to governance, the territory, social and housing programs, health and education, and culture. All other plans are plans under a CCP.

Getting to Fundamental Issues Developing a CCP is not a fast or easy process. There is a great deal of discussion and listening to many different viewpoints. This is why a CCP is usually a two or three year process for most communities. One task your CCP Coordinator and meeting facilitator will try and do is to help the group get to what is the fundamental issue or issues. Once the core issue is identified, it is more fruitful to tackle the core issue than a symptom. This is best demonstrated with an example dialog.

“We need a barge with a store on it that comes to the village”

“why?”

“So we can shop”

“What would you buy”?

“Groceries and other things for the house”

“Oh, how do you shop now”?

“We shop in Port Hardy but It’s too expensive flying groceries in or ship as freight”

“Ok, so the issue is the cost of getting groceries and supplies in?”

“Yes”

“So maybe the issue is how to make living in the village more sustainable”?

“Yes, that’s it”

So in this conversation we are uncovering the underlying issue of why there is a need for a store on a barge. It really is about reducing the cost of bringing groceries and supplies in the village. Now the discussion can turn to finding ways to reduce the cost of living in the village. This might mean finding less expensive transportation or bringing the store to us. This is a completely different problem than finding ways to put a store on a barge. There are many ways to put a store on a barge but that would be solving the wrong problem. Once the problem has been properly defined there is a much broader range of possible solutions including growing more food in the village in a green house, restoring fish populations, or reviving more traditional foods. To be effective, one must solve the correct problem.

The issues presented in this CCP outline is from beginning community discussions and are first attempts at understanding the issues. Some may be further refined. We want to ensure we are addressing the correct issue—making life in the village more sustainable and not how to put a store on a barge.

At this point everything is a possibility. The importance is to identify the desired end point. How Wuikinuxv get there will come in the creative problem solving. During the meetings, people came up with suggestions. We include them in this document. Some may be difficult but the ideas are a catalyst to spur further discussion and more ideas.

Starting with the end This draft of the Wuikinuxv CCP does not have the answers…yet. In the first phase of the CCP we introduced the CCP project and began the discussions to understand where Wuikinuxv is at the present and the desired future. We acknowledge individuals and the Nation face challenges before this future for Wuikinuxv can be achieved. However with a vision in mind then the steps to get there from here can be developed. There are many routes to reach a destination. We will work on those steps in the next phase of the CCP. We look forward to more community engagement on the CCP in coming months.

For Those Living in the Village or For Those Living Away This Comprehensive Community Plan is for all of Wuikinuxv whether living in the village or living away. We recognize people living in the village face different challenges than community members living away particularly in larger towns where there is easier access to services and goods but far from the home community and Territory.

From the meetings in the village, Nanaimo, Vancouver, and Shearwater the following are some of the issues participants have raised that the Nation needs to discuss and resolve.

Comments At the end of the following sections are areas for your notes and comments. Bring your ideas to the next CCP meeting. See Appendix 1 for a worksheet for jotting down additional ideas to bring to the next meeting.

Priority among Issues Participants at community meetings ranked the issues identifying the top priorities. Following is a compilation of the issues across numerous community meetings. The interpretation should be the issues at the top of the list generally are higher priority than those lower down. However the order should not be interpreted as a firm order of priorities.

 Sustainable community: address high cost of groceries and goods in village, grow or collect more of own food  Mental health: address core issues driving people to suicide, alcohol and substance abuse, unhealthy relationships  Education: leadership and management, secure funding for more students  Emergency preparedness: emergency resources based in village  Fish and aquatic resources: rebuild  Economic development: secure minimum 100,000 m3/yr forest tenure  Infrastructure: develop policies to maintain community and personal infrastructure  Governance: develop a strong Wuikinuxv government  Culture and language: maintain  Community building: hold community events (e.g., picnics like before)

Next steps 2016-2018 Phase 1 from November 2015 to April 2016 involved several rounds of meetings to introduce the CCP project to community members and to begin the discussion on what are important issues that need to be addressed before Wuikinuxv can be the community it wants to be.

Phase 2 will continue the discussion with more time spent on the higher priority issues which have been identified as making Wuikinuxv village more sustainable and affordable, addressing the factors leading to mental health issues, and improving support for education.

Implementation The community members participating in the CCP offered suggestions for making the CCP process a success. The CCP must be implemented, it cannot be another plan put on the shelf. The CCP will be tackled one issue at a time, one sub-plan at a time. Each sub-plan needs to be delegated to someone who will commit to carry out the work. There also needs to be a communication strategy to accompany implementation to keep the community up to date. Finally the process or technology to help implement a particular sub-plan needs to be transparent. The CCP will not be another plan on the shelf.

Comments1

1 This document is intended to generate ongoing discussion. There is room at the end of each section for your notes, comments and ideas to bring to the next CCP meeting or to submit on-line or by email (online tools coming soon)

Vision Knowing where you are going is essential for planning. The destination determines the stepping stones. When asked what are the components of a vision statement, people identified the following wishes for a Wuikinuxv future:

 Healthy in all aspects  Healthy people  Loving and proud  Respect for each other  To be strong, in unity and prosperity  Diverse economy based on forestry, tourism, aquaculture  Operate own planes (self-sufficiency)  Housing for everyone who wants to live in the village  Have everything we need  Everyone working together  Wuikinuxv is spoken  Under good governance  Animals in abundance  Fish in abundance  People are one with the environment  Wuikinuxv to remain isolated and remote

These criteria for a Wuikinuxv future will be refined and drafted into a vision statement. Comments

Issue—Mental Health An elder remarked that many of the issues facing the community, such as abuse of alcohol and drugs, domestic violence, and difficulties in inter-personal relationships are not stand alone issues but symptoms of underlying causes. A major underlying root cause is the residual effects of residential school on individuals and families: the parents left in the village when the kids were taken away to schools and now the families of those who spent time in residential school. Families were separated and broken up, the opportunity to teach and pass on language, culture, traditional practices and love was interrupted. The generations that followed did not have the benefit of learning how to be a family. Overcoming the results and effects of residential school is a major challenge to a healthy community and health relations. While it is important to address substance abuse, suicide, and self-harm those are only symptoms of underlying conditions.

Desired outcomes We do not know how to get there yet but these are the desired outcomes

 End cycle of abuse of others  End cycle of abuse of myself  End cycle of poverty  End bickering  End lateral violence  End sense of loneliness and isolation for some  Return to healthy socializing  Bring families together

Some of the suggested approaches to achieve these outcomes:  Raise people up from where they are  Be good role models  Restore pride  Restore identity—who are we?  Know one’s own family history, who are? Where do you come from?  Restore cultural protocols between people, families and with other communities  Promote healthy home life and relationships  Hold circles, a safe and supportive environment to let people talk and share feelings  Let people freely express themselves  Help healing, have a healer in the community  Tailor healing to individual hurts and needs  Have healers and a place that people trust  Provide follow-up after treatment so if someone experiences triggers, there is someone to help  Offer wellness days to the community, bring in people with different specialties to lead sessions  Have ongoing support for healing  Have a healing centre either in the village or up at the Lake

 Get together to talk, play cards, play games. Turn off TV and video games.  Play bingo, have crib tournaments  Hold community meals  Bring back community picnics at various places around the village  Bring in inspiring speakers  Have full time doctors and nurses in the village Comments

Issue—Education and Careers Education was discussed at length, many saw education as necessary for moving forward as a Nation and for improving prospects for individuals. Currently Wuikinuxv supports students attending technical and academic programs. The desire is for education to:

 Train for a purpose and a career. Invest in training only when there is a future for those skills, avoid training for non-existent opportunities  Train and have those members with education, skills and experience to come back to the community to work, at least for a while to help lift the community  Train for higher education, need administrators, office workers, accountants, trades, craftsmen, and teachers to come back and work for Wuikinuxv  Wuikinuxv government run by Wuikinuxv  Need our own nurses and doctors  Offer training for a diversity of jobs and careers  Realize that youth today have different interests than their parents and grand parents  Have more students finish grade 12  Have more women trained and working  Incorporate Wuikinuxv culture in curriculum (dancing, singing, drumming daily in school)  Train for leadership

The community can lift up students by giving them moral support:

 Acknowledge and support students who are making the effort to gain education  Acknowledge student’s effort and achievements

In addition to courses and program, students can benefit from help with skills for job entry:

 Helping develop life skills on budgeting, shopping and eating wisely, running a household, expectations of the workplace around being on-time and reliable, etc.  Preparing resumes  Providing help with filling out applications  Practicing doing interviews, as a group role play interviews  Learning computer skills for email, Internet browsing, MS-Office software  Learning general office skills and procedures that are transferable between different work places  Have councillors that are more like mentors  Offer family planning

Meeting participants mentioned BladeRunners as a type of program that can help young people successfully enter the workforce.

A challenge to more success with education is with policies around how education is administered:

 Reduce emotional stress for students by streamlining administration of education, take out worry  Fund more students  Also support Wuikinuxv students who live off Reserve  Advertise education and course opportunities  Provide longer term funding  Fund a variety of circumstances, course fees + living allowance, course fees only, living allowance only  Fund other living expenses such as bus passes  Fund one time short programs, do not limit to certificate or degree programs at colleges or universities. Not everyone needs or wants a degree. Support for a certificate or qualifications would really help some people.  Improve reliability and regularity of payments to students and to institutions for tuition so as to not lose opportunities (late tuition)  Streamline administration of education  Have sufficient budget so a student has certainty of finishing a program instead of knowing only year by year  Hire a full time coordinator with experience. If lacking experience then offer job shadowing to build that experience in the education coordinator.  Plan for succession with education coordinators so experience is not lost and so students do not fall off their education track for administrative problems

The student population is dwindling

 Build a new school so kids and families do not have to move away  Build a bigger school so students can finish high school in the village

Comments

Issue—Being a Community Sometimes it is difficult to know what is missing or what could be. At a meeting a participant suggested tackling the question from the opposite direction. First describe “what is a community. What are the characteristics of a community? What makes up a community”? Then ask the question “Does Wuikinuxv fit this definition of a community”? What are we missing? What do we need to be a community?

Some initial suggestions for infrastructure and activities that would help create “community”

 A church  Sports centre/complex  Elders centre  Elder care home  Community hall  Traditional activities  Increase traditional foods in diet  Language training  Childcare with seniors, everyone of all ages are socializing together  Connecting with youth  Hanging out together like people used to before satellite TV  Accommodation for visiting family and visitors  A new school to retain families  A public pool  Clean up the community  Access: pave the airstrip and pave the roads

This suggestion would make a good and interesting CCP meeting topic. Comments

Issue—Being a Wuikinuxv Community In addition to being a community, what is needed to become a Wuikinuxv Community? The issues here revolved around maintaining the traditions, culture and language. It was more than just keeping the individual parts alive; the idea was to live it all at once, “to be Wuikinuxv”.

 Spending time in the Big House, mentorship  Learning the dances  Learning the songs  Practicing the culture in everyday life  Language study sessions  Knowing, restoring and practicing the cultural protocols  Know your roots, your history, keep records. Publish some of it, put it in libraries and in museums.  Build a big house up at the Lake  Bring families together  Provide elders with a pension  Connect different generations  Put food away by traditional methods  Have a community smoke house  Have some community canoes  Build cabins around in the Territory  Place poles all over the Territory  Need teachers for hunters and fishermen  Write up and publish all Wuikinuxv stories (e.g., Clayton Mac)  Participate in an annual tribal journey  Be together. The four brothers represent ancestry but should not divide, avoid thinking in family groups Comments

Issue—A Sustainable Wuikinuxv Community Since time immemorial the Wuikinuxv were self-sufficient with the waters and land providing all the nourishment and materials needed. There were extensive trade networks that brought materials from distant places. Then new goods and services arrived with the canneries and logging camps during the last century and the freighters that supplied them brought goods on a regular schedule. The cannery boom lasted about 40 years then as the abundance of fish declined, the canneries closed along with their stores, post offices and lines of supply from points south. Today the logging camps are self- contained and do not sell groceries, fuel, or supplies to people outside of the camp. The majority of materials, groceries and services today are brought into the village by water taxi, airplane, or a few times a year on the Bounty. Freight can add 33% to 50% to the cost of groceries brought into the village. The desire is to make Wuikinuxv village a self-sufficient, more sustainable community.

The desire is to be a more sustainable community. Ideas included:

 Green houses, grow more of own vegetables even if it is part of the year  Start a community garden  Make transportation less expensive  Need more babies (increase population)  Build 100 houses, people will come

Another view on being self-sustaining is being strong in Wuikinuxv language and culture. Be proud, build the infrastructure that will in turn employ the crafts and trades. Comments

Issue—Emergency Preparedness In cases when someone needs emergency services in the village and must be transported to Port Hardy or points further south it can take hours for a helicopter or plane to reach the village then make the return trip south. Sometimes weather hampers the boat or plane coming into the village. The desire is to have faster response and shorter time to transport a patient to medical services from the village. Some solutions discussed include:

 Have the emergency transportation onsite in the village  Having a plane and pilots based in Wuikinuxv  Having a water taxi based in Wuikinuxv  Having Wuikinuxv members trained as pilots available in the village  Keeping the runway in usable shape so there is the option of water or runway landing or helicopter landing in the village

Those are some options. This topic bears further discussion on the nature of incidents that require emergency evacuation. Perhaps part of the solution is to reduce the chances of needing emergency attention to training to higher levels of First Aid. Comments

Issue-Governance and Independence Two issues arose around governance: administrative effectiveness and dealing with the annual deficit and accumulated debt. Participants asked “what and where is the vision for Wuikinuxv on an administration”? When Wuikinuxv concludes a Final Agreement through treaty negotiations it will need an administration to run the Wuikinuxv government.

There were strong statements that the Indian Act imposes policies that divide the community. Completing treaty negotiations would get Wuikinuxv out from under the Indian Act. This topic should be explored in greater depth in future CCP meetings to identify what policies need to change or be abandoned. Also to what extent will a Final Agreement replace the Indian Act for Wuikinuxv?

The two sources mentioned that cause the deficit is the high expense for diesel to generate electricity for the village and the amount of travel to/from the village, mostly by flying.

Some needs:

 Provide sufficient resources to run the administration  Increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the administrative systems  Have transparency in all aspects of government  Have people submit invoice or bills for services provided for accountability  Promote a stable workforce, retain key people, train for careers  Plan to build infrastructure and staffing to support the planned initiatives  Start General Meetings on schedule and on time (often rescheduled, waiting for people to arrive)  Need to get Nicknaqueet power project running to start reducing the diesel deficit  Start training Wuikinuxv members now to run the system, it will be online in a couple of years  Manage our resources and bring back our people  Have fewer dogs in the village  Build a new Governance House  Have archives and museum Comments

Issue-Economic Development Wuikinuxv Nation has enjoyed recent success with its forestry tenures and from forestry partnerships with other license holders operating in the Territory. While the forestry ventures generate wealth for Nation the ventures provide few career opportunities for Wuikinuxv members. There is a need is to diversify into other businesses.

Also Wuikinuxv use many services where few if any Wuikinuxv members have a role. A desired future outcome is for Wuikinuxv members to run businesses or have roles in the services the Wuikinuxv community uses. One example is for all the flying business the Wuikinuxv community uses why not have Wuikinuxv members who are pilots to fly the planes. There is also an opportunity for Wuikinuxv members to run businesses transporting freight to the community. Other suggestions

 Catch and sell fish at the dock  Get into ecotourism  Negotiate agreements with fishing resorts to contribute to community  Mill own wood  Grow medical marijuana  Campsite and cabins at village or at lake  Support the B&Bs  Bring day visitors from Port Hardy  Invest money into fish management  Acquire more boats and licenses  Meet Wuikinuxv food and economic needs  Train Wuikinuxv to be fisheries scientists to be equals to DFO scientists to manage fish  Explore new partnerships  Develop a detailed long term business development plan

For many ventures Wuikinuxv will be competing with businesses that have advantages including having access to highways, being on the grid for electricity, and having easy access to services and parts. To be competitive Wuikinuxv businesses will need to be able to cover the extra energy, transportation, and operating costs within the profit margin. The two ways to achieve this is to either be more efficient than other businesses or to offer a product or service that is unique that no one else is offering. Then Wuikinuxv can set the selling price and cover the higher operating costs.

Tourism and eco-tourism are areas of opportunity. Possibilities include:

 Freshwater and saltwater fishing  Hot springs to visit  Can live and experience life in the village for example a 3-day cultural package  Bear viewing in estuaries  Could have accommodations, cabins  Can demonstrate and sell carving, painting, art

 Adorn clothing and hats with designs  Have carvings, jewellery and paintings for sale in the village  Offer a package with visit and activities at the Lake with ideas for activities in the village  Have campsite at the Lake with boats visitors can use to fish  Build a 5-star hotel and spa at RIC  Build trails  Offer heli-tours

Wuikinuxv relies on air and water transportation. For self-sufficiency, there were suggestions to:

 Have own plane with Wuikinuxv pilots  Have own helicopter with Wuikinuxv pilots  Have buildings at the airstrip, an airport  Have a fuel station in the village  Have own freight and boat service, have own water taxi

Ideas for businesses and amenities

 A public restaurant  A Wuikinuxv restaurant serving traditional Wuikinuxv foods  A public pool  A lumber yard  A lumber mill  A water slide park  A ski lodge  A marina and lodge  Paddle boats and canoes  A gravel pit Comments

Issue—Environment We have not touched in depth on the environment yet. A few points raised:

 Protect the environment  Clean up the rivers and streams

Comments

Issue—Youth The following are needs related to youth:

 Exercise  Healthy socializing  Sense of community  Culture  Language training and practice  Keeping occupied  Extracurricular activities  Alcohol and drug avoidance Comments

Issue-Housing Some issues were identified around housing in the village

 Where is everyone going to live?  The village does not have a land use plan or land use zoning, will end up with incompatible uses next to each other  Need to plan for complimenting land uses for adjacent areas  Need to deal with garbage and waste. Garbage dump sits on top of the aquifer that is the drinking water for the village. What is in the dump? Batteries, chemicals, heavy metals? Comments

Appendix 1

Your Turn Comprehensive Community Planning

CCP: A strategic plan developed by the community for the community. Your input will help develop a plan for the Nation to achieve a sustainable, bright, and positive future for all Wuikinuxv.

Start with the End. Then you know where you are going. The longest journey starts with the first step

Comprehensive—Includes all aspects of the Community

What are some of the issues the community and/or Wuikinuxv Nation needs to deal with in order to move forward to a positive, bright future? Are there some big issues? Some small issues? Use the big and small boxes to write down your thoughts.

My wish for the future of the Wuikinuxv Nation is … (Describe your ideal future)… (write on the back)