Williams Lake Indian Band Holds Successful Treaty Referendum

A lot of hard is to follow now that the Williams Lake Indian Band membership voted in favor of continuing in Treaty Process.

Chief Ann Louie says that’s now that they get into the actual negotiations of Treaty.

“This was just to enter into the next stage so there’s a lot of hard now that we have to bring the governments of BC and Canada to task and focus on real, hard negotiations that needs to occur and it will be over an extended period of time for giving us of governance so that we can create all of own laws and take over our own jurisdictions.”

87 of the 161 band members who cast their vote said yes to moving forward into Final Negotiations-stage five of the six-stage treaty process.

There were 385 eligible voters.

Louie says she’s extremely proud of the people that were there.

“Even though the protesters were there, they were respectful and elders of our community stood us with all day long. The support from our community was valuable to us as leaders to show that the mandate has been given to us by the community to move forward.”

Membership with the Canim Lake Indian Band, Soda Creek Indian Band, and Canoe Creek Indian had also voted in favor of continuing the Treaty process on February 11th.

The Williams Lake Indian Band (T’exelc) referendum on that day was suspended, as a vocal group of protesters opposed to treaty were disrespectful and disrupted the democratic voting process at the polling station,destroying the ballot box.

“We had a higher return of mail-in ballots from our out of town members this time around, and in fact almost doubled the return from the initial February 11th vote. I am extremely proud of all of our community members who took the time to cast their votes on this very important issue.”