Garden River's new RHT coordinator looks to provide forum 'where people are heard'

Former Sault mayoral candidate Robert Peace says it’s been a “whirlwind” past couple of days since he was announced as Robinson Huron Treaty Coordinator for Garden River First Nation. 

The president of Sault Ste. Marie Helping Hands has been tasked with facilitating a number of in-depth discussions with community members around the disbursement of a historic $10-billion settlement struck between Canada, Ontario and 21 First Nations in the Robinson Huron Treaty territory last year over unpaid treaty annuities.  

Peace, who is non-Indigenous, will then take their feedback to chief and council in order to inform their decisions on how the money will be distributed throughout the community and its membership.   

“There’s obviously a lot of interest in this — a lot of pent-up, I would say, frustration in the sense that people want to be heard,” said Peace, who was appointed to his new role last week after the First Nation asked him to submit a proposal for the job. “So now that’s my primary goal, is to make sure we have a forum where people are heard, where their remarks are recorded, and that reports are going back on a very regular — and fast — basis.”

The monetary settlement provides past compensation to Robinson Huron Treaty beneficiaries after not seeing an increase to annual treaty payments for a period of nearly 150 years, as wealth generated in the territory through resource revenues from the mining, forestry and fishing sectors continued to grow. 

The annual treaty payments to Anishinaabe beneficiaries, also known as annuities, remained at $4 per person since 1875. Prior to that, the annuities were equivalent to $1.60 per person.

In 2018, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled the Crown had an obligation under the 1850 treaty to increase annuities as wealth generated from the land grew over time, so long as the Crown can do so without incurring a loss — the result of a statement of claim filed by the Robinson Huron Litigation Fund in 2012. 

While speculation among treaty beneficiaries has been rampant since the $10-billion settlement was announced last year, it’s still unknown exactly how much of the settlement will be allotted to each community, including Garden River. As previously reported by SooToday, the settlement is currently collecting $1.3 million in interest for each day it sits in the coffers of the Robinson Huron Treaty Litigation Fund since the final $5-billion installment was deposited March 25.   

“Anything people are hearing in terms of a dollar number that anybody is going to be getting is still premature. None of that has been finalized yet,” Peace said. 

As part of his new position, Peace — who did not divulge the financial terms of his eight-month contract — will also be responsible for putting the right people in place to handle logistics surrounding the settlement disbursement process, including banking matters, insurance issues and the updating of the community’s information technology systems. 

“It is a huge process to suddenly become an institution that’s holding potentially — well, it will be — tens of millions of dollars locally, and there’s a fiduciary responsibility and a checklist of things that have to be done before anything happens,” he said. “That checklist is something that I’m making sure happens, and that people have more than ample opportunity to feed into what is possible to feed into.”

Peace says the stakes are even higher now that the potential for cyber crime, such as ransomware, has grown in recent years. “It has to be done responsibly, and there’s already obviously a lot of concerns about people being scammed,” he said. “The band will be a target, as are all 21 First Nations who are receiving these funds.” 

For now, Peace will busy himself with preparing a series of engagement sessions with members of Garden River, both on-reserve and off-reserve. He says it didn’t take long for members of Garden River to track him down on social media after his appointment. So far, he’s received everything from congratulations to “demands” being made in an “aggressive” manner. 

But Peace believes he’s been winning people over by listening to them and asking to talk with them about their ideas. Ignoring people, he says, only fosters rumours — and that’s how stories begin circulating.

“This is the challenge: When people feel they haven’t been heard, there’s a lot of pent-up frustration, and there’s sometimes obviously a misunderstanding,” Peace said, while stressing that he will not be a decision maker in the disbursement of settlement dollars. “That is not the case whatsoever. I’m just organizing venues for people to come and say what they think, and obviously to disseminate some information about where we’re at today.”