Tsimshian Protest Camp on Small Canadian Island Defies Massive Natural-Gas Project

Since late August, members of an indigenous First Nations community from the Tsimshian (also spelled Ts’msyen) Nation have been occupying—“re-occupying,” as they prefer to put it—an island off the coast of northern British Columbia where an energy multinational from Malaysia wants to build a liquid natural gas (L.N.G.) exporting terminal.  The community, Lax Kw’alaams, often referred to by its colonial name, Port Simpson, is the most populous Tsimshian village in Canada (there is also one over the border in Alaska) and is home to nine of the Tsimshian Nation’s fourteen constituent tribes.  Lax Kw’alaams members overwhelmingly voted down the developments plans in a referendum in May of this year, and the community’s mayor, Garry Reece, said late last month that the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation would file suit for aboriginal title to the island, Lelu Island, and to nearby Flora Bank.

Tsimshian territory makes up about the northern third of B.C.’s coast.  Since, with very few exceptions, almost no land in this vast province has been ceded by Indian treaty, technically all of Tsimshian territory, and nearly all of B.C., is in one sense not part of B.C. or Canada but is unceded aboriginal territory.  An “aboriginal title” claim by Lax Kw’alaams would take these territories out of their current legal limbo (which the federal and provincial governments treat as de facto Crown sovereignty) and put them squarely before the courts, where a number of recent decisions (the Gitxsan in 1997, the Tsihlq’otin in 2014) have greatly strengthened the aboriginal hand.

Artist’s rendering of the L.N.G.-terminal project proposed for Lelu Island

The struggle over L.N.G. pipelines through the territories of B.C. nations has become a flashpoint in the indigenous North American land struggle, including the recent aboriginal push against environmentally destructive energy projects which operates under the banner “Idle No More.”  (See articles from this blog about the Gitxsan land struggle here, here, and here and about that of B.C.’s Wet’suwet’en here.)

The Lelu project planners, Petronas (a Malaysian corporation known worldwide for its record-breaking Petronas Towers skyscraper complex), and its Canadian arm, Pacific NorthWest L.N.G., have said that construction of the terminal would cost nearly $1.5 billion.  This includes constructing a bridge and a harbor in addition to the processing plant.  But Lax Kw’alaams, with studies in hand, points out this will harm salmon habitat in the nearby Skeena River estuary, a serious issue for a community very dependent on the traditional seasonal round of resource-gathering, primarily salmon.  Among the other six Tsimshian communities in Canada, Metlakatla (Maxłakxaała) and Kitselas (Gits’ilaasü) bands signed off on the project (Metlakatla is home to members of several of Lax Kw’alaams’s nine tribes, but the tribes’ paramount chiefs are of Lax Kw’alaams), but Kitsumkalum (Gitsmgeelm), Kitkatla (Gitkxaała), Klemtu (the Gidestsu people at Kłmduu), and Hartley Bay (Gitga’ata), as of late September, had yet to do so.  B.C.’s premier, Christie Clark, is a supporter of the Petronas plan.

Sm’oogit Yahan, a.k.a. Donald Wesley, Jr., who has been speaking for the protestors, said in September that his group will be co-founding a brand-new organization called the Northern First Nation Alliance, along with some of the more uncompromisingly sovereigntist nations in the province, including the Gitxsan, the Wet’suwet’en, and the Council of Haida Nations.  (The Nisga’a, just to the north, are not part of the club: their chiefs surrendered their territory to the Crown in the 1990s for a cash settlement and for self-government rights that they already possessed.)  As Yahan explained, “Our Traditional ways of life and the resources which have sustained our people are not to be pawns in the Christie Clark government’s L.N.G. dreams.  Development within our Traditional territories must have our free, prior and informed consent.  The people of Lax Kw’alaams spoke very clearly in their rejection of the 1.25-billion-dollar offer from Petronas, and this camp builds upon that rejection.  This issue is not just a First Nations issue but one that will affect all British Columbians, especially those who rely upon healthy and abundant fish stocks.”

Meanwhile, Mayor Reece—whose village government office is separate from the Lelu protest group but for a while was quoted in the media as implicitly supporting it—said last month, “We want to protect crucial salmon habitat, protect our food security, and ensure that governments and industry are obligated to seek our consent.  If we obtain title, we will own Lelu Island and Flora Bank.”  He added, “Our traditional law, backed by our scientific reports, has made it clear that Flora Bank cannot be touched by [Pacific NorthWest] or any other company that proposes development.”

Gitxsan chiefs visited Lelu Island to show solidarity.

But things got complicated in late September, when Petronas workers conducting unauthorized surveying on Lelu were escorted away by members of the Lax U’u’la Warriors—an intertribal, interethnic support group linked to the Lelu protest camp.  (Lax U’u’la, also spelled Lax Üüla, or “place of the harbor seals”) is the Sm’algyax (Tsimshian language) name for the island.)

The flag of Lax Kw’alaams, flying on Lelu Island

In response, in early October, a statement issued on behalf of “the Hereditary Chiefs of the Nine Tribes of Lax Kw’alaams” granted Petronas surveyers “conditional access to Lelu Island and the Flora Banks to complete their studies, the results of which will allow us to determine our final stance.”  The statement said that Yahan and the island’s occupiers did not have “authority to speak or act, no authority to unilaterally decide to use and occupy any lands and no authority to use the identity of the Nine Tribes.  All of this contravenes Ts’msyen Law.  ...  We are actively addressing the shame certain individuals, bound by our laws, have brought by these actions.”  Regarding the expulsion of the Petronas workers, the hereditary chiefs’ statement added, “To commit violence, demean and disgrace the station of Ts’msyen Chieftainship through words and action is abhorrent to the true Chiefs of the Ts’msyen Nation and such disrespect threatens the Nine Tribes of Lax Kw’alaams,” whose “duties and responsibilities” and “names handed down since time immemorial, are thus activated, and we remind all our people that they have the right to live and work in safety under the protection of the Laws of the Ts’msyen.”

Lax Kw’alaams

In the traditional social and political structure of the Tsimshian, Gitxsan, Nisga’a, Wet’suwet’en, Haisla, Haida, Tlingit, and other nations in the area, it is the hundreds of matrilineal extended families (houses) which hold sovereignty over their separate territories.  In Lax Kw’alaams, however, houses pool some of their authority in the paramount hereditary chieftainships of the community’s nine tribes.  (For more detail on Tsimshian social structure, see my book Becoming Tsimshian: The Social Life of Names.)

Mayor Garry Reece (left), with timber executive Wayne Drury

Yahan, identified as chief of the Gitwilgyoots (one of the Nine Tribes), reacted swiftly to the joint statement from the hereditary chiefs by stating that only he had the authority to grant access to the island.  “I stand on that island because it is on our traditional territory.  I am the sole chief in standing in this tribe that has a say in what goes on.  ...  We are all individual tribes and we don’t go over other tribes’ territory.”  Mayor Reece, who uses the chiefs’ name Txagaaxs and is identified as chief of the Ginaxangiik, appeared to agree with Yahan that no one had “authority to represent or sign anything on the tribe’s behalf.”  He added that no person or group currently speaks on behalf of all nine tribes.

The Tsimshian, at least, certainly are idle no more.  Which approach to land stewardship will prevail in the Lax Kw’alaams community, and whether protectors of the land will win this battle in the war over energy projects and the environment, remains to be seen.

[You can read more about the Tsimshian, Gitxsan, Nisga’a, etc., as well as sovereignty and independence movements both famous and obscure in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Full disclosure: I have worked with and for various Tsimshian organizations, including the Allied Tsimshian Tribes Association, the Tsimshian Tribal Council, the Kitsumkalum Band Office, and, in particular and most extensively, the Kitsumkalum First Nation Treaty Office, as well as many individuals and families.  My opinions and perspectives are my own, not necessarily shared by anyone else, and I do not speak on behalf of any Tsimshian individual or organization.

Corruption Scandal Set to Put Separatists in Charge of Greenland; Inuit Debate Independence and E.U. Relations as Energy-Rich Arctic Ocean Warms

An unexpected chain of events over the past several weeks has put independence for the Danish possession of Greenland back on the table and may determine the future of energy politics in the Arctic, and in the European Union (E.U.)

Aleqa Hammond, the accommodationist prime minister of Greenland, who is cold (pardon the expression) to the idea of independence, saw her political career implode in the last days of September after a financial scandal uncovered over 100,000 Danish krone spent on her and her family’s travel expenses and hotel mini-bar tabs.  Hammond’s socialist pro-independence party Siumut (Inuktitut for “Forward”) had up to that point been sitting at the top of the heap.  It garnered 43% of votes in the 2013 parliamentary elections and formed a coalition with the far-left separatist Inuit Party and with the premier unionist party, Attasut (“Solidarity,” also translatable as “Union”), each of those having pulled in just over 6%.

Aleqa Hammond

All eyes are now on the elections scheduled for November 28th.  But in the wake of the Hammond scandal, Siumut’s popularity has dropped.  The lastest polls of Greenland’s tiny electorate (about 40,000 people, mostly Inuit (Eskiimo), scattered over an area the size of half the E.U.) show a healthy but still lower 36.5% support, with the far more boldly pro-independence Inuit Ataqatigiit party surging at 44.4%.  That close to a majority, it would need to make deals with anti-independence parties to form a government.  Meanwhile, Attasut, which is a Liberal party in the big-L, European sense, is registering only 6.8% in the polls, down from more than 8% in 2013.  So Hammond has now pushed Siumut, a socialist party which has sat precariously on the fence on the independence question, out of the running, and a firmly pro-independence coalition is set to take office.

Together for the time being: the flags of Greenland and Denmark

Hammond is Greenland’s first female prime minister, and her likely successor, Sara Olsvig, would be the second.  (As a point of interest to anthropologists, she would become the second world leader to take office this year who has a background in anthropology, with degrees from the Universities of Greenland and Copenhagen.  The other is Ashraf Ghani, a Columbia University alumnus who is now president of Afghanistan.  What with Barack Obama’s mother having been an anthropologist as well, is this now a trend?)

Sara Olsvig—Greenland’s next prime minister?

Not only is Greenlandic independence now likely to be back on the table, but the corruption scandal also represents a close call for separatists alarmed by Hammond’s plans to bring Greenland into the E.U.  Greenland is not in the trade bloc, though its parent country, the Kingdom of Denmark, is.

A remaining questions is whether the current crisis will seem like a deep enough financial or corruption scandal that foreign investment will be affected.  This is what many in the E.U. would like Greenlandic voters to think.  This matters because the promise of foreign investment is one of the key planks in Inuit Ataqatigiit’s pro-independence platform.  So how financial markets on the European continent react and how E.U. leaders react may determine how confident Greenlanders feel when they go to the polls on the 28th, and what kind of a mandate the new government will feel it has to push for separation.

There is quite a bit at stake.  As northern latitudes warm and the Arctic Ocean becomes more and more of an open sea, the oil and, especially, natural-gas resources under the water will increasingly be the focus of a mad geopolitical scramble over the next century.  Without energy, Greenland—currently dependent on fishing (hardly reliable), Danish aid (slightly humiliating), and tourism (really?)—would be a much less viable state.  Russia controls by far the greatest part of the Arctic (see map above), owning nearly half of its circular coastline.  Canada, the world’s second-largest country, has the next biggest piece, while the United States (by virtue of Alaska), Norway, and Denmark (by virtue of Greenland) have smaller pie slices of roughly equal size.

E.U. member-states are shown in blue.  Blue and blue-circled territories overseas
are in the E.U.  Overseas territories of E.U. member-states which lie outside the E.U. are in green.

The E.U. would like to be a major player in the development of the Arctic, naturally, but, inconveniently, Norway is not in the Union (Norwegians have always had too much North Sea oil to feel that they needed to be) and Greenlanders, as they eye independence, go back and forth as to whether they want to join.  Greenland is one of a small number of dependent territories of E.U. member states which are not in the E.U.  Others (see map above) include the Isle of Man and Jersey and Guernsey, which are technically independent but in free association with the United Kingdom; Denmark’s Faroe Islands (which also have an independence movement); France’s Pacific possessions New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna; the Netherlands’ Caribbean possessions such as Aruba and Curaçao; and most of the U.K.’s island territories abroad.  Other overseas possessions are in the E.U., however, such as the U.K.’s Gibraltar and Falkland Islands, Spain’s Canary Islands and its African-mainland enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, and French possessions like Réunion and the large and valuable French Guiana, where the European space program is based.  Greenland has always debated whether it should stay in the former group or join the latter one—and, indeed, whether an independent Greenland would benefit from E.U. membership on its own.

Russia has planted a flag under the sea at the North Pole ...

Would it be granted it?  Surely.  That it is in fact in North America will be no problem, since Brussels already kindly overlooks the fact that one of its member states, Cyprus, is (sshhh) in Asia.  And the huge expenses involved in running Greenland’s infrastructure would be more than made up for by the energy potential, which would strengthen western Europe’s hand mightily in what everyone agrees is a looming and burgeoning geopolitical struggle with Russia for energy resources.  With Greenland and a warming Arctic, the E.U. hopes it would not be dependent on an increasingly anti-Western Russia to keep its houses and businesses warm through the winter.

... but under international law, the reality is slightly more complicated.

But there is an irony here.  As many European colonial powers shed their overseas territories in the 1960s and ’70s, many of them were careful not to pull up stakes until they had put governments and agreements in place to guarantee parent-countries’ corporations’ access to the former colonies’ resources.  The pro-British governments installed in Iraq and Libya as the British withdrew are examples of this, and their inequities and abuses led directly to the rise of the dictatorships of Saddam Hussein and Moammar al-Qaddafi, respectively.  Likewise, the Dutch tolerated a pro–Shell Oil dictatorship in newly independent Indonesia, while Spain’s attempt to leave the former Spanish Sahara’s oil open to Spanish corporate exploitation, which set the stage for the ongoing dispute over that territory between the semi-recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (S.A.D.R.) and the new colonial master there, Morocco.  (Portugal, by contrast, tended to take its ball and go straight home, leaving colonies like Angola, Mozambique, and East Timor ravaged by decades of civil war.)  So E.U. shakers and movers in Paris, London, Madrid, and Amsterdam would very much like to see Denmark extract some concessions of this sort from Greenland as part of negotiations for independence, so that Greenland’s future energy supply can be moved into, and moved around in, the E.U. free-trade area without tariff or political disruption.  And here’s the irony: Denmark, a far more progressive, egalitarian-minded state which has never depended on colonies for its considerable prosperity, is much more likely to be a benevolent version of Portugal and let a newly independent Greenland do whatever it likes with its resources, including handing them over to non-E.U. contractors—like, say, the Chinese, who are all over Greenland right now like mud on a pig, waiting for the gold rush to start.

Greenlanders say: we may want your investment, but don’t plant your flag just yet.

Greenland must decide whether it is ready to bank on an energy still in its infancy as a guarantor of viability as an independent state.  If it does go it alone, Greenland will not need either Denmark or the E.U.  Russians, Chinese, and Americans will also be lining up to set up business there.  Economists and analysts on the Continent are already warning Greenland not to be too rash and hoping that the recent political troubles will make voters fret about investment.  No fretting is necessary.  Greenland’s voters should plug their ears, look at the facts, and make up their own minds.

Eventually, Greenlanders will sort it all out.

[You can read more about Greenland and other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

Vancouver Islanders Hope to Be Canada’s 11th Province, and Its Greenest

Some residents of Canada’s southwesternmost flank, British Columbia’s Vancouver Island, are hoping to make their large, lush land mass the newest province, to accompany the 10 others and the three territories of the Arctic.

This June, two environmental activists, Laurie Gourlay and Scott Akenhead launched something called the Vancouver Island Province Initiative.  (Akenhead is president of the Mid-Island Sustainability and Stewardship Initiative, of which Gourlay is also a member.)  At the moment, it is merely a website (see it here), but petitions to the federal Parliament in Ottawa and the B.C. provincial parliament in Victoria are already being prepared.  They aim to establish the island as its own province by May 16, 2021, which is the 150th anniversary of B.C.’s accession to the Canadian federation.

... and maybe to Canada’s 11th province, as well.

Unlike, say, the movement for the vast northern reaches of Ontario to secede as a separate province, the Vancouver Island provincehood movement comes from the left of the political spectrum, not the right.  In particular, the environmental movement in B.C. in particular and in Canada generally has been galvanized of late by plans by Enbridge, Inc., to build a Northern Gateway Pipeline to bring natural gas from Alberta’s tar sands to the ecologically and economically sensitive inlets around Kitimat, B.C., in the province’s northern mainland coast.  Vancouver Island itself, which is often called simply “the Island” by British Columbians, is no stranger to environmental activism either.  It was here, at Clayoquot Sound in the 1990s, that environmental groups and multi-national timber corporations held a standoff over the very survival of the Island’s vast temperate rainforests.  On both the coasts and the mainland, First Nations people have also been at the forefront of this kind of activism.

Vancouver Island used to be separate, as students of Canadian history know.  Before there was a Canada, in 1849, the British Colony of Vancouver Island was created, as part of the resolution of the long-simmering question of who—the Americans or the British—would control the Oregon Country and points north.  In 1866 it was merged into the Colony of British Columbia, which was then just the mainland, with a capital at New Westminster, now a suburb of the mainland’s largest city—also called, confusingly, Vancouver.  Vancouver Island’s capital, Victoria, became the capital of the new amalgamated colony, which joined the four-year-young independent dominion of Canada in 1871.

The old Oregon Country (not too dissimilar in its boundaries from today’s “Cascadia”)

Over the years there have been several attempts to redraw the region’s boundaries.  In the 1950s and ’60s, B.C.’s far-right premier, W. A. C. “Wacky” Bennett, wanted B.C. to leave Canada, and to take the Yukon Territory with it.  Starting very seriously in the 1990s, B.C.’s First Nations people began challenging the legitimacy of the Canadian and B.C. state structures by pointing out that no treaties had ever been signed for the vast majority of the province’s territory, thus making it, according to constitutional-level documents like the Royal Proclamation of 1763, unceded Indian territory illegally occupied by Canada.  And a mostly symbolic environmentalist movement to create an independent nation of Cascadia, consisting at the very least of Oregon and Washington, often includes B.C. in its aspirations as well.  (The idea is far more popular in Oregon and Washington than in B.C.)

The flag of Cascadia

If Vancouver Island did secede, it would be Canada’s second-smallest province, after Prince Edward Island, but, with more than a quarter-million people, it would just nudge past New Brunswick to become the eighth-most-populous.  It would also have more than six times as many people as Canada’s three territories—Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon—put together.  After the loss of Vancouver Island, B.C. would still retain its position as the third-largest province, behind Ontario and Quebec.

More significantly for its prospects, it would become one of the most left-leaning and environmentally-minded provinces.  It would probably take a far more aggressively line in enhancing First Nations sovereignty and protecting natural systems from corporate pillage.  In line with that, it would be able to be far more dependent on tourism than on the resource-extraction industries like mining, pipelines, and especially timber that characterize the mainland economy.  Vancouverites—people of the City of Vancouver, that is, on the mainland—are likely to fight the secession if it ever becomes a serious concern.  Without the Island, the left-leaning city will need to work harder to push progressive policies past the conservative interior of the province.  Much of the arid southern interior is ranchland, with a Wild West feel and more in common with Alberta (“the Texas of Canada”) than with the coasts.

Wet’suwet’en environmental activists in northern B.C. last year

As indicated, it is already confusing that the City of Vancouver is not on Vancouver Island.  Without Vancouver Island and Victoria, what remains of B.C. would be tempted to make Vancouver its new capital, but just to avoid further confusion it might make sense to give New Westminster its day in the sun.  Then again, Vancouver Island might choose an indigenous name for itself.  But that would mean deciding which of the island’s many indigenous Salish and Wakashan languages would be so privileged.  A linguistically hybrid name, like that of Burkina Faso, is one possibility.

There is also the question of who else might decide to join the new province.  The Queen Charlotte Islands, now renamed Haida Gwaii, whose indigenous Haida nation is often at the forefront of environmental activism, is one candidate.  So might be a number of the smaller islands, from the Georgia Strait near Vancouver and Victoria all the way to the large islands of Tsimshian territory to the north.

Would Haida Gwaii, for example, be better off in B.C.,
in the Province of Vancouver Island, or even on its own?

Since it used to be its own colony, Vancouver Island already has—or had—its own flag.  With its prominent Union Jack in the canton, it would need revising.

Vancouver Island’s flag when it was a separate colony, from 1849 to 1866.

I recommend some sort of First Nations design—the route chosen by Nunavut with its flag (see below).  After all, Vancouver Island’s indigenous people, and those of the B.C. and Alaska coasts more generally, have one of the most robust and distinctive graphic-arts traditions in the world.

Nunavut’s flag

But it would be very hard to top the stunning design that British Columbia itself chose for itself in 1960.

British Columbia’s current flag

That flag alone might be worth staying in B.C.  Eh?

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Which Part of “Wet’suwet’en Territory” Don’t They Understand?

In northern British Columbia, Canada, members of the indigenous Wet’suwet’en nation on November 21st chased surveyors off their territory, confiscated equipment, and established a roadblock to prevent further activities connected with an oil pipeline set to run through their lands.  The pipeline in question is the Pacific Trails Pipeline, a project by Apache Canada.  First Nations groups in the region have been galvanized by the controversy over the environmentally destructive Northern Gateway Pipeline planned by Enbridge, Inc., to run from Alberta’s tar sands to Kitimat, B.C.  The Wet’suwet’en group, representing “the Unis’tot’en clan” (i.e., the “C’ilhts’ekhyu,” or Big Frog Clan, one of the nation’s five descent groups), said through a spokesperson, Freda Huson, that it “has been dead-set against all pipelines slated to cross through their territories.”  A Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief who confronted the surveyors, Toghestiy (his English name is Warner Naziel), of the Likhts’amisyu (Fireweed) clan, concurred, stating, “The surveyors claimed they were working on a contract for Apache, an American oil and gas company.  Apache is the leading partner in the Pacific Trails Pipeline project which intends to connect shale gas fields in Northeastern B.C. with L.N.G. terminals in Kitimat.  ... The Unis’tot’en and Grassroots Wet’suwet’en have consistently stated that they will not allow such a pipeline to pass through their territory.”

Toghestiy

The Wet’suwet’en (previously known to anthropologists as the Bulkley River Carrier, speakers of a Dene (Athapaskan) language) and a neighboring nation, the Gitxsan, were plaintiffs in a groundbreaking land-claims suit in the 1980s and ’90s, Delgamuukw v. the Queen, which asserted that the two nations’ land-holding matrilineal extended families, under their chiefs, were absolute owners of their home territories.  The Gitxsan (as reported earlier in this blog) have been divided on the question of the Enbridge project, as have other First Nations along the proposed route.  Huson explained, “Apache’s claim that they have support from 15 out of 16 First Nation groups is extremely misleading.  They are following the government’s direction to not deal with Hereditary Chiefs who are the legitimate title holders of these lands.  Instead, they are attempting to deal with Indian Act governments who have no jurisdiction off of their Indian Reservations.  The Supreme Court of Canada’s Delgamuukw decision explicitly shows that they are breaking their own laws.”

Wet’suwet’en territories in British Columbia

[You can read more about the Tsimshian, Gitxsan, Nisga’a, etc., as well as sovereignty and independence movements both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]