Dear Sir:
Regarding "Gitxsan chief explains pipeline deal" posted in your online edition and in your Jan. 18, 2012 print edition.
What is really needed is a Gitxsan Constitution that limits the power of the Hereditary Chiefs outside of the Feast Hall. The main issue is accountability/transparency.
Every time Elmer Derrick and/or Gordon Sebastion write letters published in newspapers, they are full of new information that hardly any Gitxsan are aware of.
If corporate entities under the Gotxsan Treaty Office (GTO) are making profits, then what possible reason could there be for not making the financial statements available to all Gitxsan people (for example, by posting them on the GTO website)?
How much money was made and who benefited? Pretty simple questions, but there's no constitution requiring the chief's representatives to disclose these financial matters.
As for Mr. Derrick's poor-bashing and NDP-bashing, these belong in another place. It's a free country and Mr. Derrick is entitled to his views.
However, when he acts as a representative for the people, he needs to put his personal interests aside and give his undivided loyalty to the Gitxsan people, not to the likes of Indian-haters like Gordon Gibson, Gordon Campbell, and Ezra Levant.
David Dickinson, Hazelton, BC
Editor's note: Elmer Derrick's "Gitxsan chief explains pipeline deal" can be read online by going to www.terracestandard.com and clicking on that headline in the opinion section.