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Nuchatlaht First Nation: How a Legal Battle Could Change Land Rights for Good

Indigenous groups have been fighting for land for decades, often with disappointing results

Troy Sebastian (NUPQU ʔA·Kǂ AM̓)

The Walrus, 2023

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More than two decades ago, developers in British Columbia wanted to build a ski resort on land sacred to the indigenous Ktunaxa Nation, who rejected the proposal. The provincial government approved it. After years of litigation at each level of appeal, Canada’s Supreme Court dismissed the Ktunaxa’s case in 2017. That year, Walter Michael, the late head chief of the Nuchatlaht Nation, went to court over his First Nation’s land rights, as Troy Sebastian (NUPQU ʔA·Kǂ AM̓) reported in The Walrus in 2023. After years of lawsuits, the BC Supreme Court granted the Nuchatlaht a partial victory on April 29, 2024 by confirming their rights to a remote, four-mile-long strip on Nootka Island, including a salmon stream, a lake, and forests threatened by logging. As reported in The Seattle Times, this victory could inspire the province’s 200 other First Nations to bring their cases to court. The ruling makes the Nuchatlaht Nation – population 160 – the second largest First Nation titleholder in the province.

Summary

The Ktunaxa Nation lost its battle to protect sacred lands from development.

The Ktunaxa Nation typically does not disclose information about its sacred practices, but in the Indigenous tribe’s battle for rights to land in an area called Qat’muk, it provided crucial background about the spiritual significance of the snowy mountainsides where it believes the Grizzly Bear Spirit dances. The Nation crafted the Qat’muk Declaration, which argued for protecting the land against being developed as the Jumbo Glacier Resort, and delivered it to government land managers in Victoria in 2010.

Tribal arguments notwithstanding, British Columbia’s provincial government approved the resort in 2012. The Ktunaxa appealed for judicial review to the provincial supreme court and later to the BC Court of Appeal and the Canadian Supreme Court, arguing the resort would “cause the Grizzly Bear Spirit to leave,” ruining the spirituality of the sacred land. In 2017, the Canadian Supreme Court dismissed the Ktunaxa’s case, ruling that BC’s government had dispersed “Crown land” appropriately.

The Ktunaxa waged their battle against a backdrop...

About the Author

Ktunaxa writer Troy Sebastian (NUPQU ʔA·Kǂ AM̓) has also published work in The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, and Quill & Quire.

Nuchatlaht First Nation: How a Legal Battle Could Change Land Rights for Good

Indigenous groups have been fighting for land for decades, often with disappointing results

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The Ktunaxa Nation lost its battle to protect sacred lands from development.

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