Locked out: how a 19th century land grant is still undermining First Nations rights on Vancouver Island

On Vancouver Island, a vast swath of privately owned forest poses a unique challenge for five First Nations seeking redress for their unceded homelands

Elder Luschiim (Arvid Charlie) sits near the Cowichan River in Duncan, B.C., which he remembers teeming with fish in his childhood. Now, he says, “All the resources are gone.” Photo: Mike Glendale / The Narwhal

IN-DEPTH

First Peoples Law Report: The Narwhal: In his childhood, Elder Luschiim (Arvid Charlie) remembers the Cowichan and Koksilah rivers teeming with salmon — chinook and coho, chum and steelhead — so many you could hardly see the bottom. “The run for the spring started in early May, and by the middle of May, my great grandfather Abel would have a 50-gallon wooden barrel half full of salted salmon. But you don’t see salmon at that time nowadays. Today, there’s no fish to fish.”

At 82, Luschiim has seen a lot of change. He grew up without electricity and lived through the Second World War. He remembers when, for the most part, his people lived off the land. And he has watched the gradual disappearance of the resources that once sustained his community, and the way of life that defined them.

“We used to go hunting deer, and now there’s nothing to hunt up in the mountains anymore. We used to catch lots of ducks in our fields: mallards, widgeons, teals. There’s nothing now. Or you’d go to the salt water to get ts’e’wi’uxun, your three black ducks, and your sxe:th — that’s the common murre. Some coves or bays were black with ducks; nothing today. Come January, we’d have hwikw’us, Pacific loon. That was our turkey for Christmas time. Now, you’re lucky to see a small flock of maybe 10, 15 where it used to be hundreds. All the resources are gone.”

Luschiim is a member of Quw’utsun Tribes, a Coast Salish First Nation and one of the five member nations of the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group. Bonded by their common Hul’qumi’num language, overlapping territories, and a shared history and many cultural beliefs and traditions, the nations came together in 1994 to negotiate a modern treaty with B.C. and Canada.

Yet, after three decades, the parties are essentially at a stalemate. The Hul’qumi’num nations want a fair settlement for the nearly 270,000 hectares of their territory that was appropriated nearly a century and a half ago. But the provincial and federal governments, who originally placed those lands in corporate hands, have a strict policy to leave private property off the negotiating table.