In recent B.C. Supreme Court ruling, Cowichan Tribes did not seek to displace private property holders but ruling says Indigenous and fee-simple land title can co-exist
In 2016, the Kwikwetlem First Nation filed a claim in B.C. Supreme Court for Aboriginal title to about five square kilometres in Port Coquitlam.
The lands lie along the Coquitlam River, and include some provincial lands within the City of Coquitlam.
The provincial properties include the Riverview lands where a psychiatric hospital ran for nearly a century and was closed in 2012, the Colony Farm Forensic Psychiatric Hospital lands, and a wildlife area at the mouth of the Coquitlam River.
The claim by the Kwikwetlem, also known as the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm, also includes Metro Vancouver’s ƛ̓éxətəm Regional Park, formerly called Colony Farm Regional Park, and the City of Port Coquitlam’s Gates Park and undeveloped South Shaughnessy lands owned by the city and earmarked for future housing.
The Kwikwetlem say they exclusively used these lands to harvest, hunt and fish. They built fish traps and used various sites to process and preserve fish, plants and berries. It’s where they undertook burial, ceremonial and spiritual activities.
According to their court filing, they’ve been left with poor and inaccessible reserve land, which they say leaves them with less than three hectares of usable land.
They say the provincial and city lands they are seeking title to are the last remaining undeveloped lands in their much larger traditional territory.
The Kwikwetlem’s court filing excludes privately held lands but Aboriginal title claims like theirs — that are under negotiation or working their way through the courts — have come under sudden public scrutiny because of a recent landmark B.C. Supreme Court ruling.
That ruling found the Cowichan Tribes from Vancouver Island had Aboriginal title to about half of the 7.5 square kilometres they had claimed, land owned by the City of Richmond and federal Vancouver-Fraser port lands, but also privately held homes, farms, a golf course, and commercial lands with large warehouses.