The Wilderness Committee believes that the establishment of protected areas must:
Preserving these areas for First Nations benefits everyone by ensuring these ancient forests remain for all to enjoy.
First Nations Cultures Tied to Ancient Forests
Vancouver Island’s rich forests and marine ecosystems made it the home to one of the densest populations of First Nations people in North America until they were decimated by the small pox virus, introduced by European settlers. Five major native languages are spoken on Vancouver Island (Southern Salish, Comox, Kwa- kwa-ka’wakw, Nuu-cha-nulth and Ditidaht). Today, First Nations are still heavily tied to the ancient forests for their cultural, spiritual, and economic survival.
Chief Judith Sayers of the Hupacasath First Nations band
The western red cedar is a particularly valuable tree for coastal First Nations. Its wood and bark were used and continue to be used for making carvings, masks, chief’s curtains, canoes, baskets, containers, clothes, and building materials. Often, instead of cutting down the cedars, the First Nations peoples would strip off bark and planks of wood, leaving most of the bark intact around the trees so they could continue growing. These “Culturally Modified Trees” are still found throughout coastal BC. Unfortunately, BC’s logging industry is rapidly “high-grading” or liquidating the ancient red cedars stands.
BC contains 95% of the remaining ancient western red cedars on Earth. First Nation’s spirituality is rooted in these old growth forests and they often state that the “forests are their cathedrals and medicine gardens”. Loss of these forests for spirituality and medicines would strike at the heart of First Nation’s cultural survival.
The vast majority of British Columbia is unceded First Nations’ territory. In most places including most of Vancouver Island, treaties were never signed and First Nations still legally own the land in 95% of BC. Court ruling after court ruling has upheld aboriginal rights and title to the land in BC and have affirmed the necessity of governments to meaningfully consult and accommodate First Nations title interests when making any land-use and resource allocation decisions. This has not been done in most instances.
For example, the BC government, without consulting the affected First Nations, gave permission to Weyerhaeuser in 2004 to remove their corporate forest lands on Vancouver Island out of their Tree Farm License agreements. This move to deregulate these corporate forest lands provides a green light for Weyerhaeuser or their successors to rapidly liquidate the forests there with few restrictions and to export more raw logs to the US, thereby not providing local employment. It also opens up the possibility to develop these lands for urban sprawl. The Hupacasath First Nation led by Chief Judith Sayers in Port Alberni is currently challenging this decision in court for its lack of consultation and hope to have these lands returned to the TFL agreement.
Several First Nations are proposing their own protected areas. As early as 1983, the local Nuu-Chah-Nulth First Nations in Clayoquot Sound declared Meares Island as BC’s first “Tribal Park” to protect it from MacMillan Bloedel’s proposed logging. The Cowichan Band more recently proposed that the forests of Hill 60 in the Cowichan Valley be made a Tribal Park.
To the north, in Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands), hundreds of Haida people took part in a historic, months long blockade in the spring of 2005 against Weyerhaeuser’s logging operations, forcing the BC government to provide interim protection to over one-third of the north island (Graham Island) in “Haida Protected Areas” while negotiations are undertaken.
