The City of Richmond, B.C., is hosting an information session on Tuesday night on the impacts of a major Aboriginal title case.
In August, B.C.’s Supreme Court granted the Quw’utsun Nation (Cowichan Nation) Aboriginal title over 5.7 kilometres of land in Richmond.
However, the Quw’utsun Nation says recent comments from Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie, B.C. Premier David Eby and other politicians about the ruling are “at best, misleading, and at worst, deliberately inflammatory.”
Last week, the City of Richmond sent a letter to a group of 150 property owners, warning them that the case could compromise the validity of their ownership.
The Quw’utsun Nation says that is not the case.
“To be clear, the Quw’utsun Nation’s court case regarding their settlement lands at Tl’uqtinus in Richmond has not and does not challenge the effectiveness or validity of any title held by individual private landowners,” a statement from the nation reads.
“The ruling does not erase private property.”
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The nation said it did not bring this case against any individual private landowners and did not seek to invalidate any of their land titles.
“We welcome and anticipate supporting individual landowners making any respectful claims they may have against British Columbia,” Quw’utsun Nation Chief Pam Jack (Chakeenakwaut) of Penelakut Tribe said in a statement.
An information session is being held at the Sheraton Vancouver Airport hotel on Tuesday evening.
It is open to the public, although only property owners in the affected area can ask questions.
B.C.’s Attorney General Niki Sharma will be attending the meeting and she said this is a complicated issue.
“The work of reconciliation is understanding the past wrongs and figuring out how we sort through them together in the future,” she said.
“And, although we were not the government that made those decisions back in, the decisions or decisions that were made that the Cowichan very rightly brought to a court, and that’s the right of all First Nations.
“I think the work of reconciliation is getting around the table, trying to figure out where we can move forward and how we can move forward together, to reconcile the past wrongs and include everybody in that conversation, including current rights holders.”
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