“K’odi Nelson, a hereditary leader of the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw, says he and other activists are fed up with what they see as a lack of respect from Marine Harvest. “We’re exercising our Aboriginal right to be in those places, and they continuously call our people trespassers. … And yet who are the trespassers?”
But the extent to which the nations can actually assert control over the water in their territories has yet to be settled.
In 1997, the landmark case Delgamuukw v. British Columbia said that for a nation to assert a claim of Aboriginal title to their territory, they must demonstrate their intensive use of the area before and at the time when the Crown asserted sovereignty in 1845.
“Although most nations filed their original Delgamuukw writs to include marine and fresh water areas, it hasn’t been fought through court yet,” says Drew Mildon, a partner at Woodward & Company who worked on the Tsilhqot’in case.
Mildon does not advise the nations in the Broughton Archipelago, but he expects the nations would be able to meet the requirements to claim the offshore waters. Doing so through the courts, however, would be costly and time consuming.”
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