This included 20 directives for the Crown to prioritize resolution and negotiated settlement, while reducing the potential for legal action over Indigenous rights and title. The closing arguments come about five months after the province announced the development of "a new approach to litigation" as part of its process to implement legislation in accordance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). (The Canadian Press) First lawsuit for Indigenous land title after UNDRIP Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council vice-president Mariah Charleson says the Nuchatlaht case will set the precedent on how B.C. He said the Nuchatlaht had a "magnificent advantage" in the case, in that "not only were there the different local groups who all had occupation of their respective territories, but they were organized into a confederacy." He said case law had established that Aboriginal title is not transferable, and the legal test would not allow the modern Nuchatlaht to take on the title of other historical Indigenous groups whose members joined or merged with them.īut Woodward argues the Nuchatlaht occupied and used the claimed area before and during 1846, when the Crown asserted sovereignty over what is now B.C. Supreme CourtĬrown attorney Jeff Echols previously argued in March that the "modern-day" Nuchatlaht draws its membership from a broader base of Indigenous people, and the First Nation wasn't alone in using the island when the Crown asserted sovereignty over what is now B.C. 'Historic' Aboriginal land title trial to begin in B.C.The First Nation is the first to make a claim according to the terms of a groundbreaking three-part test set by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2014 to establish Aboriginal title - when the country's top court granted the Tŝilhqot'in First Nation title to more than 1,700 kilometres of land in northern British Columbia. In its trial that began this March, the Nuchatlaht First Nation is seeking Aboriginal title over an area of Crown land 300 kilometres northwest of Victoria, mostly made up of Nootka Island and much of the surrounding coastline. "I am shaking my finger at the province for that because it certainly was in their control and power to help design and accommodate a process that would have put the court in a less binary position." Nuchatlaht's land claim on Nootka Island No alternatives have been presented," Woodward told the court Tuesday. "The province presents the court with a stark choice: dismissal or declaration. Jack Woodward said at the start of his closing argument that the province missed its opportunity and has instead placed "the burden of reconciliation squarely on the court," in the first test of the landmark 2014 Tsilhqot'in Aboriginal title decision by the Supreme Court of Canada. A lawyer for the Nuchatlaht First Nation, which is fighting for title to part of Nootka Island in British Columbia, has told a court that the underlying objective of the proceeding is reconciliation.
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