Topping W̱SÁNEĆ’s Christmas list is one thing: #LandBack
Global News
The W̱SÁNEĆ Land Trust Society, which represents three First Nations on Vancouver Island, is asking for one thing for the holidays: land back.
December is known as the season of giving, and W̱SÁNEĆ Lands Trust is asking for one special gift this holiday season “in the spirit of reconciliation”: the gift of land back.
Land back is an Indigenous-led movement that isn’t as straightforward as just giving the land back.
While that’s part of it, Don Tom, chief of Tsartlip First Nation, explains that land back also has to deal with access.
“What it means to have land back is to restore that connection that we historically had to the land,” he said. “To have our people out on the land, to have the language be spoken on the land and to be able to have that connection once again in restoring the lands as they once were.”
The W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council Society, which started the lands trust, is made up of two W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations — Tsartlip and Tseycum.
In many cases, land back centres around the return of Crown land but for W̱SÁNEĆ, acquiring Crown land in their traditional territory — the Saanich peninsula — wasn’t possible, so they got creative and established the W̱SÁNEĆ Lands Trust.
“We looked at alternatives to solve how can we have our people back on the land? How can we have an opportunity to be stewards within our territory again?” Tom said.
“We saw lands trust being a successful avenue that I don’t think any Indigenous organization has gone down anywhere in Canada.”
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