In March 1778, Capt. James Cook arrived at the village of Yuquot, at the southern tip of Nootka Island off the central west coast of Vancouver Island.
It's the first recorded European landing on the shores of what would become British Columbia.
Jerry Jack, a hereditary chief of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation and whose traditional name is Klakwagiila, says he always tells people this is where his community's problems started.
In late 2024, the Mowachaht/ Muchalaht filed a lawsuit in B.C. Supreme Court seeking a declaration of Aboriginal title to a large area that tracks inland from Yuquot, also called Friendly Cove, along Nootka Sound, and where the tiny communities of Gold River and Tahsis are located.
The area the Mowachaht/Muchalaht are claiming Aboriginal title to is 4,300 square kilometres of sparsely settled, forested area, including nearly 14 per cent of Vancouver Island's area.
Recently, a trial date was set for 2029 and nine months of court time has been set aside, potentially placing the proceedings among a handful of lengthy and often precedent-setting Aboriginal title cases in B.C.
In its filing, the Mowachaht/Muchalaht says the province has infringed its Aboriginal title by authorizing logging, forestry roads and log handling without fair compensation.
Several area-based tree-farming and volume-based licences — which give companies the right to harvest timber and also the responsibility to replant forests — cover much of the First Nation's claimed traditional territory.
A pulp and paper mill in Gold River closed in 1999 and the last cedar sawmill in Tahsis closed in 2001.
But logging continues, with timber sorted, graded and prepared at the Nesook Bay dryland sort owned by Western Forest Products before being transported to mills in B.C. or exported.
The Mowachaht/Muchalaht are seeking a declaration of title and infringement, an accounting and repayment of provincial revenues from the claimed territory, and unspecified compensation and damages.
The legal team representing the Mowachaht/Muchalaht has not completed calculations on how much revenue went to the province, but estimates it is in the hundreds of millions of dollars since logging started in the 1950s, with billions of dollars in timber harvested.
In response to Postmedia questions, the B.C. Ministry of Forests declined to say how much timber had been harvested and how much government revenues were collected.
“We never gave the land up. We never surrendered it,” said Jack, who is a member of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht's council of chiefs.
He notes that when Cook landed there was an estimated 8,000 Mowachaht people (other estimates peg the population as lower), but now the combined populations of the Mowachaht/ Muchalaht peoples is about 600. About half live in the Gold River and Tahsis areas, and one family lives in Yuquot.
Jack says they were devastated by smallpox and other diseases and are still feeling the effects of generations of children being sent to residential schools. “We're a poor nation. We shouldn't be a poor nation with all the resources that have been taken out of our territory. ... Getting recognition and rights to our territory, we can be a wealthy nation,” he said. “It tears me up inside when I have to go to court and fight for something that was ours from the beginning of time.”
Jack said they don't want to stop forestry, but they want control over resource extraction. The Mowachaht/ Muchalaht have also said they want to implement a more sustainable forestry model that better protects the environment.
Eamon Murphy, a lawyer with Woodward & Company LLP, which is representing the Mowachaht/Muchalaht, says a key issue the case seeks to prove is how much old growth has been removed, how areas such as fish-bearing streams have been degraded, and how the Mowachaht/Muchalaht culture has been affected though the loss of cedar stands that are sacred to them.
“It's not just about the dollar figures, it's devastated the culture and the livelihood of these people,” Murphy said.
None of the claims have been tested in court.
In its response in B.C. Supreme Court, the province has acknowledged that Aboriginal title may exist within portions of the 4,300 square kilometres of claimed territory, but disputes the Mowachaht/Muchalaht can establish title over the entire area.
The province argues that First Nations must prove sufficient, exclusive occupation dating back to the mid1800s and a continuing connection, noting there are overlapping claims with the Ehattesaht, K'ómoks, We Wai Kai and Wei Wai Kum First Nations.
B.C. also says it acted lawfully by authorizing forestry and transferring provincial-land interests, and fulfilled consultation and accommodation duties, and entered agreements with the Mowachaht/Muchalaht that provided benefits.
Those included forestry revenue sharing agreements, which the Mowachaht/Muchalaht say are tiny in comparison to the amount of resources taken from their territory.
B.C. seeks to have the Aboriginal title claim dismissed and opposes providing retroactive compensation.
Jack said he wanted to stress their title case is not seeking private land.
Jack said they are pursuing court action because they don't want to end up with small pieces of disconnected land in their traditional territory. “Those are little blips. ... What we're claiming is what is rightfully ours.”
