First Nations' Growing Influence
Reconciling First Nations title and rights with Crown interest’s in BC means laws about who controls resources, who sets the rules, who enforces the rules and who gets the benefits will need to be renegotiated. This provides enormous opportunities, and challenges.
- BC Government Publication Services
The struggle for control over land and resources will define BC’s future.
There is no other place in the developed world where all the rules about land and resources will be re-written over the next generation.
This provides enormous opportunities, and challenges.
Over the last few years Dogwood Initiative has been helping First Nations assert their title and challenge logging and fossil fuel tenures because we believe this approach provides the best available leverage for promoting sustainability, human rights and land reform in British Columbia.
Recent events reveal the wisdom of this strategy as a series of court decisions and political actions have forced the government progressively to take First Nations' interests more seriously.
First Nations from across British Columbia are stepping forward, working individually and collectively, to challenge business as usual industrial practices and regain control to protect their land, forests, and communities for future generations.
Dogwood Initiative and others have been working with First Nations to undermine the legal and financial certainty large resource companies had over lands and resources in BC.
Recent court decisions, in favor of First Nations are unraveling BC’s attempts to de-regulate and corporatize decision making. These court decisions are slowly changing the way land and resources are managed in BC. The courts have directed government to dramatically increase the role of First Nations in the allocation and decision making.
These decisions create opportunities, but the government has consistently resisted the courts directions and solidified more corporate control over resources. In response First Nations began organizing and agitating.
The rapid growth of more aggressive First Nations groups, particularly the Title & Rights Alliance, encouraged government to announce a new negotiated approach to resolving land questions.
- BC Government
The New Relationship announced in 2005 signaled the potential; for a new era of First Nations involvement in decisions affecting their land, water and air. Despite initial high hopes this New Relationship is just beginning. And like any new initiative has had growing pains. .
Document Actions
- Send this
- Print this
- Bookmarks
"I was going to put my $100 toward improving the bicycle I ride every day, but the thought of Shell Oil destroying the ecosystem of the North by drilling for coal-bed methane in the Sacred Headwaters area breaks my heart." 
