Observers anticipate lengthy legal process after B.C. Aboriginal land title decision

A B.C. Supreme Court ruling that for the first time recognized Aboriginal title over privately owned land has raised new questions about how the two can co-exist, with observers anticipating a lengthy legal process that could reach Canada’s highest court.

Justice Barbara Young’s decision in the land claim ruling, handed down in August, said that the Cowichan Tribes have established Aboriginal title, a type of ownership right rooted in ancestral usage of a piece of land, to roughly 800 acres in southeast Richmond, B.C., on the Fraser River, as well as an Aboriginal right to fish for food.