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Summary of document:
Ownership not included
BY DEBORAH WILSON
and ROBERT MATAS
British Columbia Bureau
Vancouver—The Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en Indians yesterday won an important victory with a court ruling that they have a valid claim to rights over a massive chunk of land in northwestern British Columbia.
However, the British Columbia Court of Appeal said their rights do not include ownership of the more than 58,000 square kilometres of land...
But native leaders and their legal counsel were enthusiastic about what they described as an undiluted victory over the federal government’s and BC Supreme Court’s view that all native rights had been extinguished before Confederation...
For the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en, the ruling means that further court cases are needed to define the impact of existing forestry and mining activities on their rights. Yesterday’s decision will almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.
…In his ruling, Judge Macfarlane appeared to back away from the lower court description of the native’s pre-colonization life as “nasty, brutish and short.” Instead, he wrote, “there is no question that the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en people had an organized society, and that the use and occupation of land and certain products of the lands and water were integral to that society.”…
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