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In what can fairly be described as one of the most audacious acts of judicial engineering in our history, on December 11th 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada brought down its decision in the landmark case of Delgamuukw vs. British Columbia. As a result, I have no hesitation in stating that although it may not yet be fully apparent, British Columbia is faced with a serious crisis unlike anything it has faced in its 127 years within the Canadian Confederation. Gordon Gibson has described this court decision as "the most important political event for British Columbia in the second half of this century."²

Case history

This is the case in which the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en tribes laid claim to the ownership and jurisdiction over 23,000 square miles of British Columbia—an area equivalent in size to New Brunswick. The trial commenced in 1984 before Chief Justice McEachern of the BC Supreme Court. It took 374 days, over a 3-year period, and became the longest civil trial in the annals of BC judicial history.

After a further year of painstaking and exhaustive deliberation on the oral history, genealogy, sociology, anthropology, conventional history, and relevant law, the Chief Justice issued his reasons for judgment of some 394 pages in March 1991. He dismissed outright both the natives’ claim to ownership and jurisdiction. He also concluded that lesser aboriginal land rights had effectively been extinguished by colonial acts and ordinances passed by the Colony of British Columbia prior to its entry into Confederation in 1871. (The ownership of Indian reserves was not in question in this case.) By any measure, the decision was an unqualified victory for the province and the federal government.

The native plaintiffs then brought an appeal to the Court of Appeal of BC. By this time, the province had elected an NDP government. This proved to be most significant, because this saga has two strands—the legal and the political—and the two are interwoven.

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Last Modified: August 23, 2000.