Bill Chu has been working with Indigenous people for decades. Here he is marching with Grand Chief Stewart Phillip in the 2008 Women’s Memorial March. (Phillip has just been re-elected to a ninth consecutive three-year term as President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.)
On August 7, 2025, the British Columbia Supreme Court released the landmark decision, Cowichan Tribes v Canada (Attorney General).
While Aboriginal rights and titles had been upheld in significant court decisions before, this is the first case where Aboriginal title was granted over land with private properties.
Within the seven-plus square kilometres of land in Richmond covered by the decision, only some properties are owned by private owners, the rest by the city or other levels of government.
Although the case was directed against Canada and not private property owners, and the Cowichan clarified many times that they have no intention of removing existing owners from their properties, the decision has been greeted by a firestorm of mostly misinformed and inflammatory statements from politicians who should know better about BC’s colonial history and reality regarding Aboriginal title.
Understanding the court decision
For the Cowichan Tribes case – hearings spanned over 11 years, making it the longest trial in Canadian history – the BC Supreme Court combed through the history of the claimed area, confirming a pre-existing village site (Tl’uqtinus) and the illegal act by which those who knew the site was to be set aside for Indigenous settlement granted it to settlers for private ownership.
Unsurprisingly, then, the court decided “that the Crown grant of land is invalid, and therefore the titles that follow from that are invalid.”
As the public has been assured through generations of usage that land titles registered under B.C. Land Title Act constitute conclusive proof of ownership, they have understandably been surprised by the court decision, which states that section 23 and 25 of the Land Title Act pertaining to declarations of title and the protection of indefeasible title “do not apply to Aboriginal title.”
For BC politicians, the ruling is hard to acknowledge because it reveals the illegitimacy of colonial systems, an inconvenient truth that all previous governments, based on settler numbers alone, thought they could evade forever.
Many simply blame the BC government and the BC Supreme Court for their “secrecy” and “non-transparency” in conducting the case. Many try to play the role of a tough guy when the real need is to negotiate in good faith about the overlapping titles with the Cowichan.
For the informed, the Cowichan Tribes decision should not be a surprise; both locally and globally there have been major shifts in attitudes regarding colonialism and human rights.
Until 1952, BC had laws which suppressed Indigenous dissent by banning the Sun Dance, hereditary governments, fund raising for land claim efforts and any off-reserve meeting of more than three Indians. Those measures disappeared with global changes. Though native protests and road closures were frequent till the 1990s, court challenges have proved increasingly important in effecting change.
Over the past few decades, a series of landmark decisions – particularly Delgamuukw, (1997), Tsilhqot’in Nation (2014) and Haida (2024) – have increasingly affirmed Aboriginal title.
As BC politicians continued to muddle along and allow an unjust century-and-a-half-long system of overlapping titles to drag on, Justice Barbara Young in her Cowichan Tribes decision made these candid statements:
The Province has no jurisdiction to extinguish Aboriginal title . . . Aboriginal title lies beyond the land title system in British Columbia.
BC has a duty to negotiate with the Cowichan to reconcile their Aboriginal title with the private fee simple interests in a manner that accords with the honour of the Crown.
A declaration of Cowichan Aboriginal title is a foundation and a catalyst for these negotiations.
The court, faced with more native land claims in other urban areas and seeing BC making no proactive changes regarding title uncertainty – even after several landmark court decisions – decided it was time to use the Cowichan Tribes decision to precipitate an immediate legal obligation for BC to negotiate in good faith with the Cowichan regarding overlapping titles.
The Court made it clear that BC’s granting of fee simple titles does not extinguish or displace Aboriginal title but merely infringes on it. The legal onus is on BC and Canada – and not private property owners − to reconcile Aboriginal title with the assertions of the Crown, as is required in nation to nation resolution of land issues.
The exact implications for private property owners were left purposely unclear as that will be shaped during the 18 months suspension of the decision when the Cowichan, Crown and City are given “the opportunity to make the necessary arrangements.”
Expect confusion ahead
As politicians have been banking on general public ignorance and natural concern about certainty of property ownership to arouse public fear and suspicion, there will be no lack of ‘engagement with community’ in the form of town hall meetings, press conferences and releases.
One can expect that none of them will acknowledge the elephant in the room, but will offer non-starters like asking the court to stay the decision. Though several parties are appealing the decision, the reaction is more a knee jerk reaction than one well thought out.
Because the Cowichan Tribes decision has made it clear that action from the provincial government is overdue, and because the government has just spent two decades resolving overlapping titles in the Haida case, an appeal on their legal and constitutional obligations is hypocritical.
How can they not understand the situation, and act as if the court would somehow reverse its decision regarding the original sin of BC, and still be able to make credible coherent judgements in other new cases involving Aboriginal titles?
Few politicians will acknowledge the cost of this longest court case in Canada and the likelihood of repeated costs for taxpayers, or the unreported cost to the Indigenous community in denying them their Aboriginal title for the past 150 years! Instead, much of their effort will likely go into stoking fears of losing one’s property, lower property values, difficulties in getting insurance, remortgaging or selling one’s properties, etc.
John Rustad, leader of the opposition in BC, even made the cancellation of DRIPA – BC’s 2019 Act which establishes the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a framework for reconciliation – part of his election platform last October. At stake is a vilification of the Indigenous community, a rollback of BC’s progress made on reconciliation and a return to BC’s dark age of conflict and court battles with the natives.
The Good News
Bill Chu with Nisga’a friend Lily Jorgensen at the annual Hoobiyee celebrations at the PNE Forum earlier this year.
This comment is not meant as a ‘guilt trip’ but as an encouragement for God’s people to act out of a faith fitting for His kingdom.
As the court decision has revealed a ticking land title time bomb for BC, it is high time to remind Christians of the human cause of this predicament and of the need for collective repentance and engagement in the gradual manifestation of God’s sovereignty within human culture and history.
Since Satan has seeped into every area of human life, our duty is to let the truth of God permeate and impact every area including the injustice within the title system in BC.
Colonialism is not a new subject. Christ was born into a Roman colony which pursued him from birth till death.
He was painfully aware of the colonial burden imposed on his people, as evidenced in Simeon’s waiting for a Messiah to liberate them from oppression and restore Israel’s glory; “the consolation of Israel” in Luke 2:25 echoing Isaiah 40:1 “Comfort, comfort my people”; and Christ’s proclamation in Luke 4:18-19, which further clarifies his mission within the colony.
Christ’s teachings of the Good News, the Beatitudes, etc. are centred on the kingdom of God for a good reason – the reign of God is not just a promise for life after death but also a new life before death.
That new life is much more than worship and evangelism, as Christ’s mission is to embody the good news of God’s sovereignty, with preaching and action to challenge the social, economic, religious, racial and political norms of his time, and lead all into a new life marked by radical departure from those norms.
Moreover, the Good News is not just for the Jews but for all. From Christ’s response to the Samaritan woman by the well and his parable of the Good Samaritan, the lesson for us is not to repeat the shunning and alienation of the Indigenous people of our time but to ask whether we have been acting as neighbours to them.
As Christ has broken down the wall between Jews and Gentiles, anyone who identifies oneself as a civilizer on the Western frontier and the Indigenous people as obstacles or irrelevances to progress is still in colonial bondage. They are in as much need of God’s deliverance as the people they victimize.
Reconciliation
Learning from Alvin Nelson at Mount Currie Reserve on October 2025 study tour; Bill Chu has led many tours there.
As part of humanity made new, we have been charged with the serious task of reconciliation (2 Corinthian 5:17-19). By God’s grace, we have the opportunity to embrace new possibilities, to walk in the light of God’s love and to extend that to people of all colours.
In the eyes of not a few Indigenous people, the church has been the Bad News! While we no longer have to allow old mistakes, failures and burdens to define us, we must not continue to support colonial sins and hope that grace may abound.
Instead, by living out a new and honest relationship with Indigenous people and creation, we may finally live out the life we were created for.
I am glad BC is finally being confronted with its original sin. That will demand much thought and action from the provincial government. The role of British Columbians, after learning the historical, legal and spiritual factors leading up to this perfect storm, is to realize that we have been made unwitting beneficiaries – and now potential victims – of the colonial land dispossession in BC.
Since the court has already established that Aboriginal title cannot be extinguished through granting fee simple titles, we need to ignore the pied pipers and urge our government to negotiate in good faith with the Cowichan rather than to litigate.
We need to enter into the Indigenous lives: listen to their outcries, walk their paths, sleep in their beds and be humbled by the harms, damage and the loss of land, language, culture and way of life inflicted on them. We can be thankful that they have been generous in allowing us to share their land and, despite all their losses, still show us the grace not to go after our fee simple title.
But such endless abuse of Aboriginal title must also end, according to the Cowichan Tribes decision. We need to remind politicians that acknowledging Indigenous rights and fostering reconciliation are global trends whose implementation have been made law in BC. They should not be treated as partisan issues.
We need to assure everyone that we are certain our uncertainties are trivial when compared to the horrific uncertainties imposed on generations of Indigenous people as they were systematically marginalized and dispossessed, with many ending up homeless in our cities.
As no society can be a real community, or sustainable, with two versions of history and land titles, I pray we can all hear the alarm sounded by the Cowichan Tribes decision – and be God’s reconciling presence in our broken province.
Bill Chu is a former professional engineer who has lived in BC for one-third of its history. He is founder of the (former) Canadians for Reconciliation Society and has led more than 2,500 people into BC’s remoted native communities. He has spoken on issues related to reconciliation at conferences, high schools and at Missions Fest (where he served as a member of the Board of Reference). He is the recipient of the King Charles III Coronation Medal.