Overlapping claims are behind protests from First Nations against two treaties

Garry Reece, elected mayor of the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation, said he did not oppose the treaty process, but he could not agree with an agreement that reached into their territory.

“We are going to stop major projects if we have,” Reece said. “We are going to do everything we can, so this treaty doesn’t go through.”

Spencer Chandra Herbert, B.C.’s Minister of Indigenous Relations, said the issue of overlapping claims was not new and he encouraged all sides to have further conversations to resolve their issues.

“I know some of those conversations are ongoing,” he said.

Chris Roberts, elected chief councillor of the Wei Wai Kum First Nation, said the government should pause the K’omoks Treaty Act for at least six months to give his nation a chance to resolve its concerns.

Roberts said the treaty with the K’omoks created the opposite of certainty and his people were “growing restless and concerned about the future.”

He said that the province needed treaties. “But they have to be done properly, and there is a fatal flaw with this treaty,” he said. “(It) doesn’t have a proper recognition of the overlapping claims with the K’omoks First Nation.”

The K’omoks Treaty Act and the Kitselas Treaty Act were tabled last week on back-to-back days after years of negotiations.

Conservative MLA Scott McInnis, critic for Indigenous relations and reconciliation, said overlap happens with treaties.

But government was pushing ahead with treaties in the context of the Cowichan Tribes ruling on Aboriginal title, and its impact on the legal environment, he said.

The August 2025 ruling confirming the tribes hold Aboriginal title on land by the Fraser River in Richmond, B.C., has led to concerns about its impact on private property ownership and is being appealed by the B.C. government and other parties.

What happens when the Wei Wai Kum First Nation can prove “ongoing and exclusive” occupation in K’omoks First Nation treaty land, McInnis asked. “What the heck are we going to do with that?”

That possibility should be grounds to pause the provincial implementation of the two recent treaties, McInnes said.

But the government, he said, is not willing to do that. “They desperately need a win on the reconciliation file,” he said. “The process is a little bit rushed and flawed.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2026.

Wolfgang Depner, The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

Overlapping claims are behind protests from First Nations against two treaties

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