Two Powerful First Nations Relive a Key Victory Two Powerful First Nations Relive a Key Victory The battle to make Meares Island a 'tribal park' A momentous ruling 'The trees are still standing'

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1 Jul 2026
1 Jul 2026The Tyee
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Facing new fights over land and water, Nuu-chah-nulth and Haida members met in celebratory solidarity.
Ian Gill
Ian Gill is a journalist, author, conservationist and bookseller. He is co-creator of Salmon Nation, co-owner of the independent Vancouver literary arts studio Upstart & Crow and a contributing editor at The Tyee.
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Facing new fights over land and water, Nuu-chah-nulth and Haida members met in celebratory solidarity. … Article written by Ian Gill.
"These canoes are incredible allies and friends. There's a lot of spirit in these canoes."
So said ƛaʔuuk (Gisèle Maria Martin) near the conclusion of a gentle and sometimes emotional ceremony on National Indigenous Peoples Day, a gathering to mark the long, hard, intertwined pathways of resistance taken by two leading British Columbia First Nations.
Martin is a member of the ƛaʔuukʷiʔatḥ (Tla-o-qui-aht) First Nation whose ḥaaḥuułi, or traditional territory, includes the west coast village of Tofino, in Clayoquot Sound. At the town's Wickaninnish Community School gymnasium, she stood before a crowd of about 200 people who had come to witness the gifting of a cedar dugout canoe from her nation to the X̱aayda (Haida) Nation.
The canoe, Martin said, was a manifestation of both nations' "intergenerational care of the forest." She spoke as her father, renowned canoe carver Tutakwisnapšiƛ (Joe Martin), looked on approvingly.
So did Joe Martin's uncle, n̓up̓itačiƛ (Moses Martin), who had commissioned the canoe to gift to the Haida, and in particular to Kilslaay Kaajii Sding (Miles Richardson), in recognition of the Haida's leadership and solidarity back in the 1980s, when Moses Martin and his Nuučaanuł (Nuu-chah-nulth) community took a stance against clearcut logging in their territory — and won.
(The Nuu-chah-nulth are a grouping of 14 Vancouver Island First Nations, three of which — the ƛaʔuukʷiʔatḥ and their aaḥuusʔatḥ (Ahousaht) and hišqʷiʔatḥ (Hesquiaht) neighbours — are situated in whole or in part in Clayoquot Sound.)
Back in the 1980s, both the Queen Charlotte Islands (as they were then called) and Clayoquot Sound were becoming internationally recognized hot spots for their opposition to B.C.'s historically powerful logging companies, whose clearcutting of old growth forests in some of the most spectacular ecosystems on Earth was being challenged not just by environmentalists, but by First Nations upon whose land they operated with impunity but not permission.
The nations' resistance at the time was unprecedented. All-powerful logging interests basically ran the province and — backed by the provincial government and the courts — easily swatted away the colourful mischief of environmentalists as just another cost of doing business. But they were about to find out that First Nations, after decades of marginalization and suppression, were awakening to a form of collaborative soft power that would change the face of British Columbia, literally and figuratively, forever.
In Clayoquot Sound, having already defaced several valleys, the companies were pressing hard to expand their operations. One place they were determined to log was wanačas hiłḥuuʔis (Meares Island), which then, as today, offered Tofino not just spectacular forest views, but the source of its fresh water.
When plans to log Meares were vehemently opposed locally, the province mandated a Meares Island planning committee, supposedly to accommodate local input. In 1983, after two years of contentious deliberations, the committee — heavily stacked in favour of logging interests — recommended that 90 per cent of Meares' 8,000 hectares of forests be logged. It suggested that cutting the remaining 10 per cent be deferr...