Juno News - Nearly 80% of B.C. locked in active Aboriginal land grab battles

00:00:00.640 Nearly all of British Columbia is tied up in competing Indigenous land claims with just

00:00:06.800 5% of the province covered by settled treaties. A Juno News analysis of Indigenous land claims

00:00:12.800 looked at the scale of the issue across British Columbia. The analysis showed that only about 5%

00:00:19.280 of the land is covered by historical treaties. Contemporary treaty efforts have made limited

00:00:25.600 progress with just eight agreements completed in more than 30 years at the same time major

00:00:31.520 court rulings are expanding recognizing aboriginal title in specific regions and in some cases those

00:00:38.000 rulings now overlap with private lands government property and major infrastructure and there are

00:00:44.800 also overlapping claims between first nations and that means that multiple groups are asserting

00:00:50.560 rights over the same area. And the result of all this is a province where land ownership and

00:00:56.320 control remain legally and politically unsettled. And this, as most of British Columbia, is still

00:01:03.280 being negotiated, challenged, and redefined in real time. For Juno News, I'm Melanie Bennett.

Juno News - April 15, 2026