There is a spectre haunting British Columbia.
If you’ve been paying any attention to BC politics over the last eight months, you know that the province has been whipped up into a panic over Indigenous rights.
The scale and ferocity of this panic is unlike anything I can remember seeing in my lifetime. They insist that the collective prosperity of British Columbians is at risk — your private property, your very homes, are at risk. Those First Nations are coming to take it all.
It all started with the Cowichan decision in August, when a BC court found that a chunk of land in the city of Richmond had been the site of Cowichan village, which was stolen outright by BC government officials. Those bureaucrats then sold that land for their own personal benefit, all the while hiding their involvement in the transactions. It was theft and corruption. Therefore the Cowichan Tribes still had some rights to that land and the government, which had resisted negotiations, had to work out a just solution.
But because of poor communication from the city and the province — and because of bad faith actors looking to exploit the situation — it soon became an article of faith that all private property in BC was at stake.
And then came a December 2025 court case about mining rights that, in essence, said mining companies had to consult First Nations, referencing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People Act, which the BC legislature passed unanimously in 2019.
This second court ruling, combined with the first, sent the hysteria machine into overdrive, and put David Eby’s NDP government into a crisis. Eby promised to amend DRIPA, a move that was opposed not only by First Nations in the province, but by members of his own caucus.
He has now backed down, but the BC Conservatives, who are in the midst of a leadership race, are all trying to out-bigot one another, claiming that these court decisions and DRIPA in particular represent an existential threat to the province.
(If you think I’m exaggerating, I urge you to watch their most recent leadership debate in full).
But there is a spectre haunting British Columbia.
It's not First Nations, or the courts or even DRIPA. It’s a man, long-dead, who is in many ways responsible for all of this modern-day panic.
His name was Joseph Trutch.
Trutch was the province’s first Lieutenant-Governor and more than anyone else, he helped create the unique situation that BC finds itself in when it comes to Indigenous land rights.
Because for most of the province’s history, BC has defied British and Canadian legal tradition, and resisted signing treaties with First Nations. And for over a century, provincial government after provincial government closed their eyes, put their fingers in their ears and just pretended that Indigenous title didn’t exist.
And now, that past is coming back to haunt the province.
That is the story that is largely missing from all of the panic about land rights in BC. Because if we do what the pundits and right-wing politicians want us to do — which is ignore First Nations and the legal claims they have to their territory — we will be opening the door to true chaos.
So today, we’re examining that history and how it continues to play out with Adam Olsen; a writer, a member of Tsartlip First Nation on Vancouver Island and the former Green Party MLA for Saanich North and the Islands.
