Inside Richmond’s Precedent-Setting Cowichan Tribes v. Canada Case – The Tyee

The BC Supreme Court decision affirms Aboriginal title on private lands. What’s next?

Today, a tract of land on the southeastern shore of Richmond’s Lulu Island includes a dirt-coloured grid of distribution centres for companies like Wayfair, Amazon and Ikea. Elsewhere, thousands of trucks, boats and cars dot the landscape like metallic bugs.

But less than 200 years ago, it was a buzzing village belonging to the Quwʼutsun Nation, who spent their summers there before travelling, en masse, in cedar canoes to their other territory on southern Vancouver Island and parts of the southern Gulf Islands for the rest of the year.

In its Aug. 7 decision on the Cowichan Tribes v. Canada case, B.C.’s Supreme Court recognized the nation’s title to this 780-acre tract of land known as Tl’uqtinus (“long chest”), named after what was once a sloping beach that hugged the river’s shore.

Read More: https://thetyee.ca/News/2025/08/19/Precedent-Setting-Cowichan-Tribes-v-Canada-Case/