{"id":215584,"date":"2025-10-15T20:08:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T20:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/215584\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T20:08:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T20:08:16","slug":"what-does-first-nations-ownership-mean-for-b-c-forestry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/215584\/","title":{"rendered":"What does First Nations ownership mean for B.C. forestry?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A morning fog has cleared at the Kelsey Bay log sort near the town of Sayward, B.C., on Vancouver Island. Thick drifts of pulverized cedar bark pile against the loading dock, evidence of the millions of trees that departed from here across the ocean, never to return.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen our territories decimated,\u201d Wei Wai Kum Chief Christopher Roberts explains. Behind him, five freshly cut, old-growth cedars line the warming pavement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These trees, Roberts says, help explain why the nation is here today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After watching trees vanish from their territory for more than a century, nations are claiming sizable stakes in an industry that has long excluded them. Wei Wai Kum is one of four First Nations to purchase a $36-million stake in La-kwa sa mukw Forestry Partnership, a joint operation with logging company Western Forest Products Ltd. Their partnership came after companies including Western Forest Products agreed to leave the biggest, canoe-carving trees like these in their communities. A sign, for Roberts, that the industry was willing to change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"LogsFirst Nations\u2019 territories have long played a key role in B.C.\u2019s logging industry, with old-growth trees being chopped down for timber. Now, in towns like Sayward, B.C., nations like Wei Wai Kum are buying up forestry tenures with hopes of reshaping the industry. Photo: Taylor Roades \/ The Narwhal<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for that, I don\u2019t think Wei Wai Kum would have had the confidence to enter into the purchase agreement,\u201d Roberts says, addressing the small crowd before him, some seated on fold-up chairs for the day\u2019s events celebrating the partnership.<\/p>\n

Their purchase last year adds to a wave of new First Nations-owned forestry tenures in B.C., which jumped from 10 to 20 per cent of the province\u2019s logging allowance in the last four years. According to the Ministry of Forests\u2019 budget notes<\/a>, tenure transfers to First Nations are \u201coccurring at a faster rate than anticipated.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the long-awaited opportunity comes at a turbulent time: B.C.\u2019s major logging companies are liquidating their mills\u00a0and licences, and moving much of their operations to the southern U.S. It\u2019s a trend that, according to industry testimony at the U.S. International Trade Commission, is \u201chighly unlikely to reverse itself in the foreseeable future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AB.C. timber companies have been liquidating their assets and moving their operations south. With 45 per cent tariffs recently placed on Canadian timber by the Trump administration, the trend seems poised to continue. Photo: Taylor Roades \/ The Narwhal <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"Close-up
\nA crowd gathers to listen to speeches at a La-kwa sa mukw Forestry Partnership event in Sayward, B.C. Wei Wai Kum First Nation, whose chief Christopher Roberts is pictured on the right, is one of four nations who purchased a stake in the joint venture with Western Forest Products Ltd. Photos: Taylor Roades \/ The Narwhal<\/p>\n

Reasons for the upheaval are varied, but Garry Merkel, a professional forester and a member of the Tahltan Nation, points to a pervasive, underlying factor: most of the highest-value big trees are gone, and many of B.C.\u2019s mills are built to process lots of trees at once. \u201cEverybody is competing for the last little bit,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That puts some First Nations-owned tenures in a pressure cooker, trying to supply the wood to keep forestry-reliant communities going while working to steward ecosystems under growing strain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Right now, Roberts remains uncertain whether that high-wire act is achievable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always believed that when First Nations are the ones that take over the ownership of licences and tenures in their territory, it would be a different value set they would have used,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just not seeing that yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

B.C. forestry: a flawed system<\/p>\n

First Nations had been using and stewarding the province\u2019s forests for millennia when 27-year-old Henry Reginald MacMillan \u2014 better known in B.C. as H.R. MacMillan \u2014 a third-generation Canadian settler with roots in Scotland, arrived<\/a> in Victoria in 1912 to launch the province\u2019s first forest service. He came with a radical plan, learned in the continent\u2019s new fleet of forestry schools, to transform B.C.\u2019s forests into a planted crop of trees, like peas or potatoes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Major forest companies would be the foot soldiers of this revolution, and were granted long-term licences from the British Columbia government to log First Nations\u2019 territories, without their input or consent.<\/p>\n

For decades, companies bought and sold access to First Nations\u2019 land like trading cards<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First Nations people, meanwhile, were forced onto reserves. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t go off a reserve,\u201d Merkel says. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t own land.\u201d Under the Indian Act, they also couldn\u2019t hire lawyers, preventing them from advocating for their rights in the bustling resource economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many First Nations people worked in the industry, but they were excluded from decision-making or ownership. In 1991, nations held<\/a> less than one per cent of the province\u2019s logging tenure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The largest ten companies in the province, including MacMillan\u2019s own company, MacMillan Bloedel Ltd., held almost 70 per cent.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"A
\nH. R. MacMillan, who launched B.C.\u2019s forestry service in the early 20th century, was an architect of the province\u2019s ambitious vision for logging, which relied on First Nations\u2019 territories even as it excluded the nations\u2019 members themselves. Photos: Supplied by the Campbell River Museum<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the industry supersized its tools to cut forests faster, including megamills and mechanized logging machines.\u00a0B.C.\u2019s companies refined their approach to high-volume, low-value forestry and companies saw<\/a> their incomes skyrocket.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many First Nations resisted the growing scale of forestry in their territories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Landmark legal victories for the Haida<\/a>, Gitxan and Wet\u2019suwet\u2019en<\/a> and other nations throughout the 1990s and 2000s prompted B.C. to change its approach to forestry in the province. \u201cThey realized they had to figure out how to work with the community,\u201d Merkel says. In 2010, B.C. introduced a suite of new policies, including\u00a0a revenue-sharing program<\/a> to allocate a share of its logging proceeds to impacted nations, many of which remain in place today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But those agreements also came with strings, including clauses restricting nations\u2019 ability to contest companies\u2019 logging in their territories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think they\u2019re a flawed system,\u201d Chief Councillor waamii\u0161 Ken Watts of Tseshaht First Nation says. The nation owns various forestry tenures on southern Vancouver Island. \u201cIt\u2019s just saying, here\u2019s our colonial laws you have to live by, sign this agreement, we\u2019ll give you a bit of change at the end of the year from what we\u2019ve made off of your territory,\u201d he says<\/p>\n

Those agreements came with some new opportunities for First Nations-owned tenure, but many of the licences came with caveats: unlike major forest companies, licensees had a limited window to log wood, and some were limited to pine beetle-killed areas. Many of the licences were never fully utilized.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Opportunity in the B.C. forestry crash<\/p>\n

Now, after years on the margins, First Nations\u2019 tenure opportunities have exploded as B.C.\u2019s biggest forest companies sell off major parts of their long-held licences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing fire sales all over the place,\u201d Merkel says.<\/p>\n

Companies like Interfor and Canfor have sold up to half of their timber licences to First Nations. Western Forest Products has taken a more incremental approach, entered into co-owning arrangements, including with the Huu-ay-aht First Nation and through La-kwa sa mukw Forestry Partnership.<\/p>\n

But the opportunity comes with a bitter pill: the industry is in freefall. Merkel sees some multinational corporations are jumping ship. \u201cAs long as they get something out of it and get out of the liability, that\u2019s cash they can take and go buy, I don\u2019t know, a shrimp farm in Africa or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. softwood lumber tariffs, which rose to 45 per cent this month, are the latest shock. And Merkel points to other, more insidious causes for the crash: namely, that H.R. MacMillan\u2019s forest project didn\u2019t work as planned. Planted forests haven\u2019t grown into the old, big trees industry made its fortunes from.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AIn 2024 and 2025, carvers from the K\u2019omox, We Wai Kai and Wei Wai Kum nations carved two xwax\u2019wana, or canoes, from windfall cedars in H\u2019kusam Forest, as well as living poles celebrating the nations\u2019 culture and forestry history in Sayward, B.C. Photo: Taylor Roades \/ The Narwhal<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019re dealing with a lot of scrub in that corner that we didn\u2019t get to before,\u201d Merkel says. Mills, meanwhile, are often designed to log lots of wood \u2014 often the big, old stuff.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some nations who paid handily for their recent tenures are in \u201ctough situations,\u201d Merkel adds. \u201cThey\u2019re bound economically.\u201d That crunch can incentivize faster, cheaper, clear-cut logging, even though old growth is often scarce.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For some nations, the situation may worsen. As logging declines across the province and the price of wood falls, B.C. has warned<\/a> that revenue sharing on forestry with First Nations will see a sizable drop, with \u201cthe first major decline in payments\u201d beginning this year.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, federal funding cuts loom for Indigenous Services Canada. The department provides key services like health care, drinking water and education \u2014 things non-Indigenous communities have had disproportionate access to, thanks in part to forestry revenue.<\/p>\n

Those vacillating government funds underscore Chief Ronnie Chickite\u2019s desire to establish financial independence through tenure ownership. \u201cI think we got in at the right time,\u201d says Chickite, whose community We Wai Kai First Nation is one of the four nation members of La-kwa sa muqw Forestry Limited Partnership and owns other forestry companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AWith the forestry industry in \u201cfire sales all over the place,\u201d according to Garry Merkel, a forester and member of the Tahltan Nation, some nations are now in a difficult place and bound to forest tenures that are not economically productive. Photo: Taylor Roades \/ The Narwhal<\/p>\n

\u00a0But dividing the shrinking pie may become more difficult.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The La-kwa sa muqw partnership, for example, faces ongoing job action from United Steelworkers, which disputes the company\u2019s intent to hire a segment of non-union workers. And it surfaces another tension: the Ma\u2019a\u0331mtagila Hereditary Chiefs claim rights to territory where the partnership is licensed to log, and have called for a halt to the company\u2019s operations, which includes logging in big-treed, old-growth forests. Canada and B.C. currently do not recognize the Ma\u2019a\u0331mtagila nation after its amalgamation with the Tlowitsis, one of the La-kwa sa mukw partnership-owning First Nations. \u201cThe Ma\u2019a\u0331mtagila never gave their land away,\u201d said Chief Nelson Bruce of the Hayalikawayi namima clan, in a press release.<\/p>\n

In recent estimates notes, the B.C. Ministry of Forests acknowledged that tenure sales can trigger unique conflicts when First Nations tenures extend across other nations\u2019 territories. Elsewhere, other configurations of these tensions have erupted: a co-owned tenure between Western Forest Products and Huu-ay-aht First Nation faces a blockade protesting the company\u2019s logging led by Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones \u2014 who opposes his own nation\u2019s decision to consent to old-growth logging in its territory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is very little left,\u201d Jones said in an August press release<\/a>. \u201cWe must save it for our children and all the children to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It is possible\u2019: First Nations charting alternative paths in forestry<\/p>\n

Over the years, Merkel says many nation-owned tenures have been leading the charge by managing forests in a way that doesn\u2019t tax their future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing much higher standards of land care and a lot more focus on ecological health and the relationship to the land,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is possible,\u201d Naxginkw Tara Marsden, Wilp Sustainability director with the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs says. Besides adhering to the Gitanyow Lax\u2019yip Land Use Plan, which protects<\/a> 51 per cent of the territory, Marsden says the nation\u2019s own tenure exceeds the land use plan\u2019s standards, and it is researching different approaches to leaving trees standing in cutblocks.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"A
\nForest tenure sales can trigger conflicts when some First Nations\u2019 tenures extend into other nations\u2019 territories. A blockade erupted in August in the Walbran Valley, led by Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones, who opposes his own nation\u2019s decision to log old growth in its territory. Photos: Mike Graeme \/ The Narwhal<\/p>\n

By sending<\/a> their wood to a local, value-added mill which employs many of the nation\u2019s members, Marsden says Gitanyow can get more for their trees, creating more breathing room to innovate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Marsden wants to see B.C. address decades-old deregulation that let companies close their local mills in the first place, by restoring appurtenancy rules, which required logs to be milled in the regions where they were cut.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Marsden, Watts and Roberts are among those looking for change in B.C.\u2019s log pricing system, also known as stumpage fees. That could mean reducing stumpage rates for certain types of forestry, like logging in second growth or selective harvest.<\/p>\n

Currently, Watts says, it\u2019s not affordable to do that kind of logging. \u201cIf it\u2019s not affordable to go out, we can\u2019t do those really creative [cutblocks] that everybody wants us to do \u2026 The value of it all through the whole chain has got to make sense for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA tree-blessing ceremony at Kelsey Bay in Sayward, B.C. Five old-growth trees are blessed by Wei Wai Kum Chief Christopher Roberts, We Wai Kai Chief Ronnie Chickite and others. Photo: Taylor Roades \/ The Narwhal<\/p>\n

Alexandra Thomas, a member of the Tlowitsis Nation with sh\u00edsh\u00e1lh ancestry and a forest stewardship coordinator with the Nanwakolas Council, one of the La-kwa sa muqw partners, is interested in using forests to harvest other, non-tree products, like medicines and foods.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s how you get more people into the forest, into the places that they should be observing and paying attention and spending time,\u201d she says. Deepening communities\u2019 relationships to forests, Thomas says, is critical to shift away from B.C. forestry\u2019s long-held tunnel vision that prioritizes economic values over ecological and cultural ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have paths before us, and we get to choose the path,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Changing the system<\/p>\n

The late afternoon\u2019s sun beats down as Chief Roberts finds a place to sit by the sidelines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He gestures to the nearby Salmon River, which, true to its namesake, once housed an abundance of the fish, and which has almost disappeared, in part, he says, due to the impacts of widespread logging across the watershed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back when the fish were abundant, a young, college-bound H.R. MacMillan was holed up on a boat a few miles upriver, nursing an axe wound to his left hand as his colleagues staked out timber licences throughout the watershed. He was there when the first logging equipment arrived on wide boats. That fall, the watershed\u2019s trees began to disappear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Roberts is waiting for a sign that tenure ownership will usher in the forest\u2019s new chapter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI often find myself really conflicted,\u201d Roberts says of his involvement in the industry today. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to change a system \u2026 It\u2019s just like the train is going and you can\u2019t stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Roberts remains cautiously hopeful for what\u2019s ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just finding the right balance and levers to pull,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now in B.C., it\u2019s not even close to equitable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A morning fog has cleared at the Kelsey Bay log sort near the town of Sayward, B.C., on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-215584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}