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Perspective of Cowichan Tribes should be given more emphasis in rezoning

The community conversation about the rezoning is how it has devolved into a process of enemy-making
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Perspective of Cowichan Tribes should be given more emphasis in rezoning

I have lived in Cowichan Bay, overlooking the Cowichan Estuary, for many years. It is a place I love. I’ve been part of eelgrass restoration projects on the estuary and volunteered with a number of environmental non-profits that help to care for the Cowichan and Koksilah watersheds and the estuarine ecosystem where they meet. And I write here as an individual, not as a representative of any organization.

I’ve read the many letters to the Citizen about the proposed rezoning of the industrial area in the estuary since the spring of 2017, when this rezoning proposal was first put forward. The Cowichan Estuary is part of a complex ecosystem, along with the two watersheds that flow into it. After thousands of years of stewardship by the Quw’utsun people, settlers, mostly unknowingly, subjected these watersheds to many adverse impacts from the time they first arrived in the Valley in the late 1800s. They’ve been diked, dredged, and their water courses dramatically altered, destabilizing banks and damaging habitat from their source to their outlet. The specific area up for rezoning has been in industrial use since the 1870s. In the 1920s a rail line was built to connect inland logging to a newly built seaport in Cowichan Bay. Forestry and agricultural practices and sewage discharge from urban development led to a ban on harvesting shellfish in the 1970s that is still in place. Yet, beginning in the 1980s, and even more so over the past 25 years, efforts to restore the health of estuary increased and continue to this day, even in the face of accelerating climate impacts. Some of these efforts have been contentious, and most have been collaborative, involving conservation groups, local governments, First Nations and industry, with positive changes brought about through dialogue and relationship-building. And yes, we still have a ways to go.

One of the things that concerns me about the community conversation about the rezoning is how it has devolved, almost from the very beginning, into a process of enemy-making, with a vocal and confrontational style of environmentalism on the part of some, that has distorted information, drowned out real dialogue and often lost sight of both the relationships at stake and sometimes the rezoning question itself, which is not about turning the area into a nature reserve or park, but about which specific industries can do what work there. My understanding is that Western Stevedoring will likely remain the long term lease holder in either zoning scenario. Other processes than this one are need to engage in a broad dialogue about our watersheds and their future.

One of [the recent] letters to the editor asks the CVRD to defeat the rezoning for the sake of the “Cowichan people”, assuming that that is what Quw’utsun Tribes actually wants. The estuary is important to the Quw’utsun, who have been stewards of the river for thousands of years. It is also important to the life cycle of three species of Pacific salmon, including the threatened Chinook, and two species of sea-run trout, as well as more than 200 species of birds.

Quw’utsun Tribes has written a letter supporting the rezoning application. I rarely hear this mentioned. The land and waters of the estuary are a part of their unceded territory and land claim — a critical part, given that much of their traditional territory was stolen and given away as part of the E&N Land Grant and is now considered the private property of forest companies. Shortly after the Cowichan Estuary Environmental Management Plan and Committee came into effect around 1987, the Canadian National Railway turned over the significant lands it owned in the estuary and their related leases to the Government of B.C. These now so-called public or Crown lands are most often where land claim negotiations begin, at least within settler concepts of private and public property.

This question has niggled away at me through this whole controversy. Shouldn’t the perspectives of Quw’utsun Tribes be given more attention, respect and weight in this rezoning conversation? I don’t know their specific reasons for supporting the rezoning. I also don’t see any reason, in terms of their long-view of moving their land claim forward, that they should necessarily tell us. Land claim issues also aren’t being mentioned in the talk I’ve heard about getting rid of all industry, creating a park, and bringing tourists and more people overall to the estuary, yet I’ve heard very little in the public discourse about whose land this actually is. Does this tourism scenario fit with Quw’utsun Tribes view of what they want for the estuary, or how this would affect the salmon, birds and other wildlife in the watershed?

In recent years I’ve also watched Quw’utsun Tribes working collaboratively with Western Stevedoring and Pacific Industrial Marine on a range of projects, from co-caring for Tribes’ hatchery salmon in their transition to the ocean, lifting a humpback whale out of the water for dissection to find out why it died in the Bay, to working on two breaches of the causeway, including one just recently, to allow the salmon coming down the north arm of the Quw’utsun River to more easily make their way to the protection and nourishment of the eelgrass meadows on the south side of the estuary. PIM has also been involved in protecting those eelgrass meadows by containing or removing boats that are either adrift or abandoned in the estuary.

My hope is that our local government can also hold the complexity and the importance of these relationships in their decision-making. Beyond this zoning question, we need to get back to a more open and inclusive dialogue, one that includes First Nations in all its aspects, in order to find the complex solutions that fit this complex ecosystem. Ultimately my hope is that this land and its surrounding waters is returned to the Quw’utsun people, its original stewards, sooner rather than later.

Jane Kilthei

Cowichan Bay