Carrying cedar boards to repair a walkway, Joe Louie passes the welcome sign to the Tla-o-qui-aht’s Meares Island tribal park, near Vancouver Island in British Columbia in February 2022. The island has been effectively controlled by the nation since the 1980s, when it stopped loggers from working there during a renowned series of battles over sovereignty known as the War in the Woods. Today Tla-o-qui-aht parks guardians, including Louie, maintain and protect the land.
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Guardians of Life: Vancouver Island Rebuilding Indigenous Sovereignty

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After logging threatened their land, the Tla-o-qui-aht of Vancouver Island protected their forests—and themselves—by creating one of the world’s first indigenous-run parks.

MEARES ISLAND, IN THE SOUTHWESTERN CORNER OF BRITISH COLUMBIA’S VANCOUVER ISLAND, IS AN IMAGE OF THE FUTURE.

So are the many islands, lakes, and peninsulas in Clayoquot Sound around Meares Island. The region’s original inhabitants, the Tla-o-qui-aht nation, have declared the entire 400-square-mile (1,000 sq km) area to be a ‘tribal park.’ Canadian maps may show it as a mix of national park, provincial timber zones, and private land with a few tiny First Nations reserves, but to the Tla-o-qui-aht it is all their territory, and always has been.

Aerial view of Radar Beach, a portion of the coastline in the traditional lands of the Tla-o-qui-aht first nation, in February twilight. Tla-o-qui-aht believe in sharing lands with the wider public, but assert their sovereignty over lands within their traditional territory as a means to keep it within their control, and thus maintain stewardship over this area, honored in travel magazines as one of the most beautiful tourist destinations on earth.

In the twentieth century, much of the Tla-o-qui-aht homeland was logged—badly, by firms that stripped the country of its valuable ancient cedar and created erosion and ruin. ‘They came and left,’ says Saya Masso, head of the Tla-o-qui-aht natural resource department in Tofino, the biggest town in the area. ‘That was fifty years ago. And they didn’t restore the land, and neither did British Columbia or Canada. So we’re doing it.’

The Tla-o-qui-aht are rechanneling streams, re-creating the prelogging ecosystem, protecting the herring spawning areas, and blockading logging roads in delicate areas where visitors shouldn’t go. On top of the conservation work, they are beginning the tedious but vital business of nation-building: starting their own education programs, hiring their own police (‘park guardians’), issuing their own parking permits in towns like Tofino, and, possibly most important, persuading businesses to fund these services with something akin to a tax—a 1 percent surcharge for the Tla-o-qui-aht nation’s endeavors.

When Tla-o-qui-aht like Masso talk about this work, they often use the word sovereignty. Typically, sovereignty means ‘self-rule.’ But to Masso the term means more than that. It stands for a vision of Native societies as autonomous cultures, part of the modern world but rooted in their own long-standing values, working as equal partners with nontribal governments at every level…” —

“Sovereignty is something you inherit, like citizenship. This is an unceded nation, meaning we never signed a treaty here. And so that enables us to decide our own future.” — Riley Caputo, Tribal Parks Guardian

top photo: Carrying cedar boards to repair a walkway, Joe Louie passes the welcome sign to the Tla-o-qui-aht’s Meares Island tribal park, near Vancouver Island in British Columbia in February 2022. The island has been effectively controlled by the nation since the 1980s, when it stopped loggers from working there during a renowned series of battles over sovereignty known as the War in the Woods. Today Tla-o-qui-aht parks guardians, including Louie, maintain and protect the land.

Excerpt from Guardians of Life: Indigenous Knowledge, Indigenous Science, and Restoring the Planet – “Vancouver Island Rebuilding Indigenous Sovereignty,” written by Charles Mann. Published by The Mountaineers 

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