May 7, 2019

Squamish First Nation plan for Vancouver housing development on Indigenous land

As reported in the Huffington Post, walking along the base of the Burrard Street Bridge that crosses Vancouver’s False Creek toward the downtown core, Khelsilem gestures across a gravel lot poised to become one of the largest Indigenous urban developments in Canada.

The Squamish Nation councillor, who also goes by the name Dustin Rivers, is standing on a pinched triangle of reserve land near the city’s centre that the First Nation won back in 2002 after decades of legal battles.

The project is in its very early stages but if all goes as planned, the Squamish Nation will build about 3,000 housing units in a project that promises to answer some of the region’s urgent housing needs at the same time that it presents a test of reconciliation.

“For a lot of other First Nations across the country, natural resources is the one option they have for growing their economies. Whereas for us, the land has been completely impacted (by the city’s growth) and so real estate is really the one thing we can get involved in that will make sense to generate revenue,” he said.

The same site was home to members of the Squamish Nation for thousands of years before villagers were illegally forced to accept a settlement and shipped on barges to less desirable land along Howe Sound in 1913. It had been declared a reserve in the late-1800s but was gradually fragmented by leases and dissected by railway lines. By 1965, the entire 32-odd hectares of reserve had been sold off.

But in 2002, the Squamish regained a small section of the earlier reserve: today’s Kitsilano Indian Reserve No. 6.

The idea to build two towers on the site gained some steam in 2009 and 2010 but was abandoned in the economic downturn.

Keep reading in the Huffington Post

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