BC to appeal landmark Aboriginal title ruling over Vancouver

VANCOUVER — On Monday, members of the Cowichan Nation praised elders and those who have gone before them as they celebrated victory in a years-long legal fight to reclaim land on the Fraser River used by their ancestors as a summer home in what is now the Metro Vancouver municipality of Richmond, B.C.

The trial had lasted 513 days, resulting in a ruling last week that is almost 280,000 words long.

Justice Barbara Young ruled that the Crown’s grants of private property ownership rights over the lands “unjustifiably infringe” on Cowichan Aboriginal title, and need to be negotiated, while titles and interests in the lands held by Canada and Richmond were “defective and invalid.”

But it soon became clear the conflict is not over, when B.C.’s Attorney General Niki Sharma promised to appeal t