Lawyer asks court to maintain 120-year-old ruling giving away native land

VANCOUVER – A federal government lawyer told a Vancouver court that a 120-year-old decision to give away First Nations land to settlers was based on ignorance, but itshouldn’t be overturned.

The government is in a Federal Court appealing a special tribunal’s ruling that determined a large part of present-day Williams Lake, B.C., was wrongly taken from the local First Nation and handed to settlers.

The independent tribunal ruled in early March that the colony of B.C. failed to protect the Kitselas (kit-sell-us) First Nation’s claim and that it should be compensated.

Government lawyer Chris Elsner argued that the reserve commissioner simply didn’t know the land had cultural significance to the band when he made the decision in 1891.

The Kitselas told the independent tribunal that the four hectares given away was part of a former village site on the Skeena River and should not have been excluded from their reserve.

Chiefs of both the Kitselas and Williams Lake Indian bands, members of council and elders have packed the federal courtroom for the two-day hearing.