The following forms part of a Galiano resident’s letter to Islands Trust trustees and staff and sent to the Driftwood for publication.
By AKASHA FOREST
On the subject of “unique amenities,” I suggest the Trust has wrongly included development in its working definition of unique amenities.
Please list my opposition to the 2023 working definition: will “include, but not be limited to, housing livelihoods, infrastructure, and tourism.” I base my opposition on an excellent Trust discussion paper, cited below, that includes the history of First Nations’ curating of the Trust’s unique amenities.
Simply put, development activities are not unique amenities. Every community across the country has economic, development, tourism and housing infrastructure amenities and/or needs for them. Each Trust island has land use bylaws that provide opportunities for meeting islanders’ needs for housing and economic activity, which can be updated without the need to erase the meaning of unique amenities.
The Islands Trust Discussion Paper – The Islands Trust Object, Past, Present and Future – from March 2021 clearly delineates the unique amenities of the Trust Area. The last sentence: “Residential, commercial or tourism development appropriate to the services and lifestyle of the islands can, in this way, be steered to the most suitable areas” in fact advises ‘steering’ development to areas that will not damage the unique amenities.
The unique amenities of the Trust Area are its natural environment, curated since time immemorial by First Nations.
The 2021 discussion paper further illustrates how far afield the Trust has deviated from its primary task.
“At the time of the formation of the Islands Trust in 1974, the government of the day recognized the importance of the unique ‘amenities’ of the lands and waters. There was understanding that the environment of the area was fragile and could be greatly impacted by development and resource extraction or overuse. However, it was not acknowledged or understood that this unique environment was the result of thousands of years of active cultivation and stewardship by Indigenous peoples.”
Throughout its 47 years of preserving and protecting the Trust Area, the Islands Trust has consistently failed to recognize or acknowledge resource gathering areas, spiritual places, medicinal plant areas and culturally significant species. The Islands Trust has managed the Islands Trust Area with a disconnected, single-species view of the ecological landscape versus a relational, interconnected acknowledgement of what truly makes the Islands Trust Area unique. Indigenous ways of knowing are not only important to reconciliation efforts but also to the effective stewardship of these lands and waters.
In 1992, the Islands Trust encapsulated the views of the public in a summary report on the Islands Trust public forums called These Islands of Ours . . . Framing Our Common Future. At the public forums, people listed “history and archaeological heritage” and “archaeological record” as key attributes they valued about the Trust Area.
At a time of rapid climate change, in a time of recognition that reconciliation requires stewardship and restitution of First Nations’ largely unceded lands, and in a time of development pressures that have existed in the Trust Area since before the formation of the Islands Trust in 1974, the Trust must find leadership to enact its mandate of “preserve and protect.”