How First Nations Are Asserting Sovereignty Over Their Lands and Waters – the Tyee

Bighouse and Ceremonial Canoe, Klemtu, BC (by Alan CC BY 2.0 via Flickr).

Indigenous Marine Protected and Conserved Areas hold a key to food security and balancing ecological and economic priorities. Part one of two.
Kitasu Bay sits within the traditional territory of the Kitasoo Xai’xais First Nation and is located on the Central Coast of British Columbia. Last summer the nation declared it a protected area under their own laws, closing it to commercial harvest by non-Indigenous fishers. Their declaration invited the provincial and federal governments to work with them to develop a co-governance model, but added, “we seek no permission…”