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Selective Reconciliation

I've been noticing something lately that I can't stop thinking about. I want to try to wander through it today, carefully, because I think it lives in more of us than we'd like to admit.


Over the past few months, I’ve had the privilege of visiting Pipi7íyekw, Joffre Lakes, twice: once in December and again in April. It is truly magical, and at these times of year, a winter wonderland. It sits on the unceded territory of the Lil'wat Nation and N'Quatqua, land that has been in relationship with those peoples since time immemorial.


If you have been in the summer, you know what I mean when I say it is a Grouse Grind level of busy. Lineups in the early morning dark, hoping you get lucky with a day pass. Trails compacted into worn paths, roots burnished smooth by the sheer volume of feet moving over them. It is a place so loved it is quietly being loved to death. And that is before you even begin to think about what the land itself might need.


Since 2023, the park has had multiple closures throughout the year, three in 2025 alone, so that members of the Lil'wat Nation and N'Quatqua can reconnect with the land, conduct ceremonies, harvest food and medicines, and allow the land to breathe and rest. The public response to these closures has often been loud, and ugly. Before I sat down to write this I went looking for the full picture, because I'd heard the pushback and I wanted to understand what was actually happening.


Here is what stopped me. The closures people are so angry about are already a compromise the Nations weren't satisfied with. The Lil'wat Nation and N'Quatqua had asked for more time than the province was willing to give. Political Chief Dean Nelson called it "disappointing and disheartening," and said: "This is not reconciliation. This is a continuation of colonial decision-making, disregarding our needs and values on the land." The anger filling those comment sections is directed at something the Nations themselves found insufficient. As they have said: "The land was never meant to endure this degree of exploitation. It requires periods of rest and regeneration."


I sat with that for a long time.


While I was enjoying my weekend at Pipi7íyekw, a friend from my childhood, Mike, sent me a link to a Facebook conversation happening around Clear Lake in Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. Clear Lake. I spent every summer of my childhood there. I can close my eyes and see that water. So when I say it felt familiar, I mean that in more ways than one. A boat closure. Indigenous rights. A non-Indigenous community in conflict with First Nations people. The chief of Keeseekoowenin Ojibway First Nation had asserted his Nation's Section 35 constitutional rights to protect the waters and the fishery his ancestors have relied on for generations. And rather than engaging with that, the conversation filled with misinformation about conquered lands, about First Nations having too much power in the discussion, and with racist and harmful narratives intended to discredit and disempower. The kind of narratives that have always been used to avoid the harder conversation about rights and responsibility.


That boat ban was recently lifted. Parks Canada reversed course in April. The Nation's response was clear: "Engagement without consent is not partnership, it is process without authority. We will not allow our rights to be interpreted as agreement where none has been given." It is not over.


Two bodies of water. Two Nations. The same wall of resistance from people who feel that their access, their recreation, their convenience, is the thing being threatened.


And then this spring, First Nations leaders in Alberta stood up against the separatist movement, and many of those same people celebrated. They shared the news. They said look at this, Indigenous leaders are protecting Canada. And I celebrated too, because it is true and it matters. Treaties 6, 7, and 8 were signed before Alberta even existed. They are nation-to-nation agreements that don't dissolve because a collective of Albertans vote on something. Chiefs gathered and said clearly: "Our Treaties are not relics. They are not documents to be shelved and forgotten." That is powerful.


But I kept sitting with something I couldn't quite shake. The assertion of Indigenous rights was welcomed, loudly and warmly, when it aligned with what people already wanted. When it protected something that felt threatening to them. I don't know that it was the same voices. But I wonder. Because the pattern is hard to ignore: Indigenous rights celebrated when they are convenient, resisted when they ask something of us. And somewhere in those comment sections at Joffre Lakes and Clear Lake, I have to believe there are people who also shared those Alberta stories with pride.


That is not reconciliation. That is reconciliation when it is convenient.


The Quw'utsun Nation brings this into sharpest focus for me. Earlier this year, a landmark court ruling recognized Aboriginal title over lands in the Richmond area of BC. The history behind the case is staggering. The very Crown official responsible for setting aside Quw'utsun settlement lands as reserves covertly sold some of those lands to himself as a land speculator. This is the origin story of how those lands came to be distributed the way they are today. The court's ruling did not erase private property. It required the Crown to sit down and negotiate in good faith. The Quw'utsun Nation was generous and clear: "We intentionally did not bring this case against any individual private landowners, and we did not seek to invalidate any of their land titles. The decision makes it clear that it is B.C.'s obligation to advance reconciliation in these circumstances."


And still, politicians lined up to fearmonger. Pierre Poilievre stood in Richmond calling on the federal government to argue that private property rights should supersede all other title, even after the court had confirmed that private landowners' titles were not at risk. The Quw'utsun Nation called those statements "at best, misleading, and at worst, deliberately inflammatory." And then they said this: "We do not wish to deepen division. We are here to build a just future based on truth and reconciliation."


That is not the language of people trying to take something. That is the language of people who have been met with bad faith at every turn, and are still extending a hand.



Here is what I keep coming back to. The people who push back hardest against Indigenous land stewardship are often the very people who love those lands most visibly. The hikers. The boaters. The families returning to the same lake every summer. And I understand that love. I feel it myself standing at the edge of Joffre Lakes.


But that land, that water, its health and its beauty and its capacity to hold us, has been protected by Indigenous stewardship since long before any of us arrived. When we resist the rights of Nations to rest the land, to govern the waters, to assert their title, we are not protecting something. We are undermining the very relationship that has kept these places extraordinary. Reconciliation is not only good for Indigenous peoples. It is good for the land. And the land is good for all of us.


Friends, I've been in this work long enough to know I'm not immune to what I'm describing. Reconciliation is easy to support in the abstract. It gets harder when it lands close to home, a park I love, a lake my family goes to, a neighbourhood I live in. That is when the real work begins. That is when the values we say we hold have to meet the moment we are actually in.


And here is a moment, right now, to practice. Pipi7íyekw closes again on June 20th for one week, to honour National Indigenous Peoples Day and the summer solstice. The Lil'wat Nation and N'Quatqua will have that time on their land, to celebrate and reconnect, without the steady stream of day packs and trail passes moving through their territory. If you were planning to go that week, I want to gently invite you to sit with what that small shift asks of you. Plan your visit for another week. Let the land rest. Let the people be on it.


And if you see the pushback starting in the comment sections again, as it will, I hope something in this piece gives you language to bring to that conversation.


The Lil'wat and N'Quatqua Nations have said it plainly: "Our Nations continue to face ongoing pressure to shorten our time and access to our own territories, while the province prioritizes recreational use by visitors. This is not an equal relationship."


An equal relationship. That is the invitation. Not equal only when it is easy, or when it serves us, or when it stops something we are afraid of. Consistently. Relationally. Even when it costs something.


So this week I am asking myself: where am I applying reconciliation selectively? Where are the places I cheer from the sidelines, but quietly step back when the cost becomes real?


I don't have a clean answer. But sitting honestly with that question is where the work begins.


Thank you, as always, for being in these conversations with me. They are where the real learning lives.


🧡 Kim


Clear Lake North Shore 1983

 

Joffre Lakes / Pipi7íyekw

Clear Lake / Riding Mountain National Park

Alberta Separatism and Treaty Rights

Quw'utsun Nation / Cowichan Aboriginal Title Case

The Globe and Mail — Poilievre urges Carney to address private property rights amid concerns over Cowichan decision (April 10, 2026) https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-poilievre-pressures-carney-over-private-property-rights-amid-concerns/

 
 
 

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