What would Indigenous sovereignty look like in practice?
Laura Morales Padilla (she/they) // EIC
Anya Ali Mulzet (they/them) // Crew Illustrator
In 2017, the Wild Bird Trust of BC (WBT) made history as one of the first non-profits to transfer board governance to a local First Nation: səlilwətəɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation). Irwin Oostindie—one of the proponents of this motion and current vice president of the WBT—explained how this decision came from questioning jurisdictions during a panel discussion by the Outdoor Recreation Council of B.C.
Firstly, birds move from one space to another without minding these artificial borders. Secondly, the WBT members realized that the Nation was doing more to advance the WBT’s mandate than the organization itself. After all, archaeological evidence confirms that the Nation has maintained a sustainable relationship with the Burrard Inlet, which they’ve called home since time immemorial.
“We excluded the Tsleil-Waututh for 25 years because it was our ‘jurisdiction,’” said Oostindie, referring to the 256-acre Maplewood Flats and only wildlife sanctuary in Vancouver’s harbour for the past three decades. He sees Land Back as the premise of the WBT’s redress work. “We focus on redress—we don’t focus on reconciliation,” he clarified. “Reconciliation is about dialogue; it’s about understanding the problem. But redress is actually doing something about it. It’s about repairing that relationship.”
Transferring governance was the first step, but the process to be allies and accomplices to First Nations is one of continuous learning. As explained by Land-Based Educator Heléna Mauti in the winter 2025 issue of Wingspan, WBT’s Land Back School was created to be “a place of learning, reflecting, and activating those in relationship with Maplewood Flats to be in alignment with Tsleil-Waututh sovereignty.”
Serendipitously, Teresa Aguirre—a Capilano University research assistant (RA) whose work included looking for public land-based Indigenous resources —ended up attending most of the 11 courses offered by Land Back School as part of her job. A key takeaway shared by Aguirre is that we are still living in a state of colonialism, “where we ignore Indigenous sovereignty of lands, and therefore ignore the needs of the lands itself.”
Where there’s an RA doing critical research, there’s usually an instructor integrating the outcomes to an unconventional course. Aguirre’s supervisor Dr. Fenn Stewart was not the exception. Along with Arts & Sciences faculty Brian Ganter, they facilitated a section of INTS 110—a first year Interdisciplinary Studies course called “Making Change: Regional Research and Action.” The course focused on work towards ecosystem health and climate justice initiatives that centre Indigenous sovereignty and governance.
“I think universities ought to be something akin to a public library—an accessible hub of resources, research, art, inspiration and support,” responded Dr. Stewart, when asked about the importance of community-engaged learning. Moreover, just as the university directs resources into the community, Stewart explains how the institution is “enriched by, and held accountable to, the expertise, lived experiences and priorities of communities that have traditionally been excluded from post-secondary education.”
At the beginning of the course, students were introduced to the WBT’s work by Oostindie and Mauti. They then spent a day on-site, where they were greeted by a deer eating roses in the rain, as shared by Dr. Stewart. Students learned from Karen Thomas—səlilwətəɬ archaeologist and president of the WBT— about the Nation’s ancestors, histories and futures. They also learned from ethnobotanist Senaqwila Wyss, who led them on a plant walk through the Maplewood Flats forest. Lastly, students completed some service work for the WBT’s native plant nursery, such as repotting plants and trimming dead leaves. “It was important for the students to reciprocate in this way, giving back to WBT through work and time,” shared Stewart, who also confirmed that the organization was remunerated by the university for their time, space and expertise.
At the end of the class, students completed a research project around Land Back organizing, a priority for the WBT. The outcome was a list of environmental-focused organizations across different areas of B.C., northern Canada, Alberta and the Pacific Northwest in the United States. Students also tried to assess whether these organizations were Indigenous-led, and to what extent they were committed to supporting Land Back initiatives. These evaluations were accumulated into the report shared with the WBT upon completion.
As the WBT story shows us, Land Back can be the first step towards repairing relationships and restoring natural spaces. If the 2025 B.C. Supreme Court decision that recognized Aboriginal title over privately held land in Richmond didn’t have the same reparative effect, it’s because of the fear-inducing misinformation campaign that came afterwards. In other words, the opposite of a Land Back School initiative. Conservative platforms exploited the uncertainty brought by the historical Cowichan ruling, given that 95 per cent of land in this province was never legally handed over by First Nations.
WBT made the decision to move from acknowledging First Nations to being held accountable. “We don’t believe that we have to wait for the Canadian state or overworked First Nations to do Land Back,” stated Oostindie, arguing that Land Back can be done by our own organizations. Although today’s settlers are not the ones who committed the colonial atrocities against Indigenous communities, they have continued to benefit from the systemic oppression and exclusion that followed.
Transferring power can feel like a loss to those who were used to holding it. But losing exclusivity to this power, in order to right a historical wrong, is not the same as suffering oppression, despite what the property-rights misinformation campaign would have us believe. We are “losing” something we were never entitled to in the first place. We cannot separate ourselves from the harms of the past while clinging to the privileges those harms produced for us at the expense of the land and the people who have stewarded it since time immemorial.
Transferring governance through Land Back is a departure from performative nods toward reconciliation, and the foundation for places like the Wild Bird Trust to thrive, “where the local ways of knowing are honoured and shared in culturally appropriate ways,” as the WBT states on its website.