[After acquiring some of the biggest and most coveted parcels of
land in Vancouver, the city’s three First Nations are becoming
players in the biggest game in town — real estate.]
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IN VANCOUVER, INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES GET PRIME LAND, AND POWER  
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Norimitsu Onishi
August 23, 2022
New York Times
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_ After acquiring some of the biggest and most coveted parcels of
land in Vancouver, the city’s three First Nations are becoming
players in the biggest game in town — real estate. _

Lelem, a development led by the Musqueam Nation, in
Vancouver.Credit..., Alana Paterson for The New York Times

 

VANCOUVER — The newest players in Vancouver’s never-ending real
estate drama don’t come from across the Pacific or from south of the
border. They are the area’s oldest inhabitants, ensconced in this
corner of Canada since long before what they call “contact” with
European colonizers — and they had long been bystanders as a
hyperactive market created fortunes and turned the city into the
country’s priciest.

Vancouver’s three local Indigenous communities, called First Nations
in Canada, now find themselves in an unusual position. As owners of
vast tracts of prime land in a major metropolis, they are courted by
developers and poised to continue shaping a city that has been
transformed in recent decades by money from Hong Kong and mainland
China.

“In the past, we were looking in windows just to be a part of things
— we’re now at the table,’’ said Wilson Williams, a councilor
and spokesman for the Squamish Nation [[link removed]],
which broke ground this month on an 11-tower, 6,000-unit residential
project called Senakw [[link removed]] on 11 acres across
English Bay from downtown Vancouver.

How the Squamish, as well as the Musqueam
[[link removed]] and Tsleil-Waututh
[[link removed]] nations, got to the table is the result of
decades-long legal battles and a tentative union among the three
communities over competing land claims. It is also part of the ongoing
process of national reckoning and reconciliation over the brutal
treatment of Canada’s Indigenous population, which was highlighted
again last month by Pope Francis’s apology
[[link removed]] for
his church’s role in that history.

Wilson Williams, a spokesman for the Squamish Nation, at Senakw, a
development site near downtown Vancouver. Credit... Alana Paterson for
The New York Times

Like their counterparts in the rest of North America, the city’s
three Indigenous communities, who altogether number about 7,500
people, were dispossessed of their ancestral lands. But there was a
key difference: the authorities in British Columbia never bothered to
sign treaties in exchange for most of the Indigenous-held
territories.“The British governor came here and just started taking
land away and giving it to his friends without any kind of agreement
with local nations,’’ Kennedy Stewart, the mayor of Vancouver,
said in an interview. “If you’re applying English common law, you
can’t just take people’s land without authority, and so that
really set the groundwork for everything.”

“The British governor came here and just started taking land away
and giving it to his friends without any kind of agreement with local
nations,’’ Kennedy Stewart, the mayor of Vancouver, said in an
interview. “If you’re applying English common law, you can’t
just take people’s land without authority, and so that really set
the groundwork for everything.”

British settlers starting taking land from Indigenous communities in
Vancouver, beginning in the 1880s and through the 1920s. Now,
following decades of court battles, governments have returned or sold
back land to the three communities — who have now become, according
to the mayor, the “largest developable landowner in this city and
probably in the metro area.”

The First Nations have also been given preference as the federal or
provincial governments have sold off land they no longer use,
including a former military site and the headquarters of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, where the First Nations are building two new
developments.

The First Nations have financed land purchases through loans from the
federal government or from banks, sometimes in partnership with
private developers eager to build on some of the last swaths of prime
land in Vancouver.

Squamish Nation members gathering for a ground blessing ceremony at
the Senakw development site near downtown Vancouver. Credit...Alana
Paterson for The New York Times

Ian Gillespie, the founder and chief executive of Westbank
[[link removed]], a major developer involved in Senakw and
other Indigenous projects, said that the developments were much more
than a real estate story, but one about achieving true reconciliation
through the three nations’ acquisition of power.

“Reconciliation isn’t about recognizing what happened and saying,
‘That’s terrible, I’m sorry, let’s move on,’’ Mr.
Gillespie said, adding that things will change only when Indigenous
communities get power. “Power can come in different forms, but
economic power is probably top of the list.’’

“When it comes to real estate in Greater Vancouver, it’s our
Microsoft, our Tesla,’’ added Mr. Gillespie, who is not
Indigenous. “And so if you can put the First Nations at the center
of that, then they are in a position of power.’’

Besides the Squamish-led project called Senakw, the Musqueam Nation
has already built about 40 percent of a 1,250-unit development on 21
acres near the University of British Columbia. Called Lelem
[[link removed]], its public spaces feature Musqueam art and
designs.

The Lelem development features Musqueam art and designs.
Credit...Alana Paterson for The New York Times

But the two projects will be dwarfed by one to develop 90 acres of one
of Canada’s most valuable oceanview pieces of property, known
as Jericho Lands
[[link removed]] in West Point
Grey, a wealthy neighborhood with beaches and mountain views. The
three Indigenous communities are developing Jericho, a former military
enclave, together after buying back federal and provincial land under
a jointly-owned company formed in 2014, MST Development
[[link removed]].

In all, the three communities separately or together have acquired
about 175 acres in metro Vancouver in the past eight years, said David
Negrin, the chief executive of MST. They are currently negotiating to
acquire about a further 100 acres of land on 14 sites from the
provincial government and two from the federal government in metro
Vancouver, Mr. Negrin added.

“If you look at the land they’ve got back, it’s nothing compared
to the land they had,’’ said Mr. Negrin, a high-profile developer
hired by the three communities to run MST.

While the communities must now mostly purchase back land they once
owned, paying market rates, leaders are pressing for a simple return
as another step toward true reconciliation.

“The nations are moving in that direction now, that they’d like to
get more of their land back and not pay for it,’’ Mr. Negrin said.

Jericho Lands, a 90-acre site in West Point Gray, a wealthy
neighborhood, will be developed jointly by the Musqueam, Squamish and
Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Credit...Alana Paterson for The New York Times

Only in Vancouver have Indigenous communities had so much success.

Across Canada, Indigenous communities have land claims in many other
major cities, said Ginger Gosnell-Myers, a former urban and Indigenous
planning expert with the Vancouver city government and now a fellow at
Simon Fraser University.

 

“Cities everywhere in this country had First Nation villages that
settlers came and stole,’’ said Ms. Gosnell-Myers, a member of the
Nisga’a and Kwakwaka’wakw nations. “We don’t have cities
across this country by divine intervention. They are there because
they were the easiest places to occupy.’’

Outside Vancouver, few Indigenous communities have succeeded in
reclaiming a major piece of city land — in great part because of
competing claims by different communities over the same territory, Ms.
Gosnell-Myers said.

“Other First Nations with overlapping land claims are not working
together, but Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh are, and this is
making them unstoppable,’’ she said.

Unity among the three nations took decades to achieve, and they still
don’t take it for granted. In fact, claims by the Musqueam and
Tsleil-Waututh over the 11 acres now being developed by the Squamish
contributed to the delay of a final court ruling.

According to First Nation leaders, unity emerged in the past decade
following a series of unexpected events.

The three communities, along with the Lil’Wat in Whistler, realized
the value of working together in helping host the 2010 Winter Olympics
in Vancouver.

“That’s when the conversations started,’’ said Mr. Williams,
the Squamish councilor whose ancestral name is Sxwíxwtn. “Why the
four nations? Because the Olympics are on our land, and we were able
to put politics aside to be able to work with everyone.’’

Chief Wayne Sparrow of the Musqueam Nation at Lelem, a Musqueam-led
development near The University of British Columbia. Credit...Alana
Paterson for The New York Times

Around the same time, members of the three Vancouver communities came
together at an emotional funeral for a baby with family ties to all
three nations, said Wayne Sparrow, the chief of the Musqueam Nation.

In a series of meetings at the Musqueam longhouse, leaders from the
three communities worked through key differences over land.
Traditionally, besides family ties, the three communities engaged in
cultural and sports activities, and came together at weddings or
funerals.

“But when it came to the land, there were always disputes,’’
said Matthew Thomas, economic development officer of the
Tsleil-Waututh Nation.

After some “arm-twisting,’’ the three communities agreed to work
together on some parcels of land, including the 90-acre Jericho, Mr.
Thomas said.

They left unsettled the ownership of other pieces of land.

Matthew Thomas, the economic development officer of the Tsleil-Waututh
Nation, standing in Seymour Village, the community’s residential
development in North Vancouver. Credit...Alana Paterson for The New
York Times

“So there’s still a lot of work that needs to get done,’’
Chief Sparrow said. “It’s not as rosy as everybody thinks it
is.’’

Still, the tentative union allowed the creation in 2014 of MST
Development and the purchase of 52 acres of the Jericho Lands, in
co-ownership with Canada Lands, the federal government’s real estate
arm. MST then purchased 38 acres from the province on its own. It also
signaled that the three communities were now a force to reckon with in
real estate.

“I got a lot of knocks on the door in the last four years,
especially with the profile of MST taking shape,’’ said Stephen
Lee, the chief executive officer of Musqueam Capital Corporation
[[link removed]], the First Nation’s business arm.

For Indigenous leaders, used to being “out of sight, out of
mind’’ in Vancouver, the developments gave them “a sense of
being at the table in the past couple of years,” Mr. Williams said.

Vancouver Magazine placed the three communities at the very top of its
list of 50 top 
[[link removed]]power brokers early
this year, pointing out that the City Council agreed to rename a
street — named after the province’s first lieutenant governor
whose racist policies harmed the city’s original inhabitants —
following a request by the Musqueam.

Some Indigenous leaders said that this newly acquired power was
difficult to grasp because their communities had yet to reap the
benefits. Chief Sparrow said that perceptions of the communities had
begun to change, in part thanks to the magazine ranking.

“It’s very helpful, being recognized to have that amount of power,
especially with business,’’ Chief Sparrow said. “Big business
people in Vancouver kind of looked and didn’t really acknowledge
First Nations. Now, while the government has the legal obligation to
consult and accommodate First Nations, I think the business world is
getting to that stage.’’

_NORIMITSU ONISHI is a foreign correspondent on the International
Desk, covering France out of the Paris bureau. He previously served as
bureau chief for The Times in Johannesburg, Jakarta, Tokyo and
Abidjan, Ivory Coast. _

_A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 24, 2022,
Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition of the NEW YORK TIMES
with the headline: Indigenous Communities Acquire Prime Land, and
Power. Order Reprints
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* Canada
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* Indigenous peoples
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* private property
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* political power
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* Housing
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* Vancouver
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