Negotiated Argreements

Land and Resource Consultation & Co-management related agreements in HTG territory.

Several formal agreements have been negotiated between the state and Hul'qumi'num people.

In the early 2000s, five communities negotiated Forest and Range Agreements (FRAs). These agreements provided area-based forestry tenures for individual First Nations. The FRA agreements were amended or replaced with FCRSAs, which continued these forestry opportunities, and included clear provisions for communication around consultation on other Crown land forestry decisions, and modest revenue sharing for Crown timber revenues from the territory. All six HTG member First Nations negotiated FCRSAs which included tenure to crown land in the form of woodlot licences.

In 2001 the parties negotiated the Hw'teshutsun interim measures act which gained protection for 1700 hectares of culturally significant land from forestry and municipal development.

In Gulf Islands National Park Reserve (GINPR), Hul'qumi'num people have negotiated a cooperative management and consultation agreement, establishing a committee for planning and management discussions between Parks Canada and the Hul’qumi’num communities. Though few sustained employment opportunities have emerged for Hul’qumi’num peoples, Hul'qumi'num people have benefited in variety of ways from the agreement including: revitalizing harvesting of shellfish in the park, an important contribution to language revitalization through the publication of a multi-lingual ecosystem guide, and an innovative policy passed directing staff to treat all archaeological sites as burial sites.

In 2007 the HTG leadership and BC Government signed the Archaeology Memorandum of Understanding, a non-binding agreement to improve heritage conservation in Hul’qumi’num territory to improve communications and information-sharing through establishing protocols for HTG to comment on site alteration permit applications and their outcomes and to mitigate destruction of unrecorded sites. However this agreement has faced a lack of resources to fully implement it.

HTG Framework Agreement refers to the treaty process between HTG and the provincial government which is still underway.