UNDRIP

When Captain James Cook encountered the ancestors of the Nuchatlaht people in 1778, the British explorer wrote in his journal that he had "no where met with Indians who had such high notions of every thing the Country produced being their exclusive property." Those words may come back to haunt the Crown in the coming weeks as the Nuchatlaht embark on an uncharted journey of their own: a legal quest to obtain Aboriginal title over 200 square kilometers of land off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Members of the First Nation will be in B.C. Supreme Court on Monday for the beginning of what some observers expect to be a groundbreaking trial as they attempt to prove their right to Crown land mostly comprised of Nootka Island.