Catapulted into the spotlight amid B.C.’s new war in the woods, Pacheedaht First Nation is asserting its right to decide how resources on its territory, including old-growth forests, are managed. About 120 Pacheedaht members live on the Nation’s scenic, ocean-side reserve near Port Renfrew.

On a foggy June morning in 2021, Jeff Jones loads four workers wearing hip waders into his boat at a landing in the Pacheedaht First Nation community. Jones, the Elected Pacheedaht Chief, is as comfortable on the water as he is on land; growing up he fished with his father for halibut, rockfish, ling cod, salmon, “whatever bites.” The Pacheedaht, whose name means “people of the sea foam” in their Nitinaht language, will always be a nation moored to the sea.

Pacheedaht worker Tynan Jones transplants Lyngbye’s sedge one clump at a time.

The boggy shore of Brown’s slough an artificial island where Pacheedaht members in hip waders are planting sedges and grasses to repair damage to fish habitat caused by decades of industrial logging — logging in which the nation played no part and from which it received no benefit.

The Pacheedaht Nation funded Fisheries and Oceans Canada graded the inlet, dug a new culvert that had been blocked and planted sedges in the channel to relink the Gordon River estuary to an historic salt marsh, restoring connections to salmon rearing habitat.

Under the tutelage of restoration ecologist Tanis Gower, Pacheedaht members remove sedges and grasses from one area and wheelbarrow them to a muddy, gravelly depression in the middle of the island.

Transplanted sedges.

High tide brings the sea and, with it, juvenile salmon who feed on insects trapped on the grasses.

The project is already reaping natural dividends. In a murky channel, dozens of salmon fry, six centimetres long, dart back and forth, moving faster than the eye can follow. “The fish have moved in already,” the Chief says. “Mainly small, juvenile coho. It’s fantastic.” He says the nation is looking forward, not backwards, focusing not on the damage caused by historic logging but on the successful repair work underway.

Industrial logging took place in Pacheedaht territory for many decades before the Nation accrued any benefits, Chief Jones points out. “You just take a look around us and you see nothing but forestry resources,” he says. “That tells me something. Why are the logging trucks going by our community and not stopping? Why aren’t we benefitting from the resources that go out of our territory? For the last decade or so we’ve been slowly turning it around.”

The Fairy Creek watershed which straddles Pacheedaht and Ditidaht territory has become the epicentre of a flourishing movement to save the last of BC’s unprotected old-growth forests. As salmon stocks slowly rebound, the Pacheedaht First Nation continues to assert the right to determine what happens on its territory.

Thirteen years ago, the forested area on the nation’s territory — about 163,000 hectares — was allocated to third parties through licence areas and forest tenures. The Pacheedaht didn’t hold any of the logging rights. Today, the nation manages or co-manages about 140,000 cubic metres of annual cut on its territory — enough trees to fill 3,500 standard-sized logging trucks.

The nation co-owns and operates a small dry land sorting facility, and owns this small sawmill. Together the log sort and the sawmill, which mainly processes cedar, provide about 20 jobs for band members and local residents.

First Nations across B.C. are involved in the forestry industry, which provides revenue and jobs. Yet Pacheedaht First Nation has been catapulted into the national spotlight, caught in the crossfire of B.C.’s new “war in the woods,” waged by environmental groups.

Led by the Rainforest Flying Squad, a volunteer-driven, grassroots organization whose Fairy Creek blockade Instagram account has a following of more than 61,000 have set up tents, teepees and open-air communal kitchens with tin roofs. Their goal is to stop all Old Growth logging in the watershed.

The RCMP are on the scene because forestry company Teal-Jones was granted a court injunction in mid-April to remove protesters blocking access to the company’s approved logging cut block in Fairy Creek, the last unprotected, relatively intact watershed on southwest Vancouver Island.

More than 300 people have since been arrested, making Fairy Creek one of the largest civil disobedience actions in recent Canadian history.

Weekend rallies have drawn hundreds of people. Parents pull their preschoolers along logging roads in wagons. Hikers pack in tents and food. It’s only a two-hour drive from the province’s capital city of Victoria; you can throw together a picnic, toss some drinks in the cooler, tie up your walking shoes and go for the day.

The Pacheedaht Nation has close to 300 members. About 120 live in the Pacheedaht community, less than a 15-minute drive from the blockades. And the inconvenient truth for the protesters, however well-intentioned in their inventive and prolonged efforts to save old-growth, however well-versed in the parlance of acknowledging the territories of Indigenous peoples, is that only a few Pacheedaht members have joined them.

A Fairy Creek land defender, or protester or intruder depending on who you talk to, walks through a section of Old Growth in the Fairy Creek Valley. Unprotected old-growth forests are at-risk all over B.C.

Less than three per cent of the province’s biggest, most ecologically important old-growth remains.

Five years ago, with assistance from forestry revenues, the nation purchased Pacheedaht Mountain— unlike the reserve, which lies on federal land. The nation’s long-term plan is to relocate the entire community to the mountain, out of the flood plain and tsunami zone that the federal government unilaterally designated for them.

Chief Jones says the nation, which now has 170 employees across all of its ventures, like Soule Creek Lodge pictured here, can offer employment to any member who wants it. This is a direct benefit of logging revenue. As Pacheedaht members move back from other communities, the nation is building houses for community members and returnees.

“Third parties — whether they are companies, organizations, other governments or individuals — have no right to speak on behalf of the Nations,” the nations make clear. “Forestry is and will always be part of Pacheedaht Nation,” the Chief tells us. “We’re not going to leave. We’re not leaving as a nation. We’ve been here for many, many thousands of years and we’re not going anywhere. I want to make that clear to the world. Nations do not move.”

Inside the Pacheedaht Nation’s Stand on Fairy Creek Logging Blockades