Businesses on notice over land
N.B. communities seek payment for profits made on Indigenous territory
First Nations that are fighting a court battle to assert their claim to two-thirds of New Brunswick’s land have expanded their challenge to some of the biggest corporations in the province.
The six Wolastoqey communities say they want compensation for years of profit those companies have made from the traditional Indigenous territory.
“We have chosen these defendants because they are the largest landowners in New Brunswick and they have had a history of getting land from the province without paying a fair price for it,” Chief Patricia Bernard of the Matawaskiye said Tuesday.
“That is our land that the province gave away for a song. We want back what is ours; that was never theirs to give.”
Bernard said the Wolastoqey are seeking compensation from the Crown — not the corporations themselves — for “200 years of land and resource theft authorized and overseen by the New Brunswick government.”
Almost a year ago, the six communities filed a land title claim against the federal and provincial governments, asking courts to confirm Aboriginal title on more than five million hectares of land originally occupied by the Wolastoqey.
The land claimed by the Wolastoqey encompasses most of the southern and western borders of New Brunswick, following the northern Quebec border from Edmundston before plunging south on a crooked path to intersect the province’s southeastern coast near Fundy National Park.
The Wolastoqey maintain that land is unceded and unsurrendered territory.
Tuesday’s announcement amended that original claim to name major corporations, including J.D. Irving, NB Power, Acadian Timber, Twin Rivers Paper, H.J. Crabbe and Sons and AV Group — mostly forestry and pulp businesses — as defendants alongside the two tiers of government.
Those named companies, said the Wolastoqey, operate on about 20 per cent of the area — 997,950 hectares — on which the communities seek title.
In the event of a ruling in their favour, the Wolastoqey said, they would allow forestry in those reclaimed lands to continue, as long as those corporations had an agreement with the nation over activities on the land.
Bernard reiterated that the quest for title claim will not affect ordinary New Brunswickers, saying that they paid the Crown fair market value for the land, even though the Crown never compensated the Wolastoqey for the same.