On Thursday, the Lil’wat Nation shared the following:

“In this time of reconciliation, Lil’wat Nation and N’Quatqua First Nation are asserting our Title and Rights to our shared unceded territory to take this time to harvest and gather our resources within our territories.

Líl̓wat Nation and N’Quatqua First Nation are jointly shutting down the public access to Pipi7iyekw – Joffre Lakes Park until National Truth and Reconciliation Day, September 30th, 2023.

Kúkwstum̓ckal̓ap | Thank you.”

The longer letter, posted below, situates the request. As does a story that ran in the Pique in March 2021 about the Visitor Management Strategy when it was in draft form, in which Kukwpi Skalulumecw, Chief Dean Nelson, spoke to how the over-saturation of visitors to Joffre Lake has had a direct impact on the Nation’s ability to use the land for traditional purposes.  

“We’re so affected in so many ways,” Nelson says. “The actual use of the place, the traditional use, has been ignored or overlooked … The traffic, the amount of visitors, who’s allowing that? It just got way out of hand. We had no say in any of it. We were just the receiving end of everything.”

He is hopeful that the strategy will help ease some of these burdens and allow the Nation some control over its traditional land again.

“It’s a beautiful place, but it does have history too,” he said. “We are part of that history. We’ve been overlooked on the needs of the Nation, as far as traditional use and medicines and plants and spirituality.” 

Many of us who have lived here in recent times lament the way over-popularity of Joffre has taken a lovely hike experience out of our personal repertoires. I imagine the feeling, from an Indigenous perspective, is some wildly exponential version of that.

I hope this move, this pause of tourist traffic, for 37 days, will bring healing to the land and the people of the land.