Grace Islet is a small island in Salt Spring Island's Ganges Harbour seen here December 10, 2014 where an Edmonton businessman is constructing a home on a B.C. First Nation burial ground.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
A partially built home that sits on top of an ancient aboriginal cemetery just off British Columbia's Salt Spring Island is set to be dismantled, months after the provincial government paid more than $5-million to buy the site as part of a land dispute with local First Nations.
The house on Grace Islet, located in Ganges Harbour in the Gulf Islands, had become a focal point in a land dispute with the Cowichan Tribes, which had drafted a civil claim asserting aboriginal title to the islet. The province purchased the property in February as part of a plan to remove all evidence of recent construction from the site and develop a long-term conservation plan.
But while demolition activity – which is expected to take two months – appears to end the immediate dispute, archaeologists and heritage specialists say it's part of a piecemeal approach to settling land disputes that doesn't go far enough. Instead, they want a provincewide solution to protect such sacred land.
Under the province's Heritage Conservation Act, it is illegal to damage, desecrate or alter a burial place that has historical or archeological value.
"On the one hand, this resolves the case so to speak … but it does not do anything to revise how the heritage act is being employed," said George Nicholas, a professor of archeology and director of Simon Fraser University's Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage project.
Steve Thomson, Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, responded to the Grace Islet uproar by launching a review of the province's heritage and archeological laws earlier this year.
Mr. Thompson was unavailable for comment but his office said in an e-mail that the review is still in progress. The ministry did not provide any details about the review or when it would be finished.
The dispute erupted last fall when the former landowner, Barry Slawsky, began constructing his retirement home – with permits – on the picturesque islet, despite the documented presence of burial cairns.
Although Grace Islet had at one point been registered as an archeological site, it was zoned as residential in 1990 when Mr. Slawsky bought the site.
In the summer of 2006, kayakers discovered ancient human skeletal remains on Grace Islet, leading the province to commission an archeological impact assessment in 2010 that identified 15 rock features that may be burial cairns.
Mr. Slawsky obtained a building permit in 2011 and his lawyer told The Globe and Mail that the provincial archeology branch approved the building plans, which were designed to protect the burial cairns.
Construction ceased in December after the Government of British Columbia and the Nature Conservancy of Canada struck a deal with Mr. Slawsky, offering him a total of $5.45-million – $850,000 for the land and $4.6-million as a settlement.
"It has been a true partnership," said Linda Hannah, regional vice-president of the Nature Conservancy of Canada. "People have come together in such an amazing way to set right a terrible wrong."
Although Ms. Hannah said the resolution was "absolutely" a win and "a giant step in the right direction around respecting cultural values and the significance of a site to First Nations," she conceded it remains to be seen how Grace Islet will affect other land claims.
"What it means for reforms for the broader heritage permitting process is still yet to be determined," she said.
Such ad hoc resolutions have Mr. Nicholas worried that Grace Islet's happy ending won't be enough to ensure all of Canada's First Nations burial sites receive the same protection as other cemeteries.
That's because, he said, there are still troubling questions around how the protection of sites is evaluated and by whom.
"Typically it has been very unilateral, historically. It is the government or it is the scientists, or it is someone else other than the people whose heritage is on the line," he said.
"Until these gaps in the Heritage Act and how it's employed are re-evaluated, there is likely to be very similar kinds of contentions that continue to arise."