October 15, 2025
STINGING NETTLE AND BIGLEAF MAPLE are featured in a conservation area with enhanced habitat for the Oregon Forestsnail (a species at risk under federal legislation) near Lálèm Way—an affordable housing project of 23 unit rental suites, completed in 2022, that Ch’íyáqtel (Tzeachten) First Nation built for its members in collaboration with BC Housing.
“We’re bringing our people home, and that’s what we should be doing,” said Ch’íyáqtel Councillor Í:lhót (Sandra Bonner-Pederson) in a film produced by Bear Image Productions.
“The idea is that we provide an area for our membership to thrive and continue to live on Tzeachten and come home for so many of the members who really want to come home,” said Ch’íyáqtel Chief Weliliq (Derek Epp). “With the housing market, it just isn’t realistic to be able to to afford some of the rental rates out there.”
Skw’omkw’emexw (Grand Chief and Former Ch’íyáqtel Chief Joe Hall) explained in the film that a significant challenge the Nation faced was that Tzeachten is “virtually all CP’ed out to members”—subject to Certificates of Possession under the Indian Act. “Our population continued to grow, but unfortunately, the size of off-reserve population was growing faster than on-reserve because we weren’t able to provide them with the necessary land areas to build homes.”
A CP is “as close to Fee Simple as a band member can get on reserve,” Billie Fortier, a lawyer with MLT Aikins LLP in Calgary, explains. “Members have an enforceable right of possession; they can then lease those lands to other members or non-members [with Ministerial approval], extract natural resources and farm the CP lands freely.”
Ch’íyáqtel was able to purchase some land from a CP holder. Infrastructure funding was provided by Indigenous Services Canada for roadbuilding and sewage. The First Nations Finance Authority contributed to the project, and Lu’ma Development Management assisted on the consulting side.
Environmental consultation and establishing a conservation area with interpretive signs were among the many steps Ch’íyáqtel took during more than a decade of trying to create affordable housing for its membership. Ch’íyáqtel also worked with the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve to enhance offsite habitat for the Oregon Forestsnail at that location. According to a study by James Clare, then a student in the Department of Geography and the Environment at University of the Fraser Valley (who assisted the lead biologist at the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve):
The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) places residential and commercial development as the highest threat to Oregon Forestsnail populations, with transportation and service corridors coming second (COSEWIC, 2002). With considerable overlap between existing Oregon Forestsnail habitat and B.C.’s most densely populated urban areas, the majority of OFS habitat remaining is fragmented and isolated, lending to poor population stability. Small pockets of suitable Oregon Forestsnail habitat are much more vulnerable to disturbance, and the limited mobility of the snails prevents escape or relocation in most cases. In addition, the majority of suitable Oregon Forestsnail habitat remaining across the Fraser Valley Regional District is privately owned, and therefore subject to minimal or no protection from development (COSEWIC, 2002). While individual municipalities may designate ecologically sensitive development permit areas, there is currently no provincial or federal limitation on development in critical habitat areas that exist on privately owned land (Government of BC, n.d.).
(“Distribution of the Oregon Forestsnail Within The Fraser Valley Regional District”, December 2022)
Said Ch’íyáqtel Cultural Advisor Melileqthet (Helen Joe) in the film:
When we do anything with Mother Earth—whether it’s to build a home, build a longhouse, build anything—we’re supposed to, from what my ancestors always said, we need to mainly apologize to Mother Earth for taking part of her being. And we do this before the work, you know, before the construction starts, or whatever you want to call it. And we make an offering to her—because the salmon actually come from Mother Earth through the waters—that we make an offering back to her.
We are going to be building some houses, a subdivision, whatever it may be. And I think in order for our people that are going to be living in those homes—they need to be comfortable, they need to feel like they’re protected or, you know, they’re complete in their home—we will make this offering and do what we need to do for for the community, for our families.
More recently, Lu’ma has assisted Ch’íyáqtel to build 15 new on-reserve Elder and family homes at Te Stolōwálá Lálèm (“Houses on the Riverbed”), completed and occupied in 2025, among many other Lu’ma projects in BC.
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We acknowledge that the land on which we work is the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.