[2] Wilson was born in 1944 in Comox, British Columbia[2] and was the son of Puugladee (also known as Ethel or Effery), the eldest child of a hereditary chief and a hamatsa, a position of very high stature in Kwagiulth culture.
[4] They had two daughters, Jody Wilson-Raybould, former Member of Cabinet in the Justin Trudeau government, and Kory Wilson, an Executive Director at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
In his third year of law school, Wilson was the director of Aboriginal title and land claims for the BC Association of Non-Status Indians.
In March 1983, Wilson and other Indigenous leaders met with Prime Minister Trudeau and successfully negotiated the only amendment to Canada’s new Constitution.
During these negotiations, Wilson famously stated on Canadian national television that he hoped his two daughters would one day become lawyers and one of them maybe even the Prime Minister.
In 1992, Wilson, Mulroney and Premier of British Columbia Mike Harcourt signed an agreement that created the BC Treaty Commission.