Heiltsuk Nation

The present day Heiltsuk First Nation is an amalgamation of 5 tribal groups who inhabited an area approximately 6000 square miles of the Central Coast of British Columbia.

The Heiltsuk peoples lived off of both land and sea in the region between Milbanke Sound and Fisher Channel.

Rivers and streams cascade into the sea through heavy forests and dense undergrowth.‘[2]‘Oral traditions of the present-day Heiltsuk maintain that the first generation of their ancestors were "set-down" by the Maker in various places within Heiltsuk territory and were living here before the time of a Great Flood.’[3] Geological evidence shows people have been living there continuously for the past 14,000 years.

On January 29, 2016, in the Heiltsuk community of Bella Bella—along with representatives from other First Nations, industry, government and NGOs—they celebrated the completion of the final accord to protect the largest coastal temperate rainforest in the world.

[6] Archeologist Alisha Gauvreau, a PhD student from the University of Victoria and a scholar with the Hakai Institute, discovered a site on Triquet Island on British Columbia's Central Coast which appears to confirm Heiltsuk oral tradition.

The archeological team have excavated a settlement in the area — in traditional Heiltsuk Nation territory — and dated it to 14,000 years ago, during the last ice age where glaciers covered much of North America.

The Heiltsuk "territory is located at the heart" of the largest intact old-growth forest in the world, the Great Bear Rainforest.

The Great Bear Rainforest was officially recognized by the Government of British Columbia in February 2016,[11][12] and is Canada's contribution to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy (QCC), a unique indigenous forest conservation initiative established in 2015 which now includes 16 of the 52 Commonwealth nations[13][11] Industrial logging in the Great Bear Rainforest will be decreased in order to permanently conserve 85% of the forest.

[11][14] On October 13, 2016, an American tugboat, the Nathan E Stewart, holding approximately 200,000 litres of industrial oils including diesel, while attached to a massive empty American oil barge, ran hard aground on a reef off Athlone Island near Bella Bella when the tugboat missed its turn into Seaforth Channel while transiting in Canadian waters on its return trip from Alaska.

The 1997 Supreme Court of Canada decision R. v. Gladstone was a significant legal and constitutional victory for the Heiltsuk.