On August 26th, 2025, W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council (W̱LC) gathered community members from all five W̱SÁNEĆ bands – MÁLEXEȽ (Malahat), BOḰEĆEN (Pauquachin), SȾÁUTW̱ (Tsawout), W̱JOȽEȽP (Tsartlip), and W̱SIḴEM (Tseycum) at SELE₭TEȽ. The gathering was held to raise awareness of the fact that SELE₭TEȽ, where Goldstream Park is located, was never surrendered, to celebrate the salmon and W̱SÁNEĆ ongoing presence at Goldstream, and to hear from speakers about threats to SELE₭TEȽ (Goldstream River).
SELE₭TEȽ is the location of a shared Indian Reserve, the last remaining piece of land that belongs jointly to all five bands of W̱SÁNEĆ. Whereas, prior to colonization, W̱SÁNEĆ stewarded many traditional lands jointly, the establishment of Indian Bands and the reserve system created artificial divides within W̱SÁNEĆ and all but eliminated W̱SÁNEĆ’s access to traditional lands.
SELE₭TEȽ’s status as the last remaining shared land makes it particularly important for W̱SÁNEĆ. In the words of W̱IĆKINEM (Eric Pelkey), who is both the Community Engagement Coordinator for W̱LC and the Hereditary Chief of Tsawout:
This is the only piece of land left that belongs to all the W̱SÁNEĆ people. It’s not divided in any way to one First Nation. All five W̱SÁNEĆ bands own this land in common. It’s the only thing that really brings us together. It’s the way that our land used to be held in years gone by where we were just W̱SÁNEĆ Nation, before the Indian Bands got invented by the colonial government.
As the site of one of W̱SÁNEĆ’s oldest fishing villages, SELE₭TEȽ and the surrounding area are also culturally significant. Traditionally, W̱SÁNEĆ spent long days harvesting salmon there to store through the winter. ZȺWIZUT (Carl Olsen) – a W̱SÁNEĆ Elder from Tsartlip – reflected on the centrality of smoked salmon from SELE₭TEȽ in his younger years:
I grew up with the smell of smoked salmon in my house, because my parents always had sacks of dried salmon in our houses up on the cupboard and anywhere they could store them.
He continued:
So, it’s something that I grew up with and all my family, probably all of my relatives, grew up with too – it’s the smoked salmon in our diets. Over the winter it supported a lot of our longhouses and our cultural activities. People look forward to having the smoked salmon at our ceremonies.
The KELŁOLEMEĆEN (Southern Resident Killer Whales) also rely on the salmon that return to SELE₭TEȽ as a key food source.
The compound effects of colonialism and industrialization have long impacted the health of the environment at SELE₭TEȽ and reduced the availability of salmon, turning what was once a staple food source for W̱SÁNEĆ into a less available delicacy, and impacting the health of our people and the KELŁOLEMEĆEN.
To address these impacts, community advocates have worked tirelessly to restore the salmon populations and have even seen some success, but MOTT’s proposed Malahat Highway project threatens to undue their progress and create an insurmountable setback.
The $162 million project includes removing old growth trees and blasting rock to install retaining walls, place median and roadside barriers, and widen shoulders among other changes to the Malahat corridor at Goldstream Park.
To raise awareness of this issue, W̱LC invited membership from each of the five bands to join together at the Goldstream Park Picnic Area for the SELE₭TEȽ HIWEST ȽTE TŦE XAXE SĆÁÁNEW̱ – Honouring our Sacred Salmon event on August 26th, 2025. To ensure as many community members as possible could attend, W̱LC arranged for bus transportation.
The event spanned a full day – taking place from 10:00AM-3:30PM – and featured songs, a lunch, and words from W̱SÁNEĆ speakers. It was well attended by community members, including many youth and Elders.
One of the speakers was ZȺWIZUT, who has long stood at the heart of the effort to protect SELE₭TEȽ.
ZȺWIZUT has stood in protest on Malahat Highway every week for the last two years and nine months, often joined by members of the James Bay United Church and the Unitarian Universalist Community of Victoria. He is acutely aware of the damage the proposed MOTT project will cause and hopes to see more community members – including W̱SÁNEĆ and settlers alike – join the fight to stop the proposal from proceeding.
He lauded the August 26th event as an important step in making that happen, sharing: “This is the boost that we needed from leadership; I know that they’ve been thinking about it and I know that it’s going to be a fight they want to fight as well.”
ZȺWIZUT understands “the proposed MOTT project would be an infringement on W̱SÁNEĆ’s Douglas Treaty rights”, because – in ZȺWIZUT’s words – the Douglas Treaty “gives us a right to protect what provides for us, whether it’s in the stream or on the land – we have a right to protect it.” This right was formally preserved by the BC Supreme Court in its 1987 Claxton v. Saanichton Bay Marina case, where the Court found that – in at least some cases – W̱SÁNEĆ have a right to resist development.
ZȺWIZUT’s work to protect SELE₭TEȽ is not his first effort to preserve W̱SÁNEĆ’s Douglas Treaty rights. He was a party to a landmark Supreme Court of Canada case in 2006, where the court ruled the Douglas Treaty protects W̱SÁNEĆ’s right to hunt with lights.
Protecting Douglas Treaty rights, says ZȺWIZUT, is not only critical to preserve W̱SÁNEĆ’s culture, traditions, and healthy food sources, but is also necessary to fulfill W̱SÁNEĆ’s responsibility to take care of the land. In a statement for the Watershed Sentinel, ZȺWIZUT made this clear. W̱SÁNEĆ, he says:
…have a responsibility to look after this place that has provided for us for thousands of years, both in the way of salmon and the environment itself with foods and plants and medicines. It is really important that we start looking after the environment in a good way, in a way that that is meaningful and protects those who can’t protect themselves – the fish, the salmon, the birds.
ZȺWIZUT encourages all who are interested in protecting SELE₭TEȽ to attend the protest he holds each Tuesday morning. He speaks to the urgency of participation in these demonstrations, sharing:
It’s not the responsibility of one side or the other – it’s the responsibility of all of us together to protect what we have, and to not continue destroying the environment. It’s the environment that feeds us. The salmon that come up the stream, the food plants that are here at Goldstream, the medicine plants that are here at Goldstream – these are all things that we harvested here. If we lose that, we don’t get it back.
WLC raise our hands to all who came out for SELE₭TEȽ HIWEST ȽTE TŦE XAXE SĆÁÁNEW̱ Gathering to Honour our Sacred Salmon at Goldstream.
To stay up to date on the proposed highway project at SELE₭TEȽ and W̱LC’s ongoing efforts to promote respect for W̱SÁNEĆ culture, traditional practices, and language, sign up for W̱LC’s newsletter.
