Vaughn Palmer:

VICTORIA — Twenty-five years ago this summer, native people in a remote valley of the central Interior set in motion the most important court case to date involving First Nations ownership of land in B.C. The William case, after Chief Roger William of the Xeni Gwet’in First Nation, dates from the Aboriginal Wilderness Preserve Declaration of Aug. 23, 1989. It banned road construction and commercial logging in the Nemiah Valley northwest of Williams Lake. The declaration led to a lengthy, expensive and partly inconclusive aboriginal land case in B.C. Supreme Court.