History

The Koksilah watershed is a beautiful 31,000 hectare area within the territory of the Cowichan Nation on Vancouver Island.

The First People

Thousands of years ago, Syalutsa, the first Quw’utsun’ person fell from the sky and landed near Xwulqw’selu (Koksilah) ridge (Cowichan Tribes 2018). Not long after, he was followed by his younger brother, Stuts’un, who landed on Swuqus (Mount Prevost). Among the first lessons that Syalutsa and Stutsun were taught by the Creator was to perform kw’aythut (spiritual bathing) “in every little stream, river or lake” (Marshall 1999, p. 16) in order to connect with and learn from spirits, and the land upon which their lives depended. In addition to kw’aythut, Syalutsa taught his brother Stutsun to take only what is needed from the land. Together, these practices allowed the brothers to better understand their place in the world, a teaching that would be passed on to their descendants for generations to come.

Colonialism and Settlement

The majority of land in the Koksilah watershed is privately owned, the history of which dates back to the granting of Vancouver Island to the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) for safeguarding British interests in 1849 (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2018). Other key events in the mid- 1800s form the origins of Indigenous land appropriation and privatization in the Koksilah watershed, along with most of southern Vancouver Island:

• The barring of Indigenous people from preempting land, which would last until the mid-1950s (Hill 2011);
• The establishment of the federal Indian Act and creation of Indian Reserves;
• The conveyance of Vancouver Island from the HBC to the British Crown in 1867 (Hill 2011); and
• The E&N railway grant in 1883, resulting in most of the area not already preempted for farming or settlement, being granted to Robert Dunsmuir as private land. Large parcels were subsequently sold by Dunsmuir to forestry companies in order to fund building the railway (University of Victoria undated). This event is referred to as "The Great Land Grab"--- a fulsome account of which is available here.

The onset of agriculture, mining, and forestry in the Koksilah watershed are closely tied. Farming was strongly encouraged by the British government as part of colonization, leading to the development of “a series of little settlements along the one highway from Chemainus in the north to the South Cowichan” (Watt 2000).

• Early dairy farms (i.e., circa 1860) supplied larger communities up island where mining and forestry were already quite active, as well as to Victoria (Watt 2000).
• Mining began in the Koksilah watershed by the early 1900’s, including the King Solomon (nicknamed “Kinsol”) Mine (copper and silver) located near Humes Creek.
• In 1920 the Kinsol Trestle railway bridge was completed, opening up the middle and upper parts of the watershed to logging.
• The land granted to E&N Railway Company was later subdivided and sold-- the majority of which to a handful of large forestry companies (Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group 2007), including MacMillan Bloedel (later becoming Weyerhaeuser, and then Island Timberlands).
• In 2018, the two majority private forest landowners in the Koksilah watershed became jointly managed under Mosaic Forest Management.