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Spring sprang early in the Columbia Valley this year and the Windermere Valley Golf Course took full advantage. The first group of golfers set out on the Windy greens on Thursday, March 10th. PHOTO BY DALE MOORE
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Jumbo case heads to Canadian Supreme Court STEVE HUBRECHT steve@invermerevalleyecho.com The Ktunaxa First Nation’s case against the creation of the Jumbo Glacier Mountain Resort Municipality will now be heard at the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada said last week that it will hear the Ktunaxa’s appeal of the decisions made by both the B.C. Supreme Court and the B.C. Court of Appeal to dismiss the First Nations’s case. The announcement that the long-running legal case will go to the highest court in the country came on Thursday, March 17th. No date for the hearing has been set yet. “We are pleased with today’s ruling from the Supreme Court,” said Ktunaxa Nation Council Chair Kathryn Teneese in a press release. “Our right to freedom of religion should not be held
in less regard than that of other Cana- Upper Jumbo Valley and Upper Farndians. We are confident that the Su- ham areas would violate the Ktunaxa’s preme Court of Canada will agree that freedom of religion (as guaranteed unKtunaxa beliefs and practices are vital der the Canadian Charter of Rights and to who we are and must be taken into Freedoms) since it would infringe on account by statutory decision makers. Qat’muk, a territory the Ktunaxa conThis fight is not just for the Ktunaxa, sider sacred. but every CanadiThe original It’s a Charter argument petition was disan who values the Charter of Rights of broader significance missed in April and Freedoms as than just Ktunaxa. It makes 2014 and the Ktuan integral part of naxa appealed sense that the Supreme Court that result, but an this society.” The case was is looking at this. August 2015 B.C. KATHRYN TENEESE first launched in Court of Appeals KTUNAXA NATIONAL COUNCIL CHAIR July 2012 when decision upheld the Ktunaxa filed a petition with the the initial ruling. The Ktunaxa then anB.C. Supreme Court, arguing that the nounced in October 2015 that it was First Nation had not been properly seeking an appeal hearing at the Suconsulted during the B.C. govern- preme Court of Canada. ment’s approval process for the resort, Teneese had told The Echo back in which ultimately resulted in a Master October that as the case wound its Development Agreement. It further ar- way through the different lower-levgued that building such a resort in the el courts, “it became more evident
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that we were talking about something much bigger than we first thought — about whether or not Indigenous people’s spirituality has a right to be considered in other people’s statutory decision-making processes.” Speaking with The Echo again last week, she reaffirmed that the Ktunaxa feel that the earlier court decisions didn’t give adequate attention to this bigger picture. “We’re hoping they (the Supreme Court of Canada) is going to consider this issue. In our view… (the other courts) didn’t seem to understand what we were trying to argue and as a result, the larger issue wasn’t considered. We didn’t see how they (the other courts) took into account the information we provided on our spiritual connection to the place. Instead, they kind of glossed that over,” Teneese told The Echo. See A3
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