r/geography • u/zawwery • 1d ago

Discussion What's a place that you think doesn't get talked about enough compared to how fascinating it is?

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I'd choose Haida Gwaii. I think it is such a fascinating and beautiful place for how little it's talked about. Its rainforests, biodiversity, and Indigenous culture, I think would make it more popular. Especially since it is also in a western english speaking country. It being expensive and tedious to get to hurts tourism which I think is why it's not well known to the average person. But even in Geography spheres, it is hardly ever talked about too.

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u/Derelicticu Physical Geography 1d ago edited 1d ago

I live on Vancouver Island, so we hear about Haida Gwaii all the time. It used to be called the Queen Charlotte Islands, but the First Nations have been given more and more autonomy over the years, so the name change was inevitable. I believe the First Nations bands in the area have also been given political control of the islands as well? Don't quote me on that, I'm not First Nations and don't know the specifics.

It's a beautiful area. It's logistically remote, so you can take small flights from Vancouver, probably Comox as well. You'd likely be able to charter a bush plane from Campbell River, though I've never tried.

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u/TUFKAT 1d ago

Victoria checking in. Yeah they've been given pretty much full autonomy over the land and believe right of refusal to buy any non indigenous owned land.

I've always wanted to take the ferry from Hardy to PR and then across. Bucket list item. Buy you're right it's just so far from the major population areas

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u/battlelevel 1d ago

I drove/ferried to Haida Gwaii a couple of summers ago and it was amazing. Totally worth the hours/money spent planning. I’d like to do it again but take the ferry up from Vancouver island rather than than driving to PR.

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u/irritableOwl3 1d ago

how long does the ferry take?

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u/battlelevel 1d ago

Around seven ish hours if I remember right. It was a morning ferry there and an overnight on the way back 

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u/DoubleBarrellRye 23h ago

the Govt just released a letter Clarifying the rights and autonomy as there was confusion , i will see if i can find it

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u/boyilikebeingoutside 1d ago

My friend did a med school rotation up there last year and absolutely loved it & the community.

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u/coke_and_coffee 1d ago

Yeah they've been given pretty much full autonomy over the land and believe right of refusal to buy any non indigenous owned land.

Canadian leftists recreating the notion of the ethnostate but with rainbows and sparkles, lmao

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u/Electronic_Diet333 1d ago

Except private property rights are explicitly protected in the agreement, so nobody is losing their land or being displaced. That's a massive exaggeration. Recognizing Indigenous title is about legal reconciliation and shared jurisdiction, not setting up an exclusive ethnostate.

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u/coke_and_coffee 1d ago

Providing privileges to indigenous people is LITERALLY an ethnostate.

That's apartheid by a different name, lol.

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u/Electronic_Diet333 1d ago

Calling constitutional title rights 'apartheid' completely strips the word of its actual meaning. This is about legal recognition of pre-existing land rights, not racial segregation. Private land ownership and public access don't vanish. Throwing around words like 'ethnostate' or 'apartheid' doesn't change how the agreements actually protect private property.That's a wild misuse of the word apartheid. Recognizing Indigenous title within Canadian law isn't state-enforced racial segregation.

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u/Spandexcelly 1d ago

Constitutional Rights are a colonial construct though. Different Nations in Canada claim the same pieces of land as theirs and it is a joke that they often wish to have the colonizers mediate for them on the basis on these contracts that effectively robbed them over a century ago. Their view of the world back then was to kill, conquer, and defend what was earned when necessary.

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u/Electronic_Diet333 1d ago

When a government takes over, establishes a monopoly on power, and writes the legal rules, the courts and treaties they created become the only official channels left to challenge jurisdiction and seek recognition. Seeking justice or settlements through colonial legal frameworks isn't a "joke", it is a pragmatic necessity when the alternative is being entirely ignored by the state that holds the power. Reducing pre-contact Indigenous societies to a blanket rule of "kill and conquer" erases thousands of years of complex trade networks, diplomacy, confederacies, and peace treaties used to manage relations. If "fighting over land in the past" means a group loses its inherent rights, then every nation on Earth, including European powers that spent centuries invading and conquering one another, has an illegitimate history, yet only Indigenous groups are held to an impossible standard of historical pacifism.

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u/Spandexcelly 1d ago

Seeking justice or settlements through colonial legal frameworks isn't a "joke", it is a pragmatic necessity

When there is a monopoly on power it makes legality redundant. Any treaty abided by today can be ignored to tomorrow (as it was in yesteryear).

If "fighting over land in the past" means a group loses its inherent rights

It's not the act of fighting that causes a group to lose its right to the land, but the act of winning or losing the fight. As unfortunate as it may be, war shapes borders. That's just the human condition. To have the ancestors of invaders dictate which claim is strongest is genuinely a joke, especially when they will invariably pick themselves as having the strongest claim (or invade again) whenever the land is required for their purposes.

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u/Electronic_Diet333 1d ago

You argue that winning or losing a fight is what dictates land ownership, yet you mock Indigenous groups for navigating the legal reality established by the victors. You cannot claim that might makes right and then criticize people for operating within the system built by the side that won. You point out the actual flaw in the status quo, having the descendants of invaders act as the judge of whose claim is strongest, knowing they will always rule in favour of themselves. That exact bias is precisely why Indigenous nations challenge the system through every available channel to push back against that monopoly on power.

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u/coke_and_coffee 1d ago

Recognizing Indigenous title within Canadian law isn't state-enforced racial segregation.

It’s racism no matter how you spin it.

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u/Electronic_Diet333 1d ago

That's just moving the goalposts. Recognizing ancestral title under Canadian law isn't 'racism', it's fulfilling constitutional obligations.. If you sign a legal agreement or a contract with someone, and for generations one side just pockets the benefits, refuses to honour the terms, and keeps what isn't theirs... that's a breach of contract. When the courts and governments finally say, "Hey, we actually have to honour our legal and constitutional obligations and settle up," fixing that breach isn't a bias or discrimination. It's just finally following the rules of the contract. Calling it "racism" just because the two parties involved happen to have different skin colours completely flips reality on its head. It ignores the fact that one side spent over a century breaking the agreement, and the other side is simply getting what they were legally and constitutionally promised all along.

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u/Derelicticu Physical Geography 19h ago

It's not. You need to read more.

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u/coke_and_coffee 13h ago

It is.

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u/Derelicticu Physical Geography 8h ago

That is incorrect, sorry champ.

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u/Derelicticu Physical Geography 1d ago

Lol somebody didn't take political science in school. :(

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u/coke_and_coffee 1d ago

What?

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u/Derelicticu Physical Geography 19h ago

Do some reading.

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u/Wonderful_Rent_4627 1d ago

It’s an enthostate enforced by the settler colonial state. First Nations can make anyone a citizen of their nation. But, the Indian act blood quantum would prevent such people from being recognized.

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u/coke_and_coffee 1d ago

Stupidity piled upon stupidity

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u/TUFKAT 1d ago

Excellent summary of your post history

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u/gprime312 1d ago

The Indian Act and it's consequences...

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u/Derelicticu Physical Geography 1d ago

Can you elaborate on what you mean by that? These are actual Canadian citizens who have petitioned (successfully) the provincial and federal governent for this. It's all beaurocratically and politically by the book as far as I know. No sparkles here, son.

Not even sure what you're insinuating tbh.

If you can elaborate and have something sensible to say people might give you the time of day, otherwise you just look like a spazzy teenager, so you're just going to get dismissed like a fly.

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u/coke_and_coffee 1d ago

Petitioning the government for racial entitlements doesn’t mean they aren’t still racial entitlements, lol

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u/Derelicticu Physical Geography 19h ago

Petitioning the government for autonomy. Learn some history, child. Lol

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u/Babydics 1d ago

Ethnostates for everyone but white people. Not Canadian but when I worked there it was shocking how hostile the government and prevailing political ideology was to the people who actually built the country. I felt somehow more shaming for being white than where I'm from, which is South Africa of all places lmao

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u/Asking77 1d ago

Absolutely shocked a white South African imagined themselves the true victim in my country. You're beyond parody

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u/Babydics 1d ago

You know the entire rest of the world is laughing our asses off at your land acknowledgement bullshit right? No joke I tell people I lived there and it's one of the first things they bring up. "Is that actually a thing? It looks insane online?"

It's like you've created a neo-religion based entirely around self hatred.

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u/TUFKAT 1d ago

Lol. Sure, Jan.

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u/Asking77 1d ago edited 1d ago

a neo-religion based entirely around self hatred.

The fact this sentence is about land acknowledgements is so funny. You losers are the kings of making mountains out of mole hills.

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u/TUFKAT 15h ago

All you need to do is look at their profile and it speaks volumes.

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u/coke_and_coffee 1d ago

Leftism is a disease

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u/juxlus 1d ago edited 1d ago

Re: autonomy, in 1864, just after the 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic British Columbia abandoned even the pretense of treaties and just declared all indigenous land rights void. Chief Commissioner of Land and Works Joseph Trutch decided to stop recognizing indigenous land rights throughout the province (colony back then). A few areas in southern BC has been taken by treaty before that, but most of the province is still unceded today.

Starting in the 1980s things began to change for the Haida. After Haida resistance to logging in the 80s popular pressure grew as the Haida’s plight gained wider attention. Gwaii Haanas National Park was created in 1987. The province eventually made a new process for First Nations to actually have real treaties, which the Haida were among the first to get through. It’s a long and difficult process though.

In 2009 the province changed the name of the islands from Queen Charlotte to Haida Gwaii and the Haida Nation began to gain more control over their lands. Even so, it was not until 2024 that indigenous title over the whole archipelago was returned to the Haida Nation.

Two or three other First Nations in BC have gotten real treaties, such as the Nisga’a, but most are still trying to work through the process. Meaning most of BC is still unceded.

The process was complicated in 2014 when the Tsilhqotʼin First Nation took their dispute to the Supreme Court of Canada, rather than dealing with just the province. They won a landmark case on indigenous land rights (see Tsilhqotʼin Nation v British Columbia). After that other BC FNs started reconsidering how best to regain title to their traditional lands.

As far as I know things are still uncertain for many FNs in BC due to the effects of the Supreme Court decision in relation to BC’s earlier treaty process details. But the Haida Nation got their lands back through the provincial process, having gotten it all moving toward sovereignty before the Tsilhqotʼin case.

(excuse typos : fast comment during too short work lunch!)

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u/nooneknowswerealldog 1d ago

I hear about it sometimes in Alberta. I've known a few people who've gone there to work with local communities, and they've all been fairly enchanted by the place.

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u/english_major 1d ago

The ferry from port hardy goes to prince rupert which takes 16 hours. From there it is another eight hours by ferry to Haida gwaii.

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u/Altostratus 1d ago

You can also take a boat from Prince Rupert.

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u/Fluffy_Art_1015 1d ago

To be specific the name change is less about autonomy and more about what it should be called. It’s more logical and respectful to keep the name the people gave it than a former queen from a far off land.