How Coastal First Nations Built an Ownership Economy in B.C. Salmon Farming

Reconciliation in B.C. aquaculture usually gets talked about two ways: did the Nation agree to the farms, and does the Nation get a cut of what the company earns? Consent and revenue. Both matter, and both undersell what coastal First Nations have actually built on the water.

The Nations in the coalition own processing plants, transport companies, and service businesses that contract directly with the operators in their waters. They own brands sitting on grocery shelves across the country, with the proceeds funding language programs and community services back home. That is reconciliation expressed as equity, and the Trudeau-era 2029 net-pen ban is set to dismantle it before most Canadians know it exists.

All of B.C.'s farmed salmon is raised in partnership with First Nations. What that looks like once the partnership matures is worth seeing up close.

Take Klemtu, the Kitasoo Xai'xais community 800 kilometres up the coast from Vancouver. They've been partners in salmon farming for more than two decades. The Nation recently converted its salmon processing plant into a smokehouse and now produces Klemtu Spirit Hot Smoked Atlantic Salmon, which landed in Walmart Canada in 2021 and has since spread to grocery outlets across the country, with U.S. retail on the way. Fish farming and smoking are the main source of work in Klemtu; more than 50 jobs in a small, remote place where year-round employment is hard to come by. Over half the Nation's total revenue comes from its salmon farming partnership. At the same time, the Kitasoo Xai'xais have protected more than half their territory through their Great Bear Sea and Rainforest initiatives and a new Indigenous-led marine protected conservation area. The smokehouse and the conservation area belong to the same plan.

Further south, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, five Nuu-chah-nulth-speaking Nations pooled their resources into Nuu-chah-nulth Seafood LP and, in 2015, bought St. Jean's Cannery and Smokehouse in Nanaimo, the largest cannery on the Island. One purchase gave the Nations an asset they could build a farmed-salmon business around. They process Atlantic salmon under the Gratitude Seafood brand, now stocked in major Canadian grocery chains, and three percent of annual sales flows straight back to the partner Nations, split between language and identity work and new seafood ventures. This is equity written into the supply chain at the level of the cannery floor.

Ownership shows up in the logistics too. James Walkus, of the Gwa'sala-'Nakwaxda'xw Nation, built a fishing company that was facing a grim future as wild stocks fell, then pivoted it into aquaculture supply and transport. That side of the business now makes up 60 percent of his operation and employs around 30 people on north Vancouver Island, many of them First Nations. He launched a $9 million salmon transport boat in 2014 and added an $11 million vessel in 2018. This is Indigenous-owned, deep-water capital that exists to serve the farms. Pull the farms and those boats have nowhere to go.

The Tlowitsis Nation took a similar route into services. In 2021 it stood up Chief's Pride Aquaculture Co. and signed a multi-year net-washing contract with Grieg Seafood (now owned by Cermaq Canada), built around equipment the Nation now runs itself: automated net-washing gear, a skiff, a crane barge, and an accommodation barge anchored in Clio Channel for an all-Indigenous crew. The Tlowitsis named the farms in the Kwak'wala language, choosing the words for Big Brother, Little Sister, and Little Brother.

Every one of these enterprises is wrapped around the salmon farms the federal government's 2029 open-net pen ban would remove. A smokehouse with no harvest packs nothing. A transport boat with no farms to service stays tied up. A net-washing crew with no nets has no contract. A branded product with no supply chain comes off the shelf, and the language funding and community programs it pays for go with it.

That is where the policy contradicts itself. The same federal government that signed onto economic reconciliation through UNDRIP is on course to wipe out the clearest working examples of it on the coast. The Marine Protected Areas, the Guardian programs, the revitalization funds, all of it sits downstream of finfish harvest revenue the ban erases.

Lifting it does the opposite. It encourages the First Nations who host these farms to keep building on what they own, keeps the smokehouses running and the boats moving and the contracts live, and leaves the equity where it already is, in Indigenous hands.

Reconciliation on this coast has a balance sheet, and the ban runs it into the red.

References

1. BC Salmon Farmers Association. Caring for Indigenous Stewardship: Connecting with the Original Guardians of the Coast. In: Modern Salmon Farming in BC: A Review. Campbell River, BC; 2024.
2. BC Salmon Farmers Association. Caring for Communities: Salmon Aquaculture in Coastal Communities. In: Modern Salmon Farming in BC: A Review. Campbell River, BC; 2024.
3. BC Salmon Farmers Association. First Nations & BC Salmon Farmers (FAQ). 2024.
4. Coalition of First Nations for Finfish Stewardship. Key Messages — Press Conference, April 14, 2026.

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