Robed figures entered the room in silence and took their seats on the dais at the Supreme Court of Canada in regal movements. Lawyers fidgeted as our delegation of Ktunaxa elders, leaders, and youth packed into a stockade-like public gallery. The hour was early, but it felt as though the day had already passed. This was the place to be, and yet it was not the location where justice was found.
Some few thousand miles west, amid the hanging-glacier memories of kǂawǂa, deep in the snow fields where the Grizzly Bear Spirit goes to dance, a developer was determined to turn a millennia-old sacred space into a year-round skiing monstrosity known as the Jumbo Glacier Resort. The project had long been met with opposition. Some locals were less than enthusiastic about another ski resort when there were many options in the area. The Ktunaxa Nation rejected the proposal.
