“I always wanted to be a fisherman, just like my father. I told my mother that and she says, ‘No you’re not, you’re going to school,’” Kwagiulth (Kwak waka’wakw) Hereditary Chief Bill Wilson (Hemas Kla-Lee-Lee-Kla) told Global News in a 2023 interview.
When Wilson doubted his studies, it was his mother who encouraged him to stick to school.
“She said, ‘You’re not quitting, you’re going to go to law school. Stop this bullshit and get on with the work you need to do,'” he continued in the interview. “'You have been given gifts that you have to use to help out people.'”
Wilson died on January 24 “surrounded by love,” his daughter Jody Wilson-Raybould wrote in a post on X. He is survived by his wife Bev, and his daughters, Wilson-Raybould and Kory Wilson.
“There's a reason there are a lot of sad people across Canada since his passing,” said Indigenous Law Student Association Co-President Kristofer Charlebois. “We have Aboriginal law as a practice area due to his fundamental work.”
Wilson was the youngest of 17, born into a big household made up of three families in Comox, BC. His father started an “empire,” Wilson told Global, building canoes to sell to the majority-white local fishing industry.
It was his family’s footing that helped Wilson, along with his siblings, go through the provincial education system as opposed to the residential school system, which didn’t close its final doors until 1997.
Then in 1973, Wilson became the second Indigenous person to graduate from UBC’s Faculty of Law, after his cousin Alfred Scow. This would be the beginning of a lifelong career in Canadian politics and Indigenous law.
“If you want to talk about his legacy, it's generational,” said Charlebois. “I would not be a law student if it weren't for him setting the tone and setting a foundation for us … Mr. Wilson was a foundational leader to not just his nation, but to Indigenous former and current and future law students and students in general.”
Before meeting with former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau for the first time in 1970, Wilson worked as the director of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, the first Indigenous organization in the country, which was established by the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia. The organization pursued land claims and Indigenous title grievances in BC, transitioning into a trade union.
Wilson would go on to become the vice chief for the Native Council of Canada, a position that would seat him at the table with the country’s top politicians in Ottawa.
At that table, Wilson helped amend a section of the Canadian Constitution for Indigenous people across the country, section 35, which recognizes and affirms Aboriginal rights.
Early drafts of a Canadian Constitution independent from Britain did not include any recognition of those existing rights and relationships, but through efforts that Wilson helped leverage, Aboriginal rights became enshrined and protected, such that they cannot be overridden by the federal government.
“That was an exciting time because I knew we were building a country — a country that already existed but had no foundation in Indian politics and no relationship to the land or the resources that belonged to the Indians,” Wilson told Global.
“Section 35 is there because of him and the work of others. But he's pivotal in that,” said Charlebois. “Those rights are fundamentally enshrined now because of the work he's done.”
Wilson changed minds and opened eyes. He recalled showing BC's then-Premier Bill Vander Zalm around his mother's hometown in 1986, bringing provincial power on the ground to underrepresented communities, he told Global.
As Wilson explained in 2023, he hoped the next generation will “pick up the torch” and combat the political system.
“In terms of my politics, I’ve never been anything but an Indian,” Wilson told Global. “I never believed that any non-Indian policies designed by white people to be imposed on Indians are right. I maintain that, pure as a driven snow legacy.”
“That impact to have that foundation to stand up when something is not right and move forward with that, that doesn't just take bravery, that takes will of iron,” said Charlebois. “The ability to lead like that and then pass it on to your children — that's the definition of being Indigenous.”
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