The Indigenous-led Land Back movement on Vancouver Island is enabling the original stewards to reclaim and protect their ancestral lands from logging and deforestation. This frontline effort is led by Ma’amtagila First Nation matriarch Tsastilqualus Ambers Umbas, a lifelong activist for environmental justice, land stewardship, and Indigenous rights. On unceded Ma’amtagila territory, Umbas has been living and building a reoccupation camp to assert her people’s right to return to their Hiladi lands, translated from Kwak’wala as “The Place to Make Things Right.” “This is where I am supposed to be. This is my home,” she says. At 69, Umbas organizes peaceful direct actions from the Matriarch Camp, including locking herself to the federal fisheries office to protest industrial fish farming and protect wild salmon. A newly built bunkhouse will host queer, trans, Black, and Indigenous youth seeking refuge from urban life and space to reconnect with land and ancestors. With less than 3% of British Columbia’s productive forests remaining after 150 years of commercial logging, Umbas’ resistance confronts ongoing colonial extraction and environmental violence. Her personal story as a survivor of assimilationist policies and struggles with addiction speaks to the resilience at the heart of Indigenous resurgence.
