Homecoming: how an Indigenous matriarch is struggling to live on her traditional territory

If you’re driving east along Lougheed Highway in Maple Ridge, you’ll find the home of 80-year-old Florence Thomas just above the train tracks.

She is the last remaining matriarch of the Whonnock People.

Inside her deteriorating trailer, Thomas has no access to reliable power or running water. She rents a portable washroom and has to make weekly trips to collect drinking water in town.

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“My living here has been very difficult; being 80 years old and blind in the right eye and half deaf in the left ear, I survive on my family coming to visit,” said Thomas.

“I also can’t get fresh meat because I don’t have a fridge. I live like a bachelor, I guess, because I get a lot of canned food and a lot of bottled water.”

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Thomas didn’t always have to live like this. Her family had a house on the Whonnock 1 Reserve back in the 1970s. According to the Thomas family, their house was demolished in 1999 due to a mould infestation, and despite them being told that a new one would be built in six months, all that remains now is an empty lot.

The Whonnock Cultural Reclamation Society is now raising funds to set up a brand-new trailer for Thomas on the property, donated by the generous Kwan-Kwaw-a-pilt First Nation.

“Back in the day, we had community here. Now we find ourselves displaced on so many levels, and we find it our job to really bring our people home,” said Cynthia Jim, Thomas’ daughter and director of the Whonnock Cultural Reclamation Society.

“Efforts [include] fundraising from small raffles to now social media, using anything we can.”

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Their goal is to raise $32,000.

But the family’s fight to “reclaim the land” goes back decades. The Whonnock 1 Reserve currently falls under the jurisdiction of the Kwantlen First Nation.

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The Thomas family alleges that the Kwantlen Band, which has fiduciary responsibility to provide for its members, has not been supportive.

In a statement to CityNews, the Chief and Council of Kwantlen First Nation say, in part, “…For many years, however, members of the Thomas family, including Florence and her sons Robert Thomas and Chris Thomas, have sought to illegitimately take control of the reserve, which has raised tensions among the community and made governance of the reserve very challenging…”

The Whonnock Tribe was declared extinct decades ago, and there is very little recorded history about their existence.

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“As I understand, there was a bit of disagreement with a family who say they’re Whonnock, and this was considered offensive to the Kwantlen leadership, and the issues started from that point. But certainly, as registered members, they do owe them the services,” said Aboriginal lawyer Anita Boscariol.

Politics aside, Thomas just wants a safe and dignified home that her seven children, 31 grandchildren, and 22 great-grandchildren can return to.