Bulkley Valley-Stikine.
3 candidates, one seat.

Three Nations describe the Skeena and Bulkley valleys as their territory, each in its own words. The Gitxsan Huwilp Government says the Gitxsan Laxyip, the traditional territory, stretches from the basin of the upper Skeena River around Legate Creek to the Skeena headwaters and the streams around it. It says the Gitxsan have lived on this land for over 10,000 years. The Province of British Columbia lists five member bands of the Gitxsan Nation: Gitanmaax, Gitsegukla, Gitwangak, Glen Vowell (Sik-e-Dahk) and Kispiox. It places them along the Skeena, Bulkley and Kispiox rivers within 40 kilometres of Hazelton.

Gitwangak holds the remains of a hill fort. Parks Canada says Gitwangak adaawak, the Gitwangak history, recalls the battles of Chief Nekt, who fought to gain control of the trading trails from the Nass River to the Kitimat River, and credits him with building the defences. The fort had five cedar-plank longhouses on the summit, inside a palisade. Archaeological research suggests that people had used the site for at least a century when it was burned and abandoned near 1835. It was designated a national historic site in 1971. The hereditary leaders of the Simgiget’m Gitwangak Society have asked that it be called Gitwangak Ta’awdzep, using the Gitxsan word for battle hill.

The Gitanyow Nation is represented by the Simgigyet’m Gitanyow, the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs. A 2024 release from Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada says that for the Gitanyow Nation the inherent right of self-government is found in the Dax’gyet, the strength and authority of the Hereditary Chiefs' relationship with their ancestral lands.

The Office of the Wet’suwet’en has worked from Smithers since 1994 and is governed by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who live across the traditional territories. The Office describes five clans: Gilseyhu (Big Frog), Laksilyu (Small Frog), Gitdumden (Wolf/Bear), Laksamshu (Fireweed) and Tsayu (Beaver). It says the people speak Witsuwit’en, a dialect of the Babine-Witsuwit’en language. Its Hagwilget page gives the village name Tse-kya, meaning base of rock in Wet’suwet’en, and says that village and the area to the east and south make up the Wet’suwet’en territories. Its Witset page places Witset, formerly Moricetown, 30 kilometres west of Smithers and 32 kilometres east of Hazelton.

In the north, the Tahltan Central Government gives the area of Tahltan territory as 95,933 square kilometres. It says the western border runs parallel to the Alaska-Canada border and includes part of the Yukon. It says the south-eastern border takes in the upper Nass tributaries and the western half of the Stikine plateau, including the sacred headwaters of the Stikine, Nass and Skeena rivers. Tahltans live in three main communities: Telegraph Creek, Dease Lake and Iskut. The Tahltan Nation Development Corporation writes the community names as Tlēgōhīn, Tatl’ah and Łuwechōn, and describes two clans, the Crow (Tsesk’iya) and the Wolf (Ch’ioyone).

The same corporation says that in 1910 Tahltan Chief Nanok and 80 other Tahltan leaders signed the Tahltan Declaration. It says the document asserted continued sovereignty over Tahltan land and declared that any land interests in the territory must be settled directly with the Tahltan people. The Canadian Encyclopedia reports that Tahltan reserves were set aside in 1905, and that since 1972 the Iskut band and the Tahltan band have been administered separately. It counted 827 registered members for the Iskut band and 2,225 for the Tahltan band in November 2025.

The Taku River Tlingit First Nation says on its website that it is located in Atlin and that its territory covers over 40,000 square kilometres in British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska. Dease River First Nation is a Kaska Dena nation. The Kaska Dena Council says its home is Good Hope Lake, on Highway 37, and that it has 186 band members, 38 of them living on reserve. The Province lists Dease River First Nation, Daylu Dena Council and Kwadacha Nation as the three British Columbia nations of the Kaska Nation negotiating in the BC treaty process, at Stage 4, Agreement-in-Principle negotiations.

BC Geographical Names says the Stikine River takes its name from a Tlingit word meaning the river. It records that the Stickeen Territories were placed under British sovereignty in 1862 and joined to British Columbia in 1863, after gold was found and Russia expanded in Alaska. The Western Union Telegraph Company then planned a line to join North America and Europe by way of the Bering Strait. Its 1866 route crossed the Stikine River at Telegraph Creek, which gave the place its name. In the Bulkley Valley, the party of Colonel Charles S. Bulkley wintered its horses in 1865 and 1866, and the river carries his name. The Village of Hazelton says work parties reached Gitanmaax in 1866 and that the project was abandoned the next February, when a cable across the Atlantic was finished.

Traders and miners followed. The Tahltan Band Council says the Stikine and Cassiar gold rushes of the 1860s brought the first major influx of non-Tahltan people into Tahltan territory. The Village of Hazelton says Gitanmaax became a main supply point for the Omineca gold rush in the 1860s and the Cassiar gold rush in the 1870s. It says Thomas Hankin, a former Hudson’s Bay Company trader, named the community for the hazel trees on the flats at Gitanmaax. The company put its first sternwheel riverboat, the Caledonia, on the Skeena in 1891, and the village says she was the first steamboat to reach Hazelton. The Tahltan Band Council says the company started a trading post at Dease Lake in 1837. BC Geographical Names records the Dease Lake Trading Post as opened in 1838. Post offices opened at Hazelton on 1 May 1899 and at Telegraph Creek on 14 June 1899.

BC Geographical Names records that Fritz Miller and his partner Kenny McLaren staked the Discovery claim at Pine Creek on 25 July 1898. The Atlin post office opened on 1 April 1899. A 1930 gazetteer entry quoted in the record calls Atlin a post office and mining town with a Provincial Government Agent, a Gold Commissioner, the Provincial Police, a telegraph, a school, a hospital and churches. A 1980 book by R.C. Coutts, quoted in the record for Atlin Lake, says that 10,000 to 15,000 people heading for the Klondike were diverted to the discovery. It adds that the White Pass and Yukon Railway, under construction at the time, lost 80% of its workmen.

The lake and the creeks had Tlingit names before the rush. BC Geographical Names records that the name Atlin comes from the Taku River Tlingit name Ahklen or Aht’lah, meaning big water, an explanation Chief Henry Taku Jack also gave in the Vancouver Province on 25 March 1948. The record also gives a Tagish word, A-tlin, as another possible origin. It says the preferred modern Tlingit spelling is  Tlèn, from advice given in 1999 by the Yukon Native Language Centre. The same office lists Koosawu.áa Héen as the official name of Pine Creek.

The Canadian Encyclopedia says the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was incorporated in 1903 and built between 1906 and 1914, with a main line from Winnipeg through Edmonton to Prince Rupert. The Town of Smithers says the community was founded in 1913 as the divisional headquarters of that railway, and took its name from Sir Alfred Smithers, chairman of the railway's board. BC Geographical Names records that the Smithers post office opened on 30 October 1913, that Smithers was incorporated as a village on 1 October 1921 and that it became a town on 1 January 1967. The town's history page says many Dutch and Swiss families settled there after the Second World War. The 2021 census counted 180 people in the district who were born in the Netherlands.

The other valley towns have dates of their own. BC Geographical Names says the Telkwa post office opened on 1 August 1910 and Telkwa was incorporated as a village on 18 July 1952. The same record gives the traditional name Dehilkwa, meaning where the rivers flow west, as told by Gary R. George, Rita A. George and the late Andrew George Sr., Bulkley Valley residents of Wet’suwet’en ancestry. The New Hazelton post office opened on 14 April 1912. The record for Hazelton says the townsite eventually moved further east and became known as New Hazelton. Hazelton was incorporated as a village on 15 February 1956, and New Hazelton as a district municipality on 15 December 1980.

Stewart lies at the head of Portland Canal, north of Prince Rupert. BC Geographical Names records that the Stewart post office opened on 1 May 1905. The record says Robert and John Stewart, brothers from Victoria who held an interest in many of the mines in the area, formed the Stewart Land Company in 1906 and later laid out the townsite. It credits that account to the Stewart Historical Society in 2004. Stewart was incorporated as a village municipality on 16 May 1930, and re-incorporated as a district municipality on 27 June 1968 under the name District of Stewart.

The northern settlements along Highway 37 have later dates. The record for Dease Lake says the Porter Landing post office opened on 1 July 1920 at the north end of Dease Lake. It was moved 28 miles south to the settlement at the south end of the lake, renamed Dease Lake in 1930, closed on 1 April 1934 and re-established on 3 February 1972. The Iskut post office opened as Eddontenajon on 10 February 1965 and was renamed Iskut in 1973.

The Canadian Encyclopedia reports that in 1984 the hereditary chiefs of the Gitxsan and the Wet’suwet’en filed a land title action in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. It claimed title to over 58,000 square kilometres in northwestern British Columbia, and the trial began in 1987. Judge Allan McEachern ruled on 8 March 1991 that any title had been extinguished when British Columbia joined Confederation. The Court of Appeal of British Columbia agreed on 25 June 1993 that the claimants did not have title. The Supreme Court of Canada heard the case on 16 and 17 June 1997 and ruled on 11 December 1997. It found that the province had no right to extinguish the peoples' rights to their ancestral territories, and that oral history is evidence equal to other kinds of evidence. The case is named after Delgamuukw, a Gitxsan hereditary chief name held at the start of the trial by Earl Muldoe, a Gitxsan man from Kispiox.

The Gitxsan Huwilp Government calls the case a joint lawsuit with the neighbouring Wet’suwet’en and the first comprehensive validation of Gitxsan rights and title by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Province lists the Gitxsan Nation Treaty Society at Stage 4, Agreement-in-Principle negotiations, in the BC treaty process.

Agreements with the Crown followed in the northwest. The Gitanyow Governance Accord, signed in 2021 by Gitanyow, Canada and British Columbia, sets a path from the Indian Act to Gitanyow self-government based on its hereditary governance system. In a release dated 15 July 2024, Canada said it had signed a Funding Agreement with the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs and was providing $18.4 million. The Province lists a Kaska Dena Council Incremental Treaty Agreement from 2013 and an amending agreement from 2016, signed for Daylu Dena Council, Dease River First Nation and Kwadacha Nation.