indigenous

Alberta says those policies, including an oil tanker ban off the coast of BC, which both Premier Eby and BC indigenous leaders want to keep in place, are hindering energy development.

Some are concerned this will lead to the unsustainable extraction of timber or sugarcane to export abroad and burn, and the theft of indigenous peoples' land.

The move comes three years after Pope Francis issued a historic apology to Canada's First Nations for the church's role in the "genocide" and suppression of indigenous identity through the residential schools programme.

Some carried signs reading "demarcation now", calling for indigenous groups to be given legal ownership of their territories.

For centuries it was “the world’s greatest melting pot” of indigenous, European, African, Caribbean and Asian peoples, the crossroads of the vast Spanish empire.