The worst thing that can happen to a property owner isn’t a flood or a leaky foundation. It’s learning that you don’t own your property — that an Aboriginal band does. This summer’s Cowichan Tribes v. Canada decision presented property owners in Richmond, BC, with exactly that horrible reality, awarding Aboriginal title to numerous properties, private and governmental, situated within a large portion of Richmond’s Fraser River riverfront area, to Vancouver Island’s Cowichan Tribes. For more than 150 years, these properties had been owned privately or by the government. The Cowichan Tribes had never permanently lived there.