4 — Sunday, March 31, 1991 - North Shore News Aboriginal title vanished through cracks in the Crown THE SOCIAL disruptions caused by trade with Kuro- peas, the introduction of guns, ecological collapse and epidemics were devastating to the Indians of what is now British Col- umbia. But the single big- gest factor in their loss of control of the land was — and remains, the legal and political system that was thrown like an early driftnet around them, ubiquitous, invisible and impossible to escape. Bob Hunter STRICTLY PERSONAL The legal and political aspect was driven initially by commercial concerns. It can be argued, of course, that these concerns remain the driving force to this day, since the climate of economic uncer- tainty caused by unresolved land claims is put forward repeatedly by industry as a major worry. The year 1849 was the critical turning-point. That was the year Britain issued a Royal Charter proclaiming Vancouver Island a colony. At the time, there were fewer than 400 white people living on the island, yet by virtue of nothing more than a bold, distant pen-stroke, lands that had been occupied since the last Ice Age by Indians were unilaterally declared to belong to a foreign Crown. It was an outrageous way for an immigrant minority to behave, giving the local inhabitants no say in the matter whatsoever, However, this was the way em- Pires were built. Autocratic and imperialistic as the distant pen- stroke might have been, no one can say that the British were not canny. At the time the Royal Charter was proclaimed, there were at the very least 100,000 Indians living between the mountains and the Pacific Ocean. That represented 40 per cent of all the Indians in Canada. The commercial European in- terests involved were concerned mainly with products from the sea. It wasn’t until 1793 that Scots-Canadians, representing the North West Co., entered the pic- ture, courtesy of Alexander Mackenzie coming via the Peace and Fraser rivers. Tt wasn’t until amalgamation with the North West Co. that the Hudson's Bay Co. extended its trading influence over the moun- tains. The Royal Charter was a direct result of that influence. When it was declared, the HBC was charged with the settlement and colonization of Vancouver Istand while still retaining fur trading rights not only on the island out the mainiand as well. The arrangement was su cozy that the company’s chief factor at Fort Victoria, James Douglas, became governor of the new col- ony without having to give up his main job, despite the fact that set- tlement and the fur trade had been shown repeatedly to be essentially incompatible. The Indians might not have unders:ood the niceties of the relationship between the Crown and the HBC back in England. But they knew from their experi- ences so far with 200-ton gun- boats, as well as the dependency of trading posts which they had been nanoevred intc, that a change definitely not to their benefit had occurred. To ease Indian fears, Gov. Douglas got to work negotiating a series of aboriginal title sur- renders, which included provisions for village reserves, in the nor- theastern and southeastern paris of the island. Along with the almost acciden- tal inclusion of the northeast quarter of the province in Treaty 8 — one of a series negotiated at gunpoint with the Plains Indians — these island treaties were ihe only formal arrangements involv- ing title of land in which the In- dians of B.C. have participated. It wasn’t until 1858, when the mainland, technically controlled by the HBC and known to the whites as New Caledonia, was in- corporated as part of the new colony, that Gov. Douglas finally severed his corporate connections, Thus, a political entity had emerged from a purely commer-. cial one. In 1861, Douglas ordered that the village reserves throughout the colony be clearly defined, and the boundaries ‘‘to be pointed out”’ by knowledgeable Indian elders. For the very first time, fixed aboriginal occupational sites of long standing were confirmed. To protect them from being gobbled up by the settlers, Douglas declared them to be held by the Crown in trust for the Indian people. A distinctly Canadian sit::ction arises. The first treaties with in- dians in the Eastern woodlands did not include reserves. Near the end of the empire-building phase, in B.C., the Indians were pres- ented with reserves vithout treaties. This was a considerable legal anomaly, since, according to the Royal Proclamation of 1763 — a full century earlier — the principle of aboriginal title had been clearly expressed as applying to all of British America. This proclama- tion became part of the legal foundation of the Dominion when it came into being in 1867. If the principle of aboriginal ti- tle held in any part of Canada, it should have held everywhere. But when B.C. decided to link up with the Dominion in 1871, what was Canadian law did not replace (as it ought to have) what had become practice in B.C. Thus, aboriginal title vanished through a crack in the articles of Confederation. The actual process of the colony joining Dominion was a straightforward claiui-jumip. At the time of the vote, there were roughly 30,000 Indian survivors in the area, compared with a mere 10,000 colonists. The Indians, once again, were neither consulted nor permitted to vote. As a legal exercise, it compares with the mafia laundering money in order to go legit. Stolen goods — i.e., ‘title to the soil’? — was traded to Canada in exchange for political recogni- tion and a piece of the national action, with the blessing of the far-away Crown that had set up the heist in the first place. When Gilbert Malcolm Sproat marched ashore at the head of Alberni Canal in 1869 and told the chief of the age-old village located there that his people had to move to make way fora sawmill, the old Indian observed, **More King-George-men will soon be here and will take our land, our firewood, our fishing ground... we shall be placed ina little spot, and shall have to do everything according to the fancies of the King-George-men.”* A totally accurate prophecy. And the times, we see, have not changed at all. PUBLIC * Store almost anything * Compare our low rates ¢ Personal or Business Storage ¢ On-site managers ¢ Gate controlled access ee Ee es EES ee I Offer expires April 28, 1991. Subject to availability. New rentals only, Docs nat include deposits ar fees. 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