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The British law that created the mainland colony of British Columbia in 1858 had the racist Doctrine of Discovery and Terra Nullius written out in its first sentence, falsely claiming that "wild and unoccupied Territories..." were open for settlements & more "colonists".
#bcday
#bcday
Appointed governor James Douglas (a Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factor) wrote in 1858 "If the country be thrown open to indiscriminate immigration, the interests of the Empire may suffer from the introduction of a foreign population whose sympathies may be decidedly anti-British."
In December of 1858, Douglas signed a proclamation granting himself the unilateral authority to grant "to any person [...] any Land belonging to the Crown," in contravention of Indigenous law and title (no agreements had been made, aside from some on Vancouver Island).
This was soon followed by a Land Proclamation in 1859 that unilaterally claimed Crown ownership over "all the lands in British Columbia, and all the mines and minerals," setting a price of ten shillings per acre of surveyed land & auctioning off mineral lands (all Native land).
The Land Pre-emption Proclamation of 1860 allowed colonists/settlers to seize up to 160 acres of Native land, so long as they made permanent 'improvements' to the land worth 10 shillings per acre & paid a filing claim fee of 8 shillings.
In 1861, Douglas & the BC gov't passed a series of laws amending land pre-emption, lowering the price to 4 shillings, 2 pence per acre (equivalent to 1 US dollar), allowing pre-emptors to leave for 6 months without losing title & restricting them to one pre-emption at a time.
The 1866 BC Land Ordinance explicitly excluded "Aborigines" from pre-empting land, and not just Indigenous people from BC but from "neighbouring" territories, without definition. In 1870, they'd specify they meant Indigenous people from anywhere on the continent.
In 1884, after BC had joined Canada, the gov't passed an explicitly racist law to prevent "any person of the Chinese race" from pre-empting or purchasing parts of pre-empted lands, excluding people of Chinese ancestry from the settler juridical category even when born in BC.
For more see Michael Begg (2007), Phyllis Mikkelsen (1950), Robert E. Cail (1974), Paul Tennant (1990), Cole Harris (2003)
An anti-colonial history of “British Columbia”
A graphic narrative of resistance
by Gord Hill
https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/an-anti-colonial-history
#bcday
A graphic narrative of resistance
by Gord Hill
https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/an-anti-colonial-history
#bcday
This Land is Not for Sale!
STOP THE BC TREATY PROCESS
by Warrior Publications https://warriorpublications.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/this-land-is-not-for-sale/
STOP THE BC TREATY PROCESS
by Warrior Publications https://warriorpublications.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/this-land-is-not-for-sale/
War on the Coast – The Illegal Formation of British Columbia (Warrior Publications)
https://mgouldhawke.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/waroncoast-read.pdf
https://mgouldhawke.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/waroncoast-read.pdf
In 1862, under governor James Douglas, a smallpox epidemic was propagated throughout BC when the government destroyed the camps of Native people in Victoria & forced them to leave, going up the coast & into the interior. https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2020/05/19/biological-warfare-disease-and-depopulation-zig-zag-2004/
"And yet, colonial authorities not only 'permitted' infected persons to return to their villages, they forced them to, knowing full well the devastating effects of European disease."
- Zig-Zag
- Zig-Zag
"Commenting on the 1862 smallpox epidemic, Boyd states:
'…this epidemic might have been avoided, and the whites knew it. Vaccine was available. and the efficacy of quarantine was understood.'”
(Spirit of Pestilence, p. 172)
'…this epidemic might have been avoided, and the whites knew it. Vaccine was available. and the efficacy of quarantine was understood.'”
(Spirit of Pestilence, p. 172)
“The colonial authorities… knew that [expelling Indigenous people from Victoria] would spread smallpox throughout British Columbia,” explained Marianne Nicholson, a Dzawada’enuxw/Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw artist with a PhD in Linguistics and Anthropology. https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/how-a-smallpox-epidemic-forged-modern-british-columbia/
“That was an act of genocide against Indigenous people… At that point in time the [government] wanted to be able to claim those lands without having to compensate or recognize Indigenous title.”
Many historical accounts of early colonial epidemics leave out the fact that a smallpox vaccine existed & had been implemented by the early 1800s in various territories that would later be claimed by Canada, on a limited & restricted scale (unnecessarily propagating disease)
A 1990 history book published by the Secwépemc Cultural Education Society for instance describes HBC factor John Tod as using the vaccine as extortion in 1846, as he refused to administer the vaccine until Secwépemc people brought him a years supply of salmon.
Before he became governor of British Columbia, James Douglas in 1828 had been involved in the extra-judicial murder of a Dakelh man in retaliation for the killing of two HBC traders...
#BCDay http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/kwah_7E.html
#BCDay http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/kwah_7E.html
Douglas' Cree wife Amelia was said to have saved him from being killed in return. (Van Kirk, 1980)
