After two decades of research into the Texada Island land scandal the challenges faced by first nations during the colonial era in British Columbia are obvious…
The Texada land scandal was an actual event, and was the subject of the First Royal Commission in British Columbia. It was a circumstance that I felt revealed some of the underlying sentiments that existed then, among settlers and among the people of First Nations. These inclinations also reveal sentiments that underpinned the social and political structures that were in place during late colonial British Columbia. Whether overt or not, by their very nature, these sentiments had a hand in facilitating the calculated transfer of all land in the Province of British Columbia, from the collective First Nations, to the Crown. The form that the land policy eventually took, ultimately resulted in the smothering of First Nations culture – not one culture, viewed collectively, but many individual Nations, that were each unique unto themselves.
Much of the displacement occurred at the hands of individuals, who took advantage of the lack of guidelines and regulation, both within the colonies themselves, and from the Federal Government.
Presently, there are 198 distinct First Nations in the province of British Columbia, each with their own unique traditions and history. There are more than 30 First Nation languages, and close to 60 dialects spoken in the province. Many did not survive integration, and have disappeared in the mists of history.
The struggles the Natives endured over the last two centuries, as a direct result of this poorly executed interference, is an outgrowth – an evolution – of the circumstances they were presented with. From the time of European arrival here, and well beyond, for the First Nations, there was no context for understanding the white man’s rule of law. It was forced upon them. Much of the bigotry that ultimately became entrenched in “white” culture, resulted from impatience and a lack of understanding, that, no matter what measures were enacted, the Natives just didn’t seem to get it. In searching the historical record, it’s not much wonder: little effort anada Census. While all this was happening, new place names were given throughout Tla’amin territory, by anyone who happened by, with no First Nations consultation.
Not surprisingly, many of these places had already been given recognized names by the Tla’amin people. In 1920, Tla’amin children, between the ages of five and fifteen years old, were apprehended from their families, en masse, by Indian Agents and the North West Mounted Police, and sent to Catholic Residential schools, the last one of these, St. Mary’s, in Mission, finally closed in 1984. Even onward until 1960, there was a “Whites off reserve /Natives back on reserve by dusk” curfew still in effect. Natives still had limited seating in restaurants, pubs and the movie theatre in Powell River without proof of enfranchisement. This segregation occurred in every form of public transportation and service, including steamships, trains and buses.
Despite extensive exposure to the realities of integration here in BC, and across Canada, I was shocked, during my research, to discover an entry in series of daily log books, compiled by the British Columbia Provincial Police during the late-ninetieth century, and housed in the BC Provincial Museum, in Victoria, that up to the late nineteenth century, there were still hangings for “Indians practicing sorcery”. It is also recorded that during Amor De Cosmos jurisdiction, in 1892, Father Chirouse – the Godhead for the church in Sliammon, was sentenced to one year for “whipping an Indian” (a scene incorporated, for posterity, but via “symbolic” players, into A Garden of Thieves); and, in 1894, a notation was made regarding a Mr. Hollingsworth’s and his purchase of “Sarah Cliff, a half-breed Indian girl.” These Provincial Police archives, are testament to the minutiae and specific details of First Nations life, during and after integration; they do far more than any running narrative, to pin-point how insidious and destructive the dismantling of First Nations culture was.
History here, is but a looking glass to the much larger picture. I am reminded of Alan Watts, who writes, “The five colours will blind a man’s sight. The eye’s sensitivity to colour is impaired by the fixed idea that there are just five true colours. In fact, there is an infinite continuity of shading, and breaking it down into divisions, distracts the attention from its subtlety.” We are capable of endearing ourselves to only one colour at any given time, as with truth and its many shades of meaning. But, to suddenly see the meaning of a life, or the far-flung effects of an event in history, from the infinite possibilities of meaning; to realize that there is a story that, if known, would have changed the course of things, what then?
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