Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance and Reserves in British Columbia (review)

Reviewed by: Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance and Reserves in British Columbia Jean-Paul Restoule (bio) R.C. Harris. Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance and Reserves in British Columbia University of British Columbia Press 2002. xiii, 418. $85.00, $29.95 This is an important book for historians, geographers, lawyers, government officials, and scholars of Aboriginal studies. But it deserves to reach a wider audience because it speaks to fundamental issues of Canada's founding, namely, the dispossession of the original peoples living here. In British Columbia, where the question of Aboriginal title was not satisfactorily settled over most of the land, this issue is particularly volatile. Why were the people limited to, in most cases, small reserves? How could this be done without addressing the matter of Aboriginal title? Did Aboriginal people not resist? Harris addresses these issues, outlining the development of reserve policy in BC and chronicling Native resistance to this process. Harris's work is exceptional for several reasons. One is that his is the first work to sustain such an extensive focus on BC reserve policy. Harris suggests that the outcome of BC's land question was by no means inevitable. In making his case, Harris carefully presents background information to each reserve superintendent's appointments drawing on correspondence and journals to present the development of political goals and ideology. Particular 'colonizers' such as James Douglas, factor of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1849 and soon after governor of British Columbia, and Malcolm Gilbert Sproat, Indian Reserve commissioner from 1876 to 1880, changed their views on the land question as they spent more time among [End Page 468] Native people and actually listened to their concerns. Harris suggests that the position of Native people in BC would be very different today had these men's views not been superseded by those of others in provincial power. Harris presents the arguments of settler colonists, showing a rivalry between local settlers and distant colonizers (first London, then Ottawa) which continues today. This contribution is enlightening, but what stands out in Harris's work is the presentation of a Native voice. While this voice is filtered through the interpretations of reserve and Royal Commissions, Harris demonstrates that from the early twentieth century until now, Native resistance was very clear. It was just not very effective when the words and actions of colonizers were backed by cannons and gunboats. As settlers continued to take the best land for agricultural and other purposes, with the full compliance of provincial power, restrictive legislation, rather than direct expressions of might, served the purpose of suppressing Native resistance for much of the twentieth century. Only in very recent times are Aboriginal people getting recognition for ideas they have consistently expressed since the earliest times of contact. Harris argues that the socio-economic needs of contemporary Native people are an inheritance of a misguided policy of dispossession and assimilation. The issue can be addressed in one of two ways, says Harris. The first of these is assimilation, or in other words, the status quo, which has proven ill advised and unworkable. The second, what Harris calls a politics of difference, he claims is the only way forward. It entails a redistribution of resources, specifically land, and with it, Native control over resources. Resting as it does on the political will of BC citizens who currently occupy these lands or receive lucrative benefits from them, Harris seems a touch pessimistic that this solution will be realized. Harris personalizes historical information by entering into the issues through individuals and their actions, focusing particularly on James Douglas, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, Joseph Trutch (Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works, 1864-71) and Peter O'Reilly (Indian Reserve Commissioner, 1880-98). Each of these men appears to embody metonymically a greater idea of how Native land policy should be approached. Sproat, the subject of Harris's book dedication, undergoes the most dramatic 'character arc' becoming, ironically, the voice of the Native people in his last days as superintendent. Harris's writing makes Native Space read like a compelling novel as opposed to a historical treatise. Yet every interpretation is sound, documented in over fifty pages of footnotes. Harris has...

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