To Share Not Surrender: Indigenous and Settler Visions of Treaty-Making in the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia

To say that the patchwork of colonies that became Canada has a complicated history of treaty-making with Indigenous people would be an understatement. To Share Not Surrender helps to demystify one segment of this history by focusing on the Vancouver Island treaties signed from 1850 to 1854. This edited collection brings together some of the biggest names in British Columbia historical scholarship to analyze these treaties and to assess the dearth of historical treaties elsewhere in what is now British Columbia. This collection follows the life and career of Sir James Douglas (the chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Victoria and governor of Vancouver Island and British Columbia in the 1850s and 1860s) to provide historical context for understanding current Indigenous land issues and the modern treaty process.All chapters deserve a close read. Here, I offer examples to demonstrate the range of scholarship. Adele Perry analyzes the Douglas and Connolly families before, during, and after the negotiation of treaties on Vancouver Island. Using select primary materials as case studies, Perry effectively weaves together gender, class, and race to explore how Douglas’s life experiences influenced the Vancouver Island treaties and their historical legacies.Hamar Foster examines Indigenous land rights in British Columbia after 1846—the year that the Supreme Court of Canada declared as the “effective date” for British sovereignty in British Columbia. Foster argues that the legal precedent of sovereign immunity—meaning that a citizen, Indigenous or non-Indigenous, could not sue the Crown without the Crown’s permission—tied up Indigenous land claims in British Columbia (like that of Calder v. British Columbia [1973]) until it was repealed in 1974. Foster writes legal history in ways that are explanatory and accessible, which is essential given the larger collection’s aim to provide information to a broad audience.Most readers will find Neil Vallance’s chapter surprising, given his discussion of how the Indigenous signatories to the treaties actually signed their names to blank pages, with the text being added later after proper forms were sent from London. Vallance provides an excellent historiography of the treaties and offers a detailed look at what we actually know of how the treaties were negotiated (spoiler alert: it is very little), which is shocking given the importance of these treaties to British Columbian and Canadian history.Chapter 5 provides a remarkable discussion of the Indigenous translation of the Vancouver Island treaties. Not only does it complicate the process of negotiating a treaty within a multilingual context, but it also provides the first Salish language versions of the Fort Victoria treaties—rendered by Coast Salish elders Dr. Elmer George and Dr. STOLCEL John Elliot. As the chapter notes, this landmark accomplishment sparks a “new chapter” in discussions on the Vancouver Island treaties and provides a foundation for renewed discussions on the legacy of treaties based on the contributions of this important collection.John Lutz examines why Douglas made a blitz of treaties between 1850 and 1854 in certain geographies but failed to finalize treaties elsewhere. Lutz describes how different stakeholders understood treaty-making and highlights that, surprisingly, most were supporters of treaties and paying Indigenous people for their lands. However, as Lutz explains, bureaucratic red tape between the colonial government and the local legislative assembly about who controlled land sales and revenue signaled the end of treaty-making after 1854.Keith Carlson, using settler colonial theory, posits that the mainland colony of British Columbia was in a liminal state during Douglas’s tenure as governor of the nascent colony—not yet a settler colonial society but with the potential to develop into one. Carlson highlights that Douglas did not imbue his settler colonial visions with assumptions of the racial inferiority of Indigenous people. Carlson shows us that Douglas (a mixed-race man married to a Metis woman) saw alternatives to colonial control that placed Indigenous people “on the bottom rung” of settler society (311), which reminds us of the complexity of settler colonialism over time and space.The only minor criticism I have comes outside of the articles proper. The book begins with a “Treaty Timeline”—a format that will be welcomed by readers. I am hesitant to fall into the cliché of telling editors they should have simply “added more detail” when space in a book comes at a premium. However, the timeline misses a few events that I see as central to the histories presented in the book. For example, the smallpox epidemics of the 1780s deserve mention, as they directly impacted settler-Indigenous relations over the nineteenth century (and beyond). Also missing is the 1858 Fraser River gold rush—an event that saw tens of thousands of non-Indigenous people moving into Indigenous space before any treaties had been negotiated. One could also make a case for adding the passing of the Indian Act in 1876 and for mentions of important amendments to the Indian Act, such as the 1927 amendment that prohibited Indigenous people from hiring lawyers to pursue land claims against the government. These aside, the timeline is thorough and a helpful guide to the following chapters.This collection stems from an initially proposed self-proclaimed conference of “white academics sharing their versions of history” (4) that morphed into a truly collaborative event inviting scholars, settlers, and Indigenous people from local Nations. Ultimately, the discussions held at that conference in 2017 (both in academic panels, in the hallways, and across lunch tables) produced “a different kind of knowledge” (4) that forms the nucleus of this unique edited collection. The resulting collection draws from a variety of perspectives and demonstrates the importance of collaboration and inclusivity to creating a rich, vibrant, and discourse-challenging book that should find a home on the shelf of anyone seeking to better understanding British Columbia’s complex history of treaty-making.

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