Archive Quarterly

News coverage from the time shows  the significance of the break-through case. Editors and readers alike realized that the question of Indigenous sovereignty is linked to ownership of the land, "native title" as it was called, and this hunting case from Nanaimo brought the issue into the modern courts and Canadian common law.

David White and Clifford Bob's ancestors had sold land to Governor James Douglas in 1854, so the Colony of Vancouver's Island would have land to settle on. The court case revolved around the Province's ongoing denial of continuing rights to hunt on lands that were not sold to the Colony.

A magistrate convicted White and Bob of illegally being in possession of six deer; they appealed, and a County Court threw out the convictions, acquitting them on the basis that they had ongoing rights to hunt on unoccupied land there in the ancestral territory. The Province of BC appealed that decision all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. White and Bob proved their hunting rights were superior to BC's game laws.

"...this game warden kept arresting them for hunting deer and throwing them in Oakalla,..."

An interview with Kitty Sparrow about that day in court, in September of 1964, when White and Bob won at the BC Court of Appeal.

"The game warden was sitting next to me and when he saw the jig was up, he got up to leave and my mother stuck her chin out and she said, "You bastard, get back there and learn something." Laughter

AQ April 24  

When the new Province of British Columbia encountered the reality of buying land for settlement from the Indigenous Peoples, it made legislation instead.

BC's assumption of access to everything west of the Rocky Mountains was met with dismissal from the Attorney General of the newly confederated Canada. "...all lands belonging to the Province, shall belong to the Province "subject to any trust existing in respect thereof, and to any interest other than that of the Province in the same."  

The 1874 Act was disallowed; Canada got a new Attorney General; the new AG allowed a renewed BC Lands Act, saying, “Great inconvenience and confusion might result from its disallowance.”  

With this cloud on title, Canada and BC took drastic actions: the Indian Act and the Indian Reserve Commissions.

AQ April 24

Indigenous response to the "Indian Reserve Commission" was swift and clear.

The 1874 Petition represented each community from Douglas Portage through the Lower Fraser, and up the seashore of the mainland to Bute Inlet. There were 109 signators. 

AQ April 24

Over widespread and meaningfully organized protest, Canada legislated the Indian Reserve boundaries marked off by the 1912-1914 Reserve Commission.

In AQ, we will read about the political steam-roller from the letters and petitions of individual nations, the Allied Tribes, the Douglas Tribes, and more.

The Land Question west of the Rockies today is scarred by the fact that Indian Reserve boundaries, surveyed and legislated at about one acre per person in 1924, have rarely and barely been increased. Today, almost 80% of Indigenous persons live off-reserve.

AQ April 24

The Bonaparte Roadblock at Cache Creek in 1974 is considered the first armed standoff in modern history, since the turn of the century. The issue that sparked it? The on-reserve housing crisis in Indigenous British Columbia.

The Native Peoples Caravan launched from an occupation in Onigaming, Anishinabek. Heavily armed police responded. Similar issues of poverty and denial united people from coast to coast to coast in marching to Ottawa, where they presented the Native Peoples Manifesto.

AQ Summer 24

In 2014, the first and only judicial declaration of Aboriginal title land in Canada was made for the Tsilhqot'in nation. That was 60 years after the White and Bob case brought the fact of unsold land rights into court for the very first time. And 50 years after the Nisga'a case in Calder resulted in strong judicial opinion that native land title has survived every aspect of colonial assumptions of jurisdiction.

AQ Summer 24

What was life like for women in the 1960s and 70s, especially those who had lost Indian Status?

In the July issue, Archive Quarterly looks at the brave legal battles of Jeannette Corbiere-Lavell and Yvonne Bedard, Sandra Lovelace, Sharon McIvor, and their interaction with local magistrates, the Supreme Court of Canada, and UN Treaty Bodies. We will look at how they won in the county court - and how Canada turned around and litigated against them, saying the Canadian human rights laws were not meant to override the Indian Act, and inviting 160 Indian Band Chiefs to Ottawa to shut displaced women out.

With a special interview by Jeannette Corbier-Lavell, Commissioner on Citizenship for the Anishinaabe Nation.

And - a comprehensive look at the amendments to the Indian Act which most affected women.

AQ Summer 24

On January 31, 1973, the Supreme Court of Canada gave the first ever ruling on a native title case brought by Indigenous plaintiffs. It was inconclusive - yet three judges ruled that unextinguished Native title continues in British Columbia.

Examining government policy to limit the scope of land claims; direct action by Indigenous Peoples to demonstrate the full extent of their land titles; Royal Commissions that exposed government duplicity; and tracking title cases through the colonial courts to the 2024 Nuuchatlaht case; AQ presents a graphic and plain-language reader.

With new interviews, old archival documentation, and the lifelong experience of Indigenous leaders and Canadian lawyers, this summary of the outstanding "land question" provides some readily understandable answers.

AQ Special Issue ~ Aboriginal Title

Coming Soon!