Native Land Claims - British Columbia

Paper Summary:

This paper argues that Paul Tennant's article, "Aboriginal Peoples and Aboriginal Title in British Columbia Politics," makes a significant contribution to our understanding of contemporary governance in Canada's westernmost province. After presenting various highlights of the article, this author describes Tennant's article as an excellent summary of an important issue.

From the Paper:

"To start with, Tennant's article takes us back to the eighteenth century and to the original Royal Proclamation. While students of history (at their own peril) sometimes overlook this important document and what it says about white-aboriginal relations, the truth of the matter is that, while ultimate title to native land may have been perceived to lie with the Crown, the Proclamation nonetheless recognized tribal autonomy and "political separateness" from the ever-growing colonial societies (Nichols, 129-130). Thus, when native groups finally began to mobilize in the 1960s, one of the things that surely fueled their anger was the sense that even white governments of many generations earlier had implicitly realized that native peoples had certain prerogatives that could not be blithely ignored - no matter how hard subsequent governments would try to efface those rights. Furthermore, native anger at the government was also driven, in part, by the realization among many natives in the last-third of the twentieth century that the concept of reciprocity - the idea that natives would give up their title to land in exchange for various benefits like land reserves - had for too long been overlooked in British Columbia in favor of the principle of terra nullius, or the idea that, since a section of land had escaped any significant human occupation, natives had no original title to it (Tennant, 46; for more on the use of terra nullius in British Columbia, please see McKee, 14). If you want to understand the lingering tensions that still complicate the land claims negotiation process even today, you need to appreciate this concept - and Tennant's article can certainly help you with that."

Sample of Sources Used:

• McKee, Christopher. Treaty Talks in British Columbia: Negotiating a Mutually Beneficial Future. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia, 1996.
• McNeil, Kent. "Aboriginal Rights in Transition: Reassessing Aboriginal Title and Governance." American Review of Canadian Studies, 2001 (volume and issue number not provided): 317+. Questia.com 18 Sept. 2007 <http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002420654>
• Nichols, Roger L. Indians in the United States and Canada: A Comparative History. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
• Tennant, Paul. "Aboriginal Peoples and Aboriginal Title in British Columbia Politics." 45-64 (Additional bibliographic information not provided by client).

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