CHAPTER SIX “whatever the Government saw fit to give them”¹ The British Columbia Interior, 1877 to 1927

Churches and Indigenous Lands in British Columbia

Like the two levels of government, churches in Canada and their representatives, as discussed earlier, had similar long-term goals related to Indigenous peoples even if individual missionaries sometimes acted to promote First Nations interests. Throughout the period under discussion here officials of the various Christian churches regularly involved themselves in the alienation of First Nations land.

A key figure involved in Indigenous land issues in the British Columbia interior (and in the Treaty 7 region) and an important constituent of the surveillance network was Methodist missionary John McDougall. McDougall had already been hired by the DIA in 1905, and paid $10 a day plus expenses, considerably more than any Indian agent or inspector in western Canada, “to do special work for the Department in negotiating for the surrender of portions or the whole of certain Indian reserves” in the North-West Territories.³²

In 1909, he was “sent to British Columbia to examine carefully the reserves in and south [of] the railway belt, as to their area, fitness for agriculture or other purposes, the number of Indians on each, what, in his opinion, should be sold as well as to look into the moral and general condition of the Indians.”³³ Adherence to Anglo-Canadian values and pursuance of what was deemed appropriate moral behaviour would be rewarded with more generous recommendations regarding the future of reserve lands. Concerning the Okanagan reserves near Kelowna, McDougall determined that “Indians are low down in the scale” of morality and that the two reserves in the area, totalling 3,208 acres that had been allotted by O’Reilly in 1888, should “be surrendered by them and these sold for their good as well as that of the white settlement in the vicinity.”³⁴ At top end of Okanagan Lake, McDougall found that “these Vernon Indians are the worst in the country” and that portions of the reserve at the head of the lake “most suitable for small fruit farms, could be taken from reserve without causing serious harm to these Indians.” Other reserves at Long (now Kalamalka) Lake could be “disposed of” entirely.³⁵ In southern Secwepemc territory near Enderby he found the Splats’in (Spallumcheen) to be “generally moral” and “steadily making progress in civilization,” but still recommended a number of reductions and sales “for the benefit of the Indians.”³⁶ In fall 1909, McDougall reported to his DIA employers which reserves, in his opinion, could be turned over to settlers. While he recommended the reduction of many thousands of acres of reserve land in the Kamloops and Okanagan districts, in only two cases did he recommend small additions.³⁷

The First Nations in the interior were clearly unaware of McDougall’s land alienating agenda. While at least some of the Indigenous leadership was not initially interested in McDougall’s inspections, they were “told by whites that Mr. McDougal [sic] is a very good man, and has been sent here on an important mission, and now they are very anxious to see him.”³⁸ It is likely that McDougall’s visit came to be seen as a response to petitions sent to the DIA by interior leaders in July 1908 and March 1909. As discussed above, there was general dissatisfaction with Agent Irwin, but the main issues presented in the petitions were the need for better education and health care, and the concern that “our country has been appropriated by the whites without treaty or payment.” They wondered if they had “been treated thus because we welcomed the White as a brother, believed what he said, and asked nothing from him.” They clearly recognized that the treatment meted out to them was at variance with what had occurred “with our fellow Indians of Alberta, Eastern Washington and Idaho.”³⁹

By fall 1910, McDougall reported, as discussed in Chapter Three, that Indigenous people had “awakened” to their actual position in liberal Canada. They had none of the rights of citizens now living in their ancestral territories, regardless of how debased those citizens were. Nor did they have any input into the laws or policies that they were obliged to conform to. McDougall argued that if it were not for their

sublime faith in Ottawa [as a Christian government] and the patience this has engendered there would have been most serious trouble re this between the Indians and the whites, because of the overbearing impudence and outrageous conduct of the latter.⁴⁰

He claimed finally that Indigenous people that he had met with wanted fee simple title to their lands, abandonment of the reserve system and its attendant Indian agents, withdrawal of the Indian Act, and the extension of citizenship to them. If these conditions were not met, McDougall forecasted, “the native tribes will continue to seek help outside of your Department, and both natives and white people will become more unsettled and nervous, and possibly desperate and rash consequences will ensue.”⁴¹

While some officials may have agreed with McDougall’s assessments, the Dominion government was clearly unprepared to have them made public or divulged to the subjects of the inquiry.⁴² McDougall served the interests of his employers well, but his personal contradictions are evident when he broke the tight reign that the DIA kept on information by furnishing copies of his report to individuals outside the department. It is unclear whether or not he deliberately passed on this material to individuals lobbying for some modicum of justice for Indigenous people, but when a copy of his report turned up in the hands of Bishop Perrin of the Friends of the Indians in British Columbia, he denied giving it to anyone “associated with the movement on behalf of Indians in British Columbia”⁴³

The whole point of McDougall’s surveillance work was not to augment reserves, but rather to facilitate the disposal of the most agriculturally-valuable lands for the benefit of White settlers. McDougall was chosen in large part because of his ability as a missionary to survey the situation and gather the information required by the DIA to justify a reduction in lands while at the same time presenting an image of benevolence to ensure Indigenous quietude. While Dominion officials consistently referred to reserve reductions and sales as benefiting First Nations, the recipients of these compassionate acts could not be allowed access to the reasons for, or the results of, McDougall’s surveillance. A decade later, with the short memory and revisionist tendencies of those with political power, it was argued that “practically all that Mr. McDougall asked for was given.”⁴⁴

The work of missionaries in reducing Indigenous territories should not be understated. Writing in the 1960s, Wilson Duff, former Curator of Anthropology at the British Columbia Provincial Museum (now RBCM), estimated that by the early twentieth century fully nine out of ten Indigenous people were “nominally Christian.”⁴⁵ Significantly, the missionary effort was not a simple imposition of foreign ideas but, like colonialism itself, was a dialectic and adaptable encounter. As Susan Neylan reminds us in her work on the Tsimshian “the reception to it [Christianity], transformation by it, and further dissemination of it was also the work of First Nations themselves.”⁴⁶ The rapid acceptance of Christian teachings, even if not always to the same degree or for the same reasons, and Indigenous participation in the promulgation of Christianity is significant. The work of missionaries seems, overall, to have divided communities and dulled the potential for resistance in British Columbia even while some missionaries and their churches advocated for what they believed to be justice for Indigenous people. Still, resistance in connection with land issues did continue to take on a number of forms and levels of organization in the Kamloops and Okanagan regions.

Indigenous Resistance in British Columbia Before World War I

Often the resistance was local in nature and in response to local conditions. Frequently, community leaders would balk at valuations placed on land alienated for railway or other purposes and refuse to allow contractors onto reserves before payment was received.⁴⁷ They might also simply refuse to consent to a lease as the Okanagan at Penticton did in 1910 when DIA Inspector K.C. MacDonald noted in response, “a general impression seems to exist among the Indians that an attempt is being made throughout British Columbia to take their lands from them, and as a consequence they are very slow to accept any assurance to the contrary.”⁴⁸ At times, interior leaders also acted in concert to press for a particular local issue.⁴⁹

Broader organization took form by 1906 when representatives from the interior and south coast met at Cowichan and delegated three leaders: Chief Joe Capilano of Squamish, Chief Charley Isipaymilt of Cowichan, and Chief Basil David of the Bonaparte (Stuctwesemc) Secwepemc to travel to London to present their concerns to the British monarchy at the centre of the empire. While they met with King Edward, the British-elected government informed the delegates that this was a Canadian issue, so redress should be sought there. In the period leading to World War I, though, organized resistance in British Columbia primarily found expression in three groupings: the Indian Rights Association, which consisted primarily of Coastal First Nations, the Nisga’a and a few other nations from the north coast, and finally the Interior Tribes, which included among others the Nlha7kápmx, Secwepemc, and Okanagan. The end of the first decade of the twentieth century witnessed a flurry of organized activity and in 1909 the Interior Tribes began meeting on a regular basis and appointed James Teit as secretary.⁵⁰

In 1910, a large delegation from the Interior Tribes met with Prime Minister Laurier at Kamloops and presented him with a written statement, or memorial, that the Kamloops Sentinel referred to as “an excellently drawn up presentation of their case in support of their demand for treaties…”⁵¹ The memorial condemned the policies of the British Columbia Government as “utterly unjust, shameful and blundering in every way.” In addition it asserted that interior First Nations

never accepted these reservations as settlement for anything, not did we sign any papers or make any treaties about same. They thought we would be satisfied with this, but we never have been satisfied and we never will be until we get our rights.⁵²

The memorialists also patiently tried to explain that their territories were not dissimilar to large farms from which they gained their sustenance in the hope that this reasoning would strike a chord with settler representatives as discussed in Chapter Two. Laurier seemed to offer a positive response to the presentations of the interior delegation by suggesting that the only way to resolve the land title issue was before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) and to this end he said, “I will take steps to help you.”⁵³ Since the Dominion government felt that “the Indians will continue to believe they have a grievance until it has been settled by the Court,” it appears that Laurier did apply some pressure to Premier Richard McBride and his Provincial Conservatives.⁵⁴

In 1911, a delegation of nearly one hundred community leaders from the north and south coast and the southern interior met with Premier McBride to encourage him to acknowledge Aboriginal title and to allow adequate reserves. Incredibly, McBride commented that until a few months previous he was not aware of any dissatisfaction and criticized the delegation for accepting the ill-conceived counsel of non-Indigenous advisors. He contended further that Indigenous interest in land was limited to “a mere right to occupancy.”⁵⁵ Not wanting the issue of title to be raised in court, McBride blocked access to the JCPC. The premier argued that the issues involved were largely political as opposed to legal ones and that the economic stakes were too high to risk at court.⁵⁶

Any pressure brought to bear by the Dominion at the conclusion of the first decade of the twentieth century came to an end with Laurier’s electoral defeat at the hands of Borden’s Conservatives in 1911 as the new Dominion government proved to be even more conciliatory to the Conservative government in British Columbia. Indigenous organizing in British Columbia continued, though, as communications between organizations improved. In 1912, Kamloops Agent J.F. Smith attended “a monster meeting of Indians from nearly all over the province, on the Kamloops reserve.” In 1913, a large meeting was held at Spence’s Bridge.⁵⁷

While First Nations organized, non-Indigenous advocacy groups also became increasingly active. In March 1910, the Conference of Friends of the Indians of British Columbia was formed and in August retained lawyer Arthur E. O’Meara as council and presented its own memorial to Laurier. In September, the Moral and Social Reform Council of Canada added its voice in support of the Friends and the two groups met with the prime minister and the SGIA in October, and the Friends with the Government of British Columbia in December.⁵⁸

Arthur O’Meara was perhaps the highest profile of non-Indigenous advocates and became one of the primary legal advisors to the organized First Nations’ leadership in British Columbia for almost two decades until his death in 1927. He had practiced law in Ontario for 20 years before becoming a deacon and missionary beginning in 1906.⁵⁹ In a 1908 address in Vancouver, O’Meara told his audience that even though the First Nations of British Columbia “did not surrender any title claimed by them in the reserved lands or in any other lands in the district,” the Province continued to act as if the only rights that existed were its and Canada’s and that “Indian tribes had no rights at all.”⁶⁰ O’Meara’s direct advocacy on behalf of Indigenous groups, coupled with his activity in promoting Indigenous issues to interested non-Indigenous audiences, aggravated McBride’s government to a point that it employed Pinkerton’s Detective Agency to observe his activities, as discussed in Chapter Three. For their part, Dominion officials similarly could not believe that First Nations people were capable of understanding the significance of title or Indigenous rights. To do so would undermine both their justification for not entering into international agreements, as they would have with other nations, and for their continued surveillance to facilitate both reform and the alienation of land and resources.

A reoccurring theme that runs through the textual historical record on resistance in British Columbia and elsewhere is that, according to Dominion officials, any disaffection or disquiet must have been fomented and sustained by those classified as outsiders. In 1910, for example, the department sent a circular “referring to unrest among the Indians of British Columbia owing to agitation by certain white people with reference to the Indian title to lands.” To this, the DIA’s Inspector Ditchburn, responsible for the region that included large portions of Secwepemc and Okanagan territories, responded that he would reassure Indigenous residents that the department would look after their interests in this matter “and that no necessity exists for independent action on their part, and that to take the law into their own hands would” only “prejudice their case.”⁶¹ Here too, the problem was presented as originating with “certain whites who are carrying on a systematic campaign for the purpose of uniting the Indians in an independent movement for the settlement of the land question.”⁶²

To be sure, there were, in the years before World War I, various individuals and organizations that crossed the boundary between “Indian” and “White” spheres of interest at a variety of levels. Especially notable in this regard is former Mountie James Halbold Christie, who advocated on a number of Secwepemc and Okanagan issues including working in concert with another advocate, lawyer A. Bridgman, to overturn an extra-legal land sale of the Okanagan’s Long Lake reserve.

Long Lake Surrender

The events surrounding the so-called surrender and sale of the Okanagan reserve at Long Lake are illustrative of the lengths to which liberal Canada was willing to go to appropriate even the fragments of territory remaining to First Nations. The procedures employed to alienate this land similarly display the operation of the disciplinary surveillance network, the rewards meted out to the reformed, and the exclusion of those who resisted reformation. None of this, though, was unique to Okanagan territory or to British Columbia, but part of a phenomenon evident throughout western Canada.

In her study of twenty-five reserves surrendered for sale in the prairie west, Peggy Martin-McGuire explored the legal foundations of the Crown’s obligations, the provisions of any relevant treaties, relevant case law and legal opinion, DIA policy and the role of key government officials, and a variety of other factors. She found patterns of abuse of authority, minorities making decisions regarding the reduction of reserved lands, lack of informed consent, blatant self-interest, departmental control of proceeds from land sales but less than energetic collection procedures, and a variety of other factors that serve to demonstrate that the procedures and events, and apparent breaches of trust discussed below in regard to Long Lake are not isolated.⁶³

In June 1907, Vernon newspaper editor John Kennedy, wrote to Kam-loops-Okanagan Agent Irwin asking to purchase the 128 acre reserve at the north end of Long (now Kalamalka) Lake offering forty dollars per acre. This amount, he said, was “satisfactory to the Indians” and according to Irwin was “a good price for the land.” Irwin sent the request off to Superintendent Vowell in Victoria saying that the reserve was initially allotted as a fishing station, but that it was now used only by “one old man.” Once Kennedy was able to acquire a “quit claim,” by which the Province gave up its claim to reversionary interest, the DIA authorized Irwin to take a surrender vote from the Okanagan. In October 1908, Irwin forwarded the surrender document, with its seventeen signatures, to Victoria. While it is not clear how Irwin decided who would be allowed to vote in this surrender, his annual report for the year ending in March 1909 shows the Nkamaplix Okanagan (Okanagan band) at the head of Okanagan Lake population at 225 of which there were 73 men between 21 and 65 years of age. Seventeen, then, is a long way from a majority of adult male members of the First Nation involved. Nevertheless, the surrender was approved by an Order in Council in November 1908.⁶⁴

While the matter seemed settled to the satisfaction of the DIA, within weeks a number of grievances, including questions concerning irregularities involved in the surrender, began to surface. Recently deposed Nkamaplix Okanagan Chief Pierre Michel wrote to DSGIA Frank Pedley that a “large majority” of the community had opposed the “surrender or sale” and claimed that after the meeting held to discuss the surrender he was taken by Agent Irwin to a magistrate in Vernon where Irwin “demanded of me if I was going to sell that land or not I informed him that I could not sell it myself as most of the people was against the selling of that land – Mr Irwin the agent then told me that I could no longer be chief that Issac [sic] Harris would be chief in my place.” Michel claimed further that while Harris had been “posing as Chief” he was “not a member of this Band in accordance with the Indian acts.”⁶⁵

The department, never quick to respond to the protests of its Indigenous apprentices unless there was some threat to its liberal façade, seems to have accepted the advice of its long-time clerk H.C. Ross that “it would be best to pay no attention to this letter, and probably nothing further will be heard from the writer.”⁶⁶ Indeed, the department did not hear from Michel again but a few weeks later it did receive a letter from lawyer A. Bridgman, who had already been acting, on behalf of Okanagan and Secwepemc communities and dealing with department reluctance to share information, for a year at least.⁶⁷

Bridgman was told by Irwin that Chief Michel had been deposed by an Order in Council but asked on what authority Irwin could appoint Harris to the position of chief. Harris, Bridgman was informed by a number of the Nkamaplix Okanagan, was not entitled to even live on the reserve because he was not a member of the Nkamaplix community. When the DIA asked its agent for clarification, Irwin responded that Michel had resigned rather than risk deposal for intemperance and that Harris was indeed a member of the band and while he “would have made an excellent Chief,” his interim appointment by Irwin came to an end when the majority voted for Baptiste Logan.⁶⁸

In the meantime, the Province’s decision to build a road along the shore of Long Lake and through the reserve and the subsequent transmission of misinformation regarding the status of the road by provincial authorities in spring 1909, first held up Kennedy’s possession of the land in question and then caused the department to withdraw from the sale altogether.⁶⁹ DSGIA Pedley informed Kennedy unceremoniously that “the Department is not prepared to consider your application for purchase of this reserve.” The DIA stated though, that it was “willing to acquire the alleged interest of the Province” in this reserve and then “sell the lands by public competition.”⁷⁰ Kennedy was incredulous, but his claim to the land was soon jeopardized further by the continued agitation of the Nkamaplix Okanagan.⁷¹

In July, an Okanagan delegation went to visit Methodist Missionary John McDougall in Kamloops and repeated what Chief Michel had told the department already, that the majority were opposed to the surrender.⁷² By the beginning of August the issue had been picked up by another non-Indigenous advocate, J.H. Christie, a former NWM Policeman, who would be in the midst of Okanagan struggles for some time to come. Christie forwarded a “formal protest” to the department on behalf of the Okanagan in which the authors identified a variety of irregularities involved in the surrender. The protest pointed out that the list of those in favour of the surrender included some who were placed on the list without their knowledge or were not present and did not delegate authority to have their names added. Others, it was alleged, held lands in the United States or were not members of the Nkamaplix Okanagan. Still other signatures were apparently gathered by misrepresenting the nature of what was being agreed to. Enclosed with the letter were affidavits confirming the irregularities and a list of those opposed to the surrender of the reserve that included more than twice the number of names as the original, if manufactured, surrender document.⁷³ This seems, finally, to have got the department’s attention, and by early October, Inspector J.G. Ramsden was sent from Toronto to work alongside John McDougall in an investigation of the situation.⁷⁴

During the course of their inquiry, Ramsden and McDougall allowed Irwin and even Kennedy to question witnesses. Kennedy and his partner, T.J. Cummiskey, were also permitted to submit written statements. Nevertheless, the investigation found that the points raised in Christie’s formal protest were valid and also unearthed a number of other irregularities.⁷⁵ Irwin admitted that he had no official list of band members let alone one of those eligible to vote. Further, it was found that a majority of voters left the meeting in protest before the ballot because they were not in favour of the sale. Others were clearly confused about whether they were voting for a sale of the reserve or an exchange of another piece of land. Some, like Isaac Harris, who Irwin had appointed as temporary chief, had their membership in the Nkamaplix community challenged while others on Irwin’s list were found to be underage.⁷⁶

Still others claimed to had been paid by Kennedy to round up signatures in favour of the surrender. Ramsden and McDougall found that not only were there irregularities, but that no direct vote had been taken on the surrender. Ramsden reported that Christie had “done the Department a real service” and “that his manner and conduct” were “praiseworthy.” Under the weight of this evidence the DIA had little choice but to rescind the surrender.⁷⁷ The issue, though, was not closed.

Within a few months, Irwin presented a petition to the department requesting that Baptiste Logan, who replaced Harris as chief, be deposed for intemperance. The petition was signed by Harris but apparently not by a majority of the Nkamaplix and the action was not supported by DIA officials in Ottawa.⁷⁸ By the end of 1911, however, T.J. Cummiskey, Kennedy’s partner in the questionable surrender and sale deal, had been appointed Inspector of Indian Agencies for the region that included the Kamloops and Okanagan agencies. Within a few months, Cummiskey by-passed new Okanagan Agent J.R. Brown, deposed Chief Logan, dissolved the band council, and threatened to jail any who objected. He claimed he had the support of Secwepemc Chief Louie and Okanagan Chief Chilheetsa in the action.⁷⁹

Representatives of the Nkamaplix Okanagan claimed that Cummiskey had support for the land deal and for his internal political machinations from residents on the reserves who had no right to be there.⁸⁰ With the assistance of Christie, they wrote to Ottawa and asked the department to “kindly inform Mr. Cumisky [sic] that we don’t want him to interfere with our Chief as he is a Good Chief to us and we don’t want any other Chief here to interfere with us… Cumisky [sic] is no good being under the influence of whiskey when he comes here.”⁸¹ To this, Cummiskey countered that Logan had not made any “progress” on the reserve and had “created a code of immorality.” Any discontent, he claimed, was largely the result of the agitation of “halfbreed Tom Linley” a reserve resident assisted by “Squaw man J. Christie.” He concluded he could not “allow squaw men, immoral halfbreeds or other evil inclined whitemen to dictate a policy to me.”⁸² Concerns about Cummiskey were even raised in the House of Commons, but while he was rebuked for not following proper procedure, within two weeks, Logan’s removal for intemperance was approved by the Governor General in Council and the charges against the inspector “were found not to be justified.”⁸³ Logan was succeeded by a reinstated, and apparently reformed, Pierre Michel, who began sending minutes of band meetings directly to the inspector.⁸⁴

In the decade and more that followed the October 1909 investigation, during which time he claimed that he continued to pay taxes to the Province on the land at Long Lake, Kennedy hired a lawyer and pursued a variety of strategies. Together they produced a 1907 agreement, apparently signed by an Okanagan Chief identified as Chewile and his son Seymour Edward confirming that there was an agreement of sorts for the land although there is no indication that the signatories had the authority to enter into an agreement of this kind nor does it seem to have been confirmed by the Okanagan until the questionable surrender meeting of October 1908.⁸⁵ In 1909, Kennedy’s initial claim that the 1908 meeting confirmed a land sale was revised to bring it in line with the findings of Ramsden and McDougall that the gathering was held to confirm a land exchange. Kennedy eventually entered into a lease for the land.⁸⁶

In 1913, Kennedy claimed that the slow pace of the DIA was at the root of his problems concerning the Long Lake land. What scuttled the deal that he claimed he had with the Okanagan, though, was “that they had been tampered with and put up to make untrue statements” by J.H. Christie. He went so far as to claim, without providing any evidence, that the former Mountie was arrested for complicity with famous train robber Bill Miner.⁸⁷

The same year, following Cummiskey’s untimely death, Major A. Megraw was appointed as DIA inspector for the region that included the Kamloops and Okanagan agencies. It was soon apparent that Megraw was no more a benevolent overseer than was his predecessor. When a lease of 2,000 acres of Okanagan reserve land, arranged by Megraw, was opposed by new Chief Casto Louie and others, Megraw wrote the chief to tell him “you have been deposed” and that he would find a chief who would take “orders from me and from no one else.”⁸⁸ Christie again stepped in and circulated Okanagan complaints in the Senate and House of Commons where they were brought forward by opposition M.P. Frank Oliver.⁸⁹ J.A.J. McKenna was instructed to make an investigation of the lease and found it to be “not for the benefit of the Indians.” The lease was subsequently cancelled, but only after Henderson’s crop of wheat was harvested.⁹⁰ The removal of Louie as chief was allowed to stand.

It seems clear that the Okanagan had little trust in Megraw, but the department benefited from its disciplinary surveillance network and was able to work through apparently reformed and compliant reserve residents, like Isaac Harris and the rehabilitated Pierre Michel, to fracture the unity of opposition. When the department tried to compile a band census in 1918, not surprisingly with the assistance of Isaac Harris, former Chief Casto Louie and the 78-year-old Louie Tonasket refused to participate. For their recalcitrance they were, according to Christie, jailed by inspector Megraw. Christie published another article on behalf of the Okanagan and appealed for clemency for Louie and Tonasket.⁹¹ Christie’s advocacy had clearly become an irritant to the department as well as to Kennedy and Megraw, and the latter went to some length to besmirch his reputation, even contacting his former employers at the NWMP in the attempt to find damning evidence.⁹²

While Louie and Tonasket were eventually released, and their case as well as that of Cummiskey’s removal of Logan was presented in the House of Commons on several occasions, the issue that started the whole story of the cut-off lands at Long Lake would take three generations to resolve. The Okanagan never entered into another surrender for their reserve at Long Lake, but the actions of the Canadian government facilitated its alienation without their consent.

As a result of the work of the Royal Commission on Indian Affairs for the Province of British Columbia, the Long Lake reserve was “cut off” and in July 1922 was sold to Kennedy.⁹³

The McKenna-McBride Commission

The Royal Commission, also known as the McKenna-McBride Commission, was established after Prime Minister Borden appointed J.A.J. McKenna of Winnipeg as Special Commissioner in 1912 to “investigate claims put forth by and on behalf of the Indians of British Columbia, as to lands and rights and all questions at issue between the Dominion and Provincial Governments.”⁹⁴ The negotiations between McKenna and Premier McBride to establish the commission, though, resulted in a narrowing of the frame of reference. Now the commission would work solely to “settle all differences between the governments of the Dominion and the Province respecting Indian lands and Indian affairs.” Already “the claims put forth by and on behalf of Indians” would be outside the parameters of the commission, illustrating Canadian acquiescence to the settler interests represented by the Government of British Columbia.⁹⁵

British Columbia agreed to give up its reversionary interest in all reserves confirmed or established by the commission. Further, according to the agreement, land could only be removed, or “cut off,” from already established reserves with the consent of the First Nation involved, and if this was granted the land would be sold at auction with half the proceeds going to the Province, and the remainder to be held in trust by the Dominion “for the benefit of the Indians.” The commission would include two representatives each from the Dominion and the Province and a chairman selected by these appointees. They would travel the province, gather information from witnesses, and submit a report that would finalize reserve boundaries.⁹⁶ In spring 1913, Nathaniel W. White of Shelburne, Nova Scotia and J.A.J. McKenna were named to the commission on behalf of the Dominion, while James A. Shaw of Shuswap, British Columbia, and D.A. Macdowall of Victoria were appointed by the Province. E.L. Wetmore was chosen as the chairman.⁹⁷

Since the goal of the commission was to mend the relationship between the two levels of government, and since the Province would not give up on its contention that land in British Columbia was “unburdened by any Indian title,” McKenna agreed “as far as the present negotiations go, it [the issue of title] is dropped.”⁹⁸ In a similar vein, the commissioners were informed by the Privy Council that, “[t]he Minister is of the opinion that it would be inadvisable to burden the commission with the investigation of all matters that might be brought to their attention by Indians, many of which would be of slight importance not affecting the relation of the two Governments.” Indigenous peoples’ concerns would be heard, but they were to be specifically informed that the commissioners could not act on these matters.⁹⁹ As a Secwepemc leader said later of consultations concerning Indigenous land matters generally, “to keep matters simple the party most affected was left out of negotiations.”¹⁰⁰

It did appear, though, that there would be some protection afforded by the Royal Commission since reserves would only be reduced “with the consent of the Indians, as required by the Indian Act.”¹⁰¹ But at the same time, the commissioners realized that seeking consent “would tend to make the future progress of the Commission very disagreeable, and be apt to raise hostility in the minds of the Indians towards the Commissioners and their work.”¹⁰² While McKenna confirmed that under the agreement made with the Province “no diminishment of existing reserves shall be made without the consent of the Indians,” eventually provision was made to reduce reserves without this requirement.¹⁰³

From their base in Victoria, the commissioners toured the province, gathering information from Indigenous informants, and hearing presentations from chambers of commerce, boards of trade, and individual settlers. While the primacy of White settler interests is clear from the recommendations and results of the McKenna-McBride Commission, the textual record of evidence taken in Secwepemc and Okanagan territories provides further examples of both exclusionary liberalism and disciplinary surveillance in operation. The commissioners identified the wishes of White settlers, listened to their observations concerning Indigenous people, and examined first-hand the economic potential of reserves that could be alienated for their benefit. While Indigenous witnesses spoke of their desire for increased reserve land and better access to resources, the commissioners were free to exclude matters “brought to their attention by Indians” from their deliberations. That Isaac Harris was chosen as interpreter in collecting much of the Indigenous evidence in these areas is revealing in itself.

Evidence taken by the commissioners at Shuswap Lake indicates that the results of encroaching White settlement and subsequent restrictions to hunting and fishing were most troubling to the Secwepemc living there. Francois Pierrish of Sk’emtsin (Neskonlith) said, “we want to go out to hunt, and sometimes we want to go out to fish. We would like to be peaceable all through this Country so that we will come home allright.” Sexqeltqi’n (Adams Lake) Chief Narcisse complained that with the increasing number of White settlers, there was no longer pasture land available outside the reserves and insufficient inside. He said, “Just at the beginning of the year we had to sell part of our stock in order to limit the stock to the measure of the pasturage.” Antoine Tawhalst, also of Sexqeltqi’n, confirmed: “My land is lots and the Government has confined me to a small spot and fixed my land so that I should dig in that little spot for my living.”¹⁰⁴

Similar concerns and explanations were presented in the Okanagan as well. Chief Baptiste George of the Nk’Mip (Osoyoos, Inkameep) Okanagan pointed out that “my forefathers nor myself never received one cent” for alienated territory. The Nk’Mip reported that they too were restricted by the economic strategies and close proximity of the surrounding settlers. While the Nk’Mip were encouraged to grow fruit like neighbouring White settlers, they believed this to be folly, saying “‘No, we will raise stock. We can always sell cattle.’ Then they call us lazy because we do not do what they do.”¹⁰⁵

Dominic Buckleypeach of Penticton was even more direct.

It is not because the whiteman has come that we make a living – we have been living before the whiteman came, and now you ask us how we get along. We get along from the land – it is our father and mother – we get our living just like milk from the land, therefore we have no land to sell – it would be just like selling our bodies. We cannot sell any land until the Man who made the land comes back.¹⁰⁶

Many of the Secwepemc and Okanagan, who understood that the objective of the McKenna-McBride Commission was to reduce the pieces of territory that remained to them, made the effort to explain that they in fact did not have any excess land. Others, like Chief Edward Clemah wondered how reductions were possible and went a step further to ask, “Is the Queen’s word no good?” The commissioners were rarely interested in answering questions posed by Indigenous witnesses to clarify concerns regarding existing reserves. In response to one such question from Sam Pierre from the Splats’in (Spallumcheen) Secwepemc community, Chairman Wetmore retorted, “We are not here to be examined by the Indians. We are here to examine the Indians…Do you know that we could place you in prison for not answering our questions?”¹⁰⁷

Even before the McKenna-McBride Commissioners traveled to the interior to meet with Secwepemc, Okanagan, and settler representatives, the Kamloops Board of Trade argued that while “there was no wish to work any injustice to the Indians” the Secwepemc living across the Thompson River from Kamloops, “would be better off if removed from near the city and would benefit largely from the proceeds of the sale of the lands.” The single dissenting voice was that of the board’s secretary, and future Indian Agent, John Freemont Smith, who argued that the “Indians were here first and their rights must be considered first.”¹⁰⁸ Despite Smith’s objections, the board prepared a resolution to Premier McBride requesting “the removal of the Indians” from the Tk’emlups (Kamloops) reserve. The Board pointed out that not only was “the proximity of the reserve to the city inimical to the interests of the community, but it also gives opportunity for providing liquor to the Indians and thus furnishes great scope for crime, which has been so prevalent of late amongst the Indians.” The board argued further, that while the reserve contained 32,000 acres, only 200 were cultivated.¹⁰⁹ The board clearly drew the link between settler society’s construction of an Indigenous population with a propensity to immorality and the unacceptable under-utilization of farm land.

The Board of Trade’s presentation to the McKenna-McBride Commissioners was virtually identical to the resolution they forwarded to McBride in 1907. There was not universal settler support for their position though. Major J.M. Harper denounced the plan as a “mere land grabbing scheme.” The local newspaper agreed and claimed that uncultivated reserve land was not the primary cause of land shortages, but rather it was the fault of land speculators who kept large tracts of land from use “to the detriment of local, provincial and national prosperity for the purposes of personal gain.” J.F. Smith, as Indian Agent, argued that selling the reserve would be “seriously detrimental” to the Secwepemc at Kamloops.¹¹⁰

Nevertheless, the board presented its case to the commissioners to have Kamloops reserve one alienated in the “best interests” of both the Secwepemc and the settler community. Kamloops lawyer F.J. Fulton, former Minister of Lands in McBride’s cabinet, clearly articulated the oft-presented position that Indigenous interests were very much offset by those settler citizens: “the Indians as the original inhabitatnts [sic] of this Province, are entitled to some consideration, still under modern conditions I don’t think they should be allowed to hold back the development of the Province.”¹¹¹

At Salmon Arm, Board of Trade member James Evans suggested that a problem facing his Indigenous neighbours was that they held land collectively rather than individually: “The Indians in their present state, are as close to Socialism as it is possible to get.” Evans thought that they would have to be educated to understand the benefits of individual land tenure, advising, “I would deal with the Indians as I would deal with a child. I would not give them a title to any part of it until I found they were capable of taking care of it.” But when asked by McKenna, “is it a fair comparison to make between an uneducated whiteman and an Indian?” Evans responded, “No, because the whiteman is better equipped as regards brain power.” Evans, in what could not have been more than a few minutes before the commission, laid out the core of settler understandings that justified both their exclusion from the liberal rights extended to their non-Indigenous neighbours and the reduction of the lands that remained to them. Liberal notions of individual liberty and the protection of private property saturate Evans’ words, but since both he and his settler society determined that these were beyond the comprehension of Indigenous people, equality could not be permitted. While it might be possible for Indigenous people, in time, to become liberal citizens, they were somehow not as well equipped intellectually and therefore parental control would be a lengthy if not indefinite state.¹¹² There were, though, a few opposing voices.

Regarding the Secwepemc reserve at Kamloops, John Freemont Smith, perhaps Canada’s only Black Indian agent, stated simply that it was “necessary for the reasonable requirements of the Indians.” The reason it was not cultivated was because there was insufficient access to water for irrigation. In response to Smith’s comments Commissioner Macdowall retorted, “well then, if they don’t use it how can you say that it is necessary for their requirements?”¹¹³ Macdowall’s logic was clear, since the Secwepemc at Kamloops had survived without cultivating this land, they had demonstrated that it was beyond their requirements. Notions of “progress” or “advancement” that might be brought about by irrigating the land were not part of the syllogism.

In the Kamloops and Okanagan agencies, Commission Chairman E.L. Wetmore was regularly confused about which reserve was being discussed and often, as in this case, the commissioners missed the point.¹¹⁴ In late November, only a few weeks after leaving Shuswap Lake, and after only six months on the job, Wetmore resigned from the commission stating: “While I found the work monotonous and uninteresting, I cannot say that so far it has been strenuous.” In the Kamloops Agency, Wetmore confirmed that the commissioners and their entourage traveled mostly by “automobile over good roads” and “had all the time comfortable hotels to stop at.” He was concerned, though, that in the next season they would be in the northern parts of the province and in the Williams Lake area where they would “have to take our outfit along and camp as such stopping places as are along the road are of such a character that I am advised that I would find it very unpleasant and running a great risk to stop at any of them.”¹¹⁵ It would seem unlikely that Wetmore could possibly comprehend Indigenous lifeways or to empathize with First Nations concerns.

Together, the parameters established for the commission, the cultural location of the commissioners, the leading questions and belligerent attitudes, the often very brief visits to reserves, and the economic interests of witnesses from settler society, mitigated against the possibility of any clear understanding of Indigenous land use and therefore the “reasonable requirements” of interior First Nations. From the evidence presented, it is clear that the Secwepemc and Okanagan were already becoming increasingly restricted to the fragments of their territories that had been reconfigured as reserves. While their representatives patiently tried to explain to the commissioners the importance of retaining the pieces that remained, the commissioners were in no position to understand what they heard.

The work of the McKenna-McBride Commission demonstrates settler society’s understanding that any social, political, cultural, or economic philosophy other than that informed by liberal capitalism was unreasonable. The reports of the commission are textual displays of Western scientific knowledge laid out in tabular form with maps that fundamentally ignored Indigenous boundaries in order to conform to the square survey. Other understandings and other geographic boundaries were nonsensical to the commissioners and their audience.

The commission continued the imperialist tradition of drawing up maps and subdividing land to illustrate ownership, but clearly, Indigenous people had not yet accepted the sort of spatial zoning fundamental to liberal capitalism. This is not to suggest that there was no recognition of areas of sovereignty clearly understood between First Nations, but rather that the individualization of land, the possessive component of human stewardship over it, and the necessity of drawing lines on pieces of paper to prove ownership were foreign. As Sk’emtsin (Neskonlith) Secwepemc elder Mary Thomas affirms, “we knew where our hunting grounds were, our fishing grounds, and we claimed that area and that was it.”¹¹⁶ Indigenous people had come to understand the settlers’ penchant to subdivide land, but many still trusted the federal government to live up to its promises and obligations.

In British Columbia as a whole, the commission cut off 47,058.49 acres of reserve lands, but added 87,291.17 acres. It appeared, then, that the commissioners recognized the importance of allowing the retention of much of the existing reserve land after all. However, the commission estimated the value of the additions at $444,838, but placed the reductions at $1,522,704. Over the next few years the trend toward a little more, but much less valuable reserved lands continued. The commission reported that the total reserved land in British Columbia was 666,640.25 acres and had an estimated value of $19,890,000. Several years later, the DIA reported an increase in total reserve acreage to 729,258 but, even with the inflation of the World War I period, valued it at only $12,865,194.¹¹⁷ Further, McKenna later commented that even if the recommendation for reductions was rejected, a position that he himself soon came to advocate contrary to the commission’s official report, the additions would only amount to a three acre increase per person, which he stated “would be still less than one-third of the per capita allotment of the prairie Indians.”¹¹⁸

In the Kamloops Agency, the commission recommended that 3,498.53 acres, valued at $130,814.40 be cut off, and that new reserves totaling 1,477 acres, and valued at $7,385 be allocated.¹¹⁹ Much of the reduction, 2,165 acres valued at $77,375, was reserved to the Qw7ewt (Little Shuswap Lake) Secwepemc.¹²⁰ In the agriculturally valuable Okanagan Agency, the commission added 2,600 acres at $13,000, but recommended by far the largest reductions in the province at 18,536.8 acres, valued at between $418,959.91 and $671,211.51.¹²¹ Here, the reserve at the head of Okanagan Lake survived intact, three small reserves, including that at Long Lake, were eliminated, and the large reserve at the south end, between Summerland and Penticton, was reduced by 14,000 acres and lost its entire shoreline on Okanagan Lake.¹²²

On Okanagan reserve three, on the rail line south of Armstrong, where the commissioners found 160 acres of “[g]ood farm land excellently utilized” and fenced, Isaac Harris had constructed a “roomy and substantial residence thereon with good farm outbuildings.” Harris’s long history of appeasement to government officials and his adherence to Anglo-Canadian liberal values ensured that he would inevitably be judged as more advanced than other reserve residents by those at all levels involved in the administration of Indian affairs. As a result, he would come closer than other reserve residents to being included in any benefits of Canadian society.¹²³ Occasionally men like this were even compared favourably against the “average whiteman,” but this was only to illustrate how far they towered above other Indigenous people in the view of settler society. “Indianness” was gradated, but conceiving of this as a simple linear hierarchy serves only to obfuscate a complex interrelationship of obedience, appearance, perception, self-interest, and imagination not to mention the web of race, gender, and class which were all clearly constructed within Anglo-Canadian cultural frameworks. At the same time, however, the model had to appear to be a simple linear one in which the instruments of normalization could be seen as equitable, and even necessary, lest the insulation that obscured the precise nature of liberalism be compromised.

As might be expected, the commissioners found Harris “a very reliable and progressive man.” Perhaps as a reward, the commissioners decided to recommend that Okanagan reserve three be conveyed to Harris, who the majority of the Nkamaplix Okanagan said was not even a band member. Further, the allotment of this reserve would not “prejudice or affect any right or interest,” which Harris had as a “member” of the Nkamaplix Okanagan, “or any interest he now has or may hereafter acquire in any lands or other property or moneys of the Band.” This reserve continues to be referred to as the “Harris” reserve.¹²⁴

Even within the relatively narrow parameters that were set for the Royal Commission, its work came under attack from opposition MPs. When former SGIA Frank Oliver rose in the House of Commons to voice his concerns about the work of the Royal Commission it was not the interests of First Nations that were the objects of his concern, though, but those of settlers. He referred to the commission as an arrangement whereby the Dominion and provincial governments could divide up lands “as they saw fit” without reference to either the provincial legislature or the federal parliament. “As a specimen of autocratic government and disregard of the rights of the people and of their representatives, I think that stands absolutely in a class by itself.” Others were more concerned about the administrative costs incurred by the commission.¹²⁵

The McKenna-McBride Commission did not, for more than two decades at least after it was disbanded, resolve federal/provincial differences. Many of the reserves in the Kamloops and Okanagan agencies were within the railway belt and were soon confirmed to be beyond the mandate of the commission to dispense with. Further, the commission’s work, and eventually its report, only exacerbated First Nation concerns and grievances when they were finally permitted access to it.

Indigenous Resistance and the Issue of Consent in British Columbia

During the four years leading to the tabling of the Royal Commission’s report, the Interior Tribes and the Nisga’a continued to call for a judicial decision regarding Indigenous rights before the reserve question was resolved. In spring 1916, the two organizations met, on separate occasions, with Wilfrid Laurier, SGIA W.J. Roche, and Prime Minister Borden to explain their positions.¹²⁶ In June 1916, representatives from at least sixteen First Nations, including the Secwepemc and Okanagan, met on the Squamish reserve and agreed to form the Allied Indian Tribes of British Columbia with Peter Kelly of the Indian Rights Association elected chairman and James Teit of the Interior Tribes as secretary.¹²⁷

In their statement of February 5, 1919 the Allied Tribes expressed concern that the DIA would attempt to win the approval of First Nations for the Royal Commission’s recommendations before the issues of Indigenous rights could be resolved by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.¹²⁸ Here, and in their much more detailed published statement prepared for the Province, they rejected the McKenna-McBride Commission’s report primarily for its inattention to the issue of title, recognized elsewhere in Canada, but also because of the inadequate reserves it recommended and its neglect of important economic issues like hunting, fishing, water, and foreshore rights.¹²⁹ Clearly the Allied Tribes were suspicious of the agreement, and moved to exert whatever legal pressure they could to delay until their case could be heard by the JCPC, but they appear to have been blindsided by the subsequent actions of the Dominion government.

While Canada was ready to accept the recommendations of the Royal Commission, British Columbia’s Liberals, elected in 1916, were concerned about additions to reserves recommended by the commission and were even more apprehensive about the requirement that Indigenous consent was necessary before land could be removed. The DIA’s Inspector Ditchburn reported to Scott in November 1919 that British Columbia’s Minster of Lands, Duff Patullo, would soon arrive in Ottawa to discuss the Royal Commission’s report and warned that “the British Columbia Government seem to shy at that part of the agreement of 1912 with regard to the cut-offs in view of the fact that it appears necessary to have the consent of the Indians.”¹³⁰

The primary objective of the Royal Commission was to resolve differences between the Province and the Dominion by freeing up additional land for settlement and extinguishing the Province’s claim to reversionary interest by selling reserve lands determined to be in excess. Certainly the commissioners recognized that consent would not be a simple process. DSGIA D.C. Scott, too, recognized by November 1919 that “in some cases the Indians would refuse to surrender” land recommended cut off by the Royal Commission. His solution was that if consent was not forthcoming then parliament should legislate to enable “the Province to sell these lands when the Indians refuse to surrender them….”¹³¹ Two months later, Scott suggested that any refusal to accept the commission’s recommendations could not be rooted in a conscious and thoughtful decision but rather had to be the result of “some influence or prejudice.” Armed with this convenient understanding, he passed on a draft of a piece of legislation that would allow the sale of cut-off lands without consent.¹³² The “British Columbia Indian Lands Settlement Act” which became law on July 1, 1920, confirmed that “the Governor in Council may order such reductions or cutoffs to be effected without surrenders of the same by the Indians, notwithstanding any provisions of the Indian Act to the contrary.”¹³³ Clearly this action directly contradicted not only the Indian Act and the original mandate of the Royal Commission, but also the repeated promises to Indigenous people both during the hearings and prior to them. It did, though, align with legislation passed by the Province in March 1919.¹³⁴

With legislation pending that would remove the necessity of consent, Canada and British Columbia, at the latter’s recommendation, agreed to establish a two-person commission to review the Royal Commission’s report in order to expedite its implementation.¹³⁵ Representing the Province would be Major J.W. Clark, who was very much an advocate of settler interests. Clark argued that not only did the “scattered” reserves recommended by the Royal Commission make the promotion of education impossible, but that reserves were “often situated at strategic points…which, if approved, will establish a decided check to the progress of White settlers in the localities concerned.”¹³⁶ Representing Canada, on Scott’s recommendation, was the DIA’s chief inspector in British Columbia, W.E. Ditchburn.

Ditchburn and Clark confirmed a number of reductions recommended by the Royal Commission. The two governments, however, continued to disagree on the status of reserves in the railway belt. The Dominion asserted that the Province had already given up any claim to these lands, and the Province maintained it still had the same reversionary rights in these reserves as it had in all others in British Columbia. At stake were all of the cut-offs in the Kamloops Agency, almost 3,500 acres, and 1,881 acres in the Okanagan.¹³⁷ The substance of the positions presented by the Allied Tribes continued to be ignored as SGIA Arthur Meighen denied that the organization represented a majority of Indigenous people in the province and insisted that rather it was a product of O’Meara’s agitation. Meighen admitted that there had been no consultations, but contended remarkably that such were pointless: “I do not think it makes much difference to them.”¹³⁸

Through the 1910s, support for the Allied Tribes was widespread, and funding for the organization came from Indigenous communities both in the interior and on the coast. By the early 1920s, though, some of the leadership in the interior became openly critical of the organization with Okanagan Chief Johnny Chilheetsa and Secwepemc Chief Elie Larue among the most vocal opponents, even though Chilheetsa donated $500 to the organization in 1919.¹³⁹ The organized resistance in the interior may have been adversely affected further by the illness and then death of James Teit, as Paul Tennant and Wendy Wickwire suggest.¹⁴⁰ The Allied Tribes though continued their lobbying efforts even if they were somewhat less united. Probably partly as a result of their efforts, Indigenous people secured the right to hold commercial salt water fishing licenses in 1923.¹⁴¹

In summer 1923, the executive committee of the Allied Tribes, which included representatives of the Okanagan and Secwepemc, met with Minister of the Interior Stewart, DSGIA Duncan Campbell Scott, Chief Inspector W.E. Ditchburn, Speaker of the Senate from Kamloops Hewitt Bostock, and a number of other federal officials first in Vancouver at the end of July and then with Scott and Ditchburn for several days in August. From the outset of the meetings in Victoria, Scott and Ditchburn attempted to skirt and muddle the issues, and downplay both the significance of the 1920 British Columbia Indian Lands Settlement Act and how the Order in Council setting up the Royal Commission, which indicated the findings, would result in a final settlement of the land question, and would impact on claims regarding title. Chief Inspector Ditchburn offered the opinion: “[p]ersonally I never could see why any objection should be taken to the report of the Royal Commission on Indian affairs; when you understand that they only had to deal with reserves…I think that they dealt very very liberally with the Indians, insofar as it was in their power to do.” He then went on to report on the new reserves created and the total net gain. When asked if the government could not withhold its acceptance of the report “until the Indians are satisfied,” DSGIA Scott seems to have been caught off guard: “[w]ell, I cannot say; I would not interpret it that way; I cannot say that. I mean to say, I do not want to place an interpretation on the Act.” The Allied Tribes continually sought clarification and assurances and reiterated the position taken in their 1919 statement, but in the end the Allied Tribes got no satisfaction from the meeting even though what they requested in return for agreeing to accept the report of the Royal Commission was not dissimilar to what is stated in the text of the numbered treaties.¹⁴²

The following year, Scott echoed the statements made by Arthur Meighen a few years earlier.

I think it should always be remembered that this organization which is represented by these Indians does not represent the whole of the Indians of British Columbia and does not carry the unanimous opinion of the Indians and that this question should be viewed from the standpoint of the general Indian interests in the Province.

Regardless of the protests voiced in these meetings, then, according to Scott, the recommendations of the Royal Commission should be executed because it was

in the best interests of the Indians as a whole to confirm the Report of the Royal Commission as regards reserves, and thus obtain for them a large area of lands, free from any reversionary interest in the Province, to be held and administered as reserves in all other parts of Canada are held and administered.¹⁴³

For the next several months the Allied Tribes continued to press their case regarding the issues presented in their 1919 statement and their opposition to the McKenna-McBride report. Their lobbying led them to a meeting with Prime Minister W.L.M. King in March, but while there were reports of “disquietude amongst the Indians of the Interior,” there were few if any substantive results.¹⁴⁴ On July 19, 1924 the federal government accepted the report of the Royal Commission as amended by the recommendations of Ditchburn and Clark.¹⁴⁵ Clearly this represented a defeat for the Allied Tribes but still, they pressed on.

In June 1925 they prepared a memorandum for King and his government where they outlined the rights they claimed, asked for a response arising from previous meetings including the one in Victoria in 1923, and requested a hearing before the JCPC.¹⁴⁶ In June 1926 the Kelly and O’Meara presented another petition on behalf of the Allied Tribes calling for a special committee of parliament to deliberate on the issues raised in their 1919 statement. The petition was read in the House of Commons on June 11, 1926.¹⁴⁷ Following the political turmoil in the wake of the “King-Byng Affair” and the resignation and re-election of Mackenzie King’s Liberals, a special joint committee of the Senate and House of Commons, consisting of seven members of each was established and began hearings on March 27, 1927. It must have seemed to the Allied Tribes that they were finally being taken seriously, but this exercise proved to be yet another liberal simulation of justice, which included no intention of actually pursuing it.

The Special Joint Committee of 1927

At the hearings of the Special Joint Committee, the Allied Tribes once again drew attention to the U.S. states adjacent to British Columbia where per capita acreage ranged from 200 to 600 and to the First Nations of Alberta that entered into Treaty 7, “whose tribal territories all adjoin British Columbia,” and have 212 acres of reserve per capita. In the Treaty 8 region there were 160 acres of reserved acres per capita while in other British Columbia communities the average was 30 acres or from one-fifth to one-twentieth of neighbouring nations.¹⁴⁸ Like the McKenna-McBride commissioners, the Special Committee members had already made their decisions before the first Indigenous witness was heard. As H.H. Stevens confirmed: “I never could bring my mind to see any solid ground for the aboriginal title.”¹⁴⁹ To be sure that these witnesses could not exert unwanted influence though, as Paul Tenant has argued, Scott was allowed to speak first, and to deconstruct the case of the Allied Tribes prior to its presentation. Scott went on for some time pontificating on Canada’s generosity, breaking only to answer questions from members of the committee. When he was finished, Andrew Paull, Secretary of the Allied Tribes was told that he had twenty minutes to deal with the question of Aboriginal title.¹⁵⁰

O’Meara was harassed and otherwise treated with remarkable disrespect. The committee refused to allow him to present evidence, interjected with their disapproval as he spoke, and simply badgered him repeatedly. H.H. Stevens was particularly antagonistic to O’Meara and to coastal and interior chiefs who he referred to as “Mr. O’Meara’s group.” While Stevens wanted to employ the now well-explored strategy of blaming outside agitation rather than legitimate grievances for any disturbance, Peter Kelly, from the Squamish Nation, retorted that “he agitates just so far as we allow him to agitate.”¹⁵¹

Not only do the hearings of the Special Committee illustrate that Canada’s representatives were deliberately belligerent and clearly uninterested in Indigenous concerns, they also demonstrate the tight reign that was kept on the information. When Allied Tribes secretary Andrew Paull made the seemingly innocuous request that “all proceedings of this Committee be reported in book form and that the Indians be supplied with that record,” the chair of the committee responded that while the committee decided to “have a certain number of copies printed. These are for the use of the members of the House of Commons and the Senate. It will be for the Committee, later, to decide whether the record can be used by others as well.”¹⁵²

Even more significantly, Paull and Peter Kelly, chairman of the Allied Tribes, complained later that they were unable to locate a copy of Papers Connected to the Indian Land Question, 1850–1875, the collection of records most fundamental to the pursuit of their case . The committee and DIA witnesses had copies, and used them to refute Indigenous testimony, but Allied Tribes representatives were denied access to the Papers except to read a short passage into the record.¹⁵³ Prior to the hearings, federal officials corresponded to discuss the benefits of withholding information from the Allied Tribes, and committee members became quite agitated when they discovered that Indigenous representatives had viewed a 1910 memorandum from the Assistant Deputy Minister of Justice, E.L. Newcombe, to Wilfrid Laurier in which the former gave his opinions on the validity of individual claims. The document, the committee argued, “was really confidential, although it is not so marked.”¹⁵⁴

In the end, the Special Joint Committee recommended, and parliament quickly passed, an amendment to the Indian Act. Section 149a stated:

Every person who…receives, obtains, solicits or requests from any Indian any payment or contribution or promise of any payment or contribution for the purpose of raising a fund or providing money for the prosecution of any claim…shall be guilty of an offense.¹⁵⁵

Since all land claims activity necessarily required expenditure, and so the raising of funds, this legislation brought this activity to a substantive halt. Settlement of the title issue through the JCPC, which the Allied Tribes sought all along, was prevented, and so access to Canada’s system of justice was denied to Indigenous people. It was not until 1938, however, that the recommendations of the McKenna-McBride Commission, as amended by the Ditchburn-Clark Agreement of 1923, and the later Scott-Cathcart Agreement of 1930, were eventually approved.¹⁵⁶

The investigations of the McKenna-McBride Commission, even more than the Joint Reserve Commission, represented a Herculean surveillance effort designed to remove from Indigenous control those lands most valuable to non-Indigenous settlers. While there was an appearance of consultation, Indigenous voices were most often considered inconsequential, a situation that was common throughout the period under discussion here at least. The time between the investigations of the Joint Reserve Commission in the interior of British Columbia in 1877 and the hearings of the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons fifty years later was witness to the rejection of any Indigenous concern or interest that might have jeopardized relations between the two levels of government. While Canada and many of its representatives might have preferred leaving a larger reserve land base and the Province would have preferred less, the debate about size served to divert attention away from the much thornier issues of title and rights. If Canadian officials had pressed on the title issue, or facilitated its presentation through the courts, they would likely have had a much more difficult time justifying removing the requirement that First Nations consent to reserve reductions. The events surrounding the “surrender” at Long Lake indicate the lengths to which liberal Canada was prepared to go to alienate land from Indigenous control and to ignore, belittle, circumvent, or silence opposition.

Both Canada and British Columbia wanted to clear the land for non-Indigenous settlers. While Canada was more concerned with reforming Indigenous people, its thirst for economy encouraged it to conclude that this reformation should be financed by the sale of reserve land. Even though the land base retained by First Nations in British Columbia was considerably smaller on a per capita basis than in the prairie west to begin with, the strategy of making even more reserve land available to non-Indigenous settlers brought it line with the Province’s agenda. That Canada did not insist on treating with Indigenous peoples or demand a similar per capita land base than it did east of the Rockies was defensible solely by pragmatic considerations of different political circumstances not by concern for Indigenous residents. Both the Dominion and the Province were prepared and content to exclude First Nations both from meaningful consultation on setting the lands that they would be permitted to retain and from the liberal rights granted to their non-Indigenous neighbours.

From the perspective of Canada, the fundraising ban included in the 1927 Indian Act as Section 149a, was successful in that relative quiet ensued for almost two decades. Resistance, which had threatened to fracture the liberal façade through reference to the newcomers’ own legal and moral frameworks, became less overt as the organizing efforts in the interior of British Columbia focused on the immediate causes of poverty. It was not until the establishment of the North American Indian Brotherhood in 1945 and an increased sensitivity to race-based policy and legislation following World War II led to the beginning of reconsideration of the Indian Act, that interior groups became more active in broader political issues. While the restrictions against land-title fundraising were lifted by the federal government in 1951, by then the social grip of government agencies involved with other aspects of the lives of Indigenous people had become more rigorous.¹⁵⁷

In 1910, Arthur O’Meara argued that it was evident that unresolved issues of land and title affected everyone in the province. He asked pointedly that since it was “equally clear it must be solved by some method of force or by some method of justice. Which is it to be?”¹⁵⁸ While overt military force was not applied, Indigenous communities in British Columbia are still waiting for justice and resolution of the “Indian land question” at the beginning of the twenty-first century.