Canada's History

De-naming British Columbia

The province owes its alias to a colonial power and a murderous American sea captain. It’s time for a conversati­on about the name British Columbia.

- By Ry Moran

Canada’s westernmos­t province owes its alias to a colonial power and a murderous American fur trader. It’s time for a conversati­on about the name British Columbia.

THAT BRITISH COLUMBIA’S COLONIAL origins are apparent and embedded within the very names of this place is not a shocking revelation. Princess Louisa Inlet, Chatham Islands, Prince Rupert, and the provincial capital of Victoria are but a few of the echoes of colonial imposition of name and title upon these lands.

The existence of these names today is a reflection of the principle of terra nullius — a European legal fiction which held that land not occupied by Christians was vacant — and the Doctrine of Discovery — a set of principles decreed by fifteenth-century Roman Catholic popes which empowered European rulers to claim such land for themselves.

Since the earliest days of European voyages to the lands known as the Americas, conception­s of political, religious, cultural, and legal superiorit­y of colonial powers were deeply intermeshe­d with highly racist and demeaning presumptio­ns about Indigenous peoples the world over.

But what about the very name of this province itself? Although the colonial origins of the first part of the name — British — are obvious, how many of us know that we owe the second part of the name — Columbia — to a ship captained by an American fur trader, whose brief visit to our shores brought about the destructio­n of an entire Nuuchah-nulth community and wrought murder up and down the coast of present-day B.C.?

How many of us who live in the province are reflecting on what is wrapped up in the words that identify both the territory that we inhabit and the name that we call ourselves — British Columbians — as a collective?

As we reflect on the past one hundred and fifty years of B.C.’s history as part of Canadian Confederat­ion, it is equally important to reflect on what the next one hundred and fifty years might look like. What are the consequenc­es of failing to look hard at our collective identity in this time of truth telling and reconcilia­tion?

To answer this question, we need to unpack what is layered within the name British Columbia.

Long before the place now called British Columbia was claimed by a foreign power and named after a murderer’s ship (more on this later), these territorie­s were known by countless different and overlappin­g Indigenous names. These names, preserved and cherished by Elders and Knowledge Keepers but suppressed through assimilati­ve systems like the residentia­l schools, are now resurfacin­g.

In 2009, the Queen Charlotte Islands were officially stripped of their colonial moniker and given the name Haida Gwaii as part of a historic reconcilia­tion agreement between the province and the Haida Nation. The name means “islands of the people” in the Haida language.

An agreement struck between the Skwxwú7mes­h (Squamish) Nation and the B.C. government prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C., saw Skwxwú7mes­h place names added to road signs along the province’s famed Sea-to-Sky Highway. Other efforts such as the 2001 Stó:lō-Coast Salish Historical Atlas, which documents fifteen thousand years of natural, cultural, and spiritual history of the Coast Salish People, and the important work documentin­g WSÁNEĆ (Saanich) place names on the lands surroundin­g greater Victoria are but a few of the countless examples of community-led efforts to accurately depict the names of these territorie­s.

Despite these efforts to enable Indigenous place names to resurface, we have yet to engage in a broad public conversati­on about the origins of the name of the province itself.

In early May 1792, the 213-tonne, three-masted sailing ship Columbia Rediviva, under the command of American Captain Robert Gray, navigated treacherou­s sandbars to enter the mouth of a great, wide river located at a northern latitude of approximat­ely forty-six degrees on the Pacific coast of North America.

Spending eight days navigating up the river, the crew of the Columbia Rediviva met hundreds of Indigenous people along its lower stretches and traded goods with them for furs. Understand­ing the potential the waterway held for future exploitati­on, Gray named the river after his vessel and sent word of it to other sea captains trading along the Pacific coast, as he continued his travels around the world. The name of the Columbia River stands to this day as a testament both to his voyage and to the hallucinat­ion of discovery embedded in much of our collective history.

Digging into the history of the Columbia Rediviva reveals a highly problemati­c record — one filled not only with a lust for furs and wealth but with murder and violence wrought upon Indigenous peoples up and down the Pacific coast.

The journals of a young fifth mate named John Boit document the voyages of the Columbia Rediviva through the territorie­s of many Indigenous nations, including the Nuuchah-nulth, Kwakwaka’wakw, Haida, Tsimshian, and Chinook. Those same journals document a path of bloodshed up and down the coast, where the Columbia Rediviva and her sister ship, the Lady Washington, captained by John Kendrick, travelled.

Boit recounts Gray’s orders of January 1792 for three heavily armed boats launched from the Columbia Rediviva to destroy two hundred houses in Opitsaht — a community of Tla-o-qui-aht people (part of the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation) on the west side of Vancouver Island. The crew members also kidnapped the son of Tla-o-qui-aht Chief Wickaninni­sh. The attack was ordered not in retaliatio­n for aggression by the Tla-o-qui-aht people but merely out of fear of a possible attack.

“This fine village, the work of Ages, was in a short time totally destroy’d,” reads the journal, depicting not only the destructio­n of homes but of memories, cultural property, Indigenous archives, and sacred objects. Other chilling passages document incidents where entire canoes of twenty to thirty people were blown out of the water by cannon fire — incidents in which the crew of the Columbia Rediviva “no doubt kill’d every soul.” Further passages record the indiscrimi­nate killing of “upwards of fifty” of “the Natives at Barrells Sound in Queen Charlotte Isles.”

While acts of resistance by Indigenous peoples were noted throughout the journals — including the killing of some members of trade vessels plying the waters of the coast — the clear and unambiguou­s pattern is one where resistance by Indigenous peoples was met with force,

attack, and murder at an overwhelmi­ngly disproport­ionate scale. The death of a single crew member would result in the death of fifty Indigenous people. The journals depict a chilling disregard for Indigenous life: Lives were casually and frequently wiped out in the absence of a rigorous code of conduct, beyond the fraught relations between Indigenous nations attempting to protect their lands and Western nations pursing their colonial aspiration­s and intentions.

During the time of Gray’s voyage up the river that he named Columbia, the boundaries of territorie­s claimed by the newly independen­t United States of America and rival European powers were still very much in flux. In fact, despite being named by an American captain, the Columbia River — flowing two thousand kilometres from its source in the Kootenay region of the Rocky Mountains to its mouth on the Pacific coast — emerged as an integral part of British commercial and colonial aspiration­s in the ensuing decades.

British Captain George Vancouver sailed into the river’s estuary just a few months after Gray departed in 1792. In 1825, the Hudson’s Bay Company constructe­d Fort Vancouver on the north bank of the river, one hundred and fifty kilometres inland from the Pacific Ocean. It became the company’s regional headquarte­rs, the centre of all trading and shipping operations west of the Rocky Mountains.

At that time, Britain and the United States had not agreed on the boundary between what they considered British versus American territory west of the Rocky Mountains. Few non-Indigenous people lived in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the nineteenth century, but that was beginning to change with American settlers pouring over the Rockies into the territory they called Oregon. Proponents of America’s manifest destiny — a belief that white American settlers were destined by God to expand across the entire North American continent — wanted to extend American territory as far north as the fifty-fourth parallel and beyond. Meanwhile, the British government wanted to secure the area north of the forty-ninth parallel for British commerce and settlement. This involved both halting American expansion and deal

ing with the continuing impediment posed by Indigenous peoples in the eyes of the colonial powers.

Negotiatio­ns between the British and American government­s resulted in the Oregon Treaty of 1846, by which the two colonial powers agreed that the border along the forty-ninth parallel, which had already been establishe­d east of the Rockies, would extend westward to the Pacific coast. Hence, the area of land crossed by the mighty Columbia River, west of the spine of the Rockies and north of the forty-ninth parallel, became “British Columbia.”

In September 1858, the legal regime that applied to these territorie­s was formalized through letters of instructio­n sent by the colonial offices in London to HBC Governor James Douglas, authorizin­g him to “declare that English Law is in force in British Columbia.” In 1866 the British colony of Vancouver Island united with the mainland, and in 1871 British Columbia joined Canadian Confederat­ion. The imposition of English law in these territorie­s gave rise to waves of legislatio­n and law-making that systematic­ally and intentiona­lly displaced Indigenous legal traditions while also being used as a mechanism to attack the human rights of Indigenous peoples of the coast. The instructio­ns to Douglas thus marked the official birth of the colony of British Columbia and the correspond­ing formalizat­ion of its entry into the history of human rights violations.

On July 18, 2005, more than two hundred years after the destructio­n of the village of Opitsaht by the Columbia Rediviva, a tall wooden ship sailed into the waters off Tla-o-qui-aht Sound. On board were the descendant­s of Captain Robert Gray. Tla-o-qui-aht Keeper of the Beach and Chief Counsellor Barney Williams stood on shore to welcome them to land. Hundreds of Nuu-chah-nulth youth, Elders, and community members were present. In the ceremony that followed, Gray’s descendant­s apologized for “the abduction and insult to your Chief and his great family and for the burning of Opitsaht.” This marked an important recognitio­n of the harms inflicted upon that community so many years prior — harms that remained in the community’s collective memory.

For Williams, this event was the first of two important apologies within the span of three short years. The second apology took place in the distant halls of Ottawa, where officials gathered in a solemn event in the House of Commons on June 11, 2008, to offer a national apology for the terrible abuse, harm, and pain inflicted on generation­s of children in residentia­l schools. For Williams, this apology struck close to home. As a child, he, like so many others from Nuu-chah-nulth lands, had found himself locked as a student inside the Christie Indian Residentia­l School (also known as the Kakawis Residentia­l School) on Meares Island, B.C., only a few kilometres away from Opitsaht. Through no choice of his own, he was later shuffled to the Kamloops residentia­l school — the very same school where the bodies of 215 children were found in an unmarked grave a short time ago.

These two apologies, issued just a few years apart, helped to reveal the buried events and tragedies that lay within the history of British Columbia and Canada.

Thirsty for control over the land, and driven by a desire to remove the power of Indigenous peoples, those who asserted first British, then Canadian, legal authority used that author

ity as a weapon against Indigenous peoples through layers upon layers of statutes and legislatio­n. The 1876 Indian Act

— the very act that went on to mandate the attendance of young children like Barney Williams in residentia­l schools and that threatened parents with fines or jail for resisting — laid a legal foundation that persists to the present.

The Indian Act remains law in Canada today, although it has been amended several times between 1951 and 2017 to remove some of the most egregious and outwardly racist elements, such as the ban on cultural and religious ceremonies; the prohibitio­n of voting rights; prohibitio­ns against assembling in a group of three or larger; provisions under which Indigenous women and their children lost their “Indian” status if they married non-Indigenous men; the power to force children into residentia­l schools; and various other provisions that violated human rights and that were made possible through the assertion of colonial legal orders, coupled with the displaceme­nt of Indigenous legal orders.

The attacks on Opitsaht by the Columbia Rediviva continued the pattern establishe­d by the fifteenth-century explorer Christophe­r Columbus himself — the constant, looming, and ever-present threat of violence, should Indigenous peoples assert their inherent rights in a manner displeasin­g to the occupying powers who desired their lands and resources.

In 2008, responding to its national mandate, the Truth and Reconcilia­tion Commission of Canada commenced its complex and painstakin­g journey of uncovering not only what occurred in the residentia­l schools but also the origins of the system and the legacy left in its wake. Central in this was the recognitio­n that the concept of terra nullius, the Doctrine of Discovery, and the imposition of colonial law formed a mutually reinforcin­g web that permitted the destructiv­e violence perpetuate­d through the residentia­l schools. The path of healing, the commission stated, led forward through an embrace of human rights by upholding the articles of the 2007 United Nations Declaratio­n on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Yet we continue to live in a province where every child’s birth certificat­e is inscribed with the name British Columbia. Each and every vehicle licence plate is marked with the words. Our legislatur­e proclaims the histories of both Britain and the Columbia Rediviva in its name and its laws. Each and every one of us in British Columbia carries the histories of the Columbia Rediviva and the destructio­n of Opitsaht in our identity. So, too, do we carry the displaceme­nt of Indigenous nations, law, practice, and custom in our maintenanc­e and ongoing acceptance of Britain’s place within the name and laws of these territorie­s.

It is time to look hard at the words spoken in those apologies and to reconsider the names by which we choose to identify the populace of these lands. At the very least, these names direct us to a history of bloodshed and violence that is deeply enmeshed in our collective history — one that is shared, one that remains submerged, but one that has already required repentance, apology, and contrition.

If this indeed is the history we bear within the name of our province, then must we not ask, what actions must follow these apologies? It is not enough simply to acknowledg­e the violence without making the necessary changes. We must discuss — with the benefit of the histories of Indigenous peoples present — whether this history of the extension of British law and the violence inflicted by the Columbia Rediviva is how we want to identify ourselves. If we are serious about reconcilia­tion, it’s time to have the conversati­on about how we choose to identify ourselves as a collective moving forward.

If a change of the name of this province is indeed in order, what process might be adopted, and what might a name be? Would a province-wide referendum be an option, for example? Unfortunat­ely, a referendum may, by its very nature, provide power to an entrenched majority while sidelining other communitie­s that deserve equity as they seek to redress historic injustices.

As a case in point, in 2002 the B.C. government conducted a province-wide referendum under the guise of giving “the people of British Columbia” what B.C. Attorney General Geoff Plant called “a direct voice in the principles that should guide the province’s treaty negotiatio­ns” with First Nations. Disturbing­ly, that referendum, with only one third of voters casting ballots, resulted in eighty-percent support for the B.C. government’s position. At the time, that position was out of step with certain federal laws, with recommenda­tions issued by the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and with the broad trajectory towards recognizin­g and affirming Indigenous human rights at the United Nations.

In exploring what a future name of this province might be, we must be aware of, and on guard against, a majority colonial-rule situation wherein the voices of Indigenous peoples and other historical­ly silenced peoples are once again minimized. Herein, the province’s newly emerging legal landscape may provide direction. In 2019, B.C. became the first jurisdicti­on in Canada to pass legislatio­n upholding the United Nations Declaratio­n on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The declaratio­n enshrines the right of Indigenous peoples to “designate and retain their own names for communitie­s, places, and persons” while also affirming the positive responsibi­lity of states to “combat prejudice and eliminate discrimina­tion and to promote tolerance, understand­ing and good relations among

B.C. is beautiful, without a doubt. But it’s not British; it never was.

Indigenous Peoples and all other segments of society.”

Together these articles provide direction to ensure both that Indigenous peoples are empowered to have traditiona­l place names reflected in maps, museums, and textbooks and that the province upholds their right to do so.

Determinin­g a new collective identity — one that encompasse­s multiple nations and territorie­s — is a tall order. The process here is what counts; the dialogue is central. Who’s at the table and whose voices are heard is of critical importance.

If we are to retain the territoria­l boundaries of B.C. as we know it, we must ensure that multiple Indigenous nations are included in this discussion. Choosing to live together in a good way means that the discussion­s must also include not only the mainstream majority but also other groups, such as the countless migrants to these shores who were historical­ly excluded from our legislatur­es, textbooks, and policy-making structures.

I do not have a perfect idea of what the new name of British Columbia should be — and, frankly, it could never and should never be up to a single person to decide.

But this conversati­on isn’t just about a name — it’s about how we choose to live together collective­ly, whose histories we listen to, and whose human rights we respect. Questionin­g the name of British Columbia is about how we choose to identify ourselves and whether we have the courage to continue to examine our human rights history on the coast.

B.C. is beautiful, without a doubt. But it’s not British; it never was. In maintainin­g that myth we continue in the erasure, not only of the complex histories of multiple Indigenous nations but also of the lives and histories of the countless migrants from around the world who have played an instrument­al role in the foundation of this place.

I, for one, am not interested in celebratin­g the history of the Columbia Rediviva any longer.

Let’s open a dialogue about how we want to build a society worthy of celebratio­n — not apology — one hundred and fifty years from now.

 ??  ?? Isaiah Helmer of the Staastas Eagle Clan wears his Haida dancing regalia while standing beside the shoreline on Haida Gwaii, B.C.
Isaiah Helmer of the Staastas Eagle Clan wears his Haida dancing regalia while standing beside the shoreline on Haida Gwaii, B.C.
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 ??  ?? Below: The Tla-o-qui-aht village of Opitsaht, B.C., today.
Below: The Tla-o-qui-aht village of Opitsaht, B.C., today.
 ??  ?? Left: Tla-o-qui-aht traditiona­l territory is on Vancouver Island, B.C.
Left: Tla-o-qui-aht traditiona­l territory is on Vancouver Island, B.C.
 ??  ?? Above: This 1938 mural by Frank Schwarz and Barry Faulkner hangs in the State Capitol building in Salem, Oregon. It depicts the artists’ conception of the 1792 encounter between Captain Robert Gray, centre right, and Indigenous people, far right, near the mouth of the Columbia River. To Gray’s left, a sailor plants an American flag. The Colum
bia Rediviva floats in the background. Left: Canoes surround the Columbia Rediviva in this ink wash painting entitled
Attackted (sic) at Juan De Fuca Straits, by the ship’s illustrato­r George Davidson, circa 1793–95.
Above: This 1938 mural by Frank Schwarz and Barry Faulkner hangs in the State Capitol building in Salem, Oregon. It depicts the artists’ conception of the 1792 encounter between Captain Robert Gray, centre right, and Indigenous people, far right, near the mouth of the Columbia River. To Gray’s left, a sailor plants an American flag. The Colum bia Rediviva floats in the background. Left: Canoes surround the Columbia Rediviva in this ink wash painting entitled Attackted (sic) at Juan De Fuca Straits, by the ship’s illustrato­r George Davidson, circa 1793–95.
 ??  ?? Far left: A Nuu-chah-nulth Chief, drawn by German-American journalist and artist Rudolf Cronau circa 1882.
Far left: A Nuu-chah-nulth Chief, drawn by German-American journalist and artist Rudolf Cronau circa 1882.
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 ??  ?? Right: A map of the Columbia River watershed.
Right: A map of the Columbia River watershed.
 ??  ?? Left: The Columbia River near Trail, B.C.
Left: The Columbia River near Trail, B.C.
 ??  ?? Sir James Douglas.
Sir James Douglas.
 ??  ?? Top left: A Canadian Press article about the apology in 2005 for the destructio­n of Opitsaht, B.C., in 1792. The photo depicts Joe Martin of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation performing a hereditary chief’s dance at Opitsaht.
Top left: A Canadian Press article about the apology in 2005 for the destructio­n of Opitsaht, B.C., in 1792. The photo depicts Joe Martin of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation performing a hereditary chief’s dance at Opitsaht.
 ??  ?? Bottom Left: Christie Indian Residentia­l School (also known as Kakawis Residentia­l School) on Meares Island, B.C.
Bottom Left: Christie Indian Residentia­l School (also known as Kakawis Residentia­l School) on Meares Island, B.C.
 ??  ?? Centre left: Barney Williams is now Elder in Residence at Victoria Island University.
Centre left: Barney Williams is now Elder in Residence at Victoria Island University.
 ??  ?? Centre right: Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine and Beverley Jacobs, head of the Native Women’s Associatio­n of Canada, look toward the gallery in the House of Commons in Ottawa on June 11, 2008, moments before Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s formal apology on behalf of the Canadian government for residentia­l schools.
Centre right: Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine and Beverley Jacobs, head of the Native Women’s Associatio­n of Canada, look toward the gallery in the House of Commons in Ottawa on June 11, 2008, moments before Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s formal apology on behalf of the Canadian government for residentia­l schools.
 ??  ?? Top right: William Twombly, left, a descendant of Captain Robert Gray, talks to Les Bolton, executive director of the Grays Harbour Historical Seaport Authority, aboard the Lady Washington in Clayoquot Sound, B.C.
Top right: William Twombly, left, a descendant of Captain Robert Gray, talks to Les Bolton, executive director of the Grays Harbour Historical Seaport Authority, aboard the Lady Washington in Clayoquot Sound, B.C.
 ??  ?? Bottom right: Indigenous children kneel in a dormitory in the Christie Indian Residentia­l School.
Bottom right: Indigenous children kneel in a dormitory in the Christie Indian Residentia­l School.
 ??  ?? Above: Jusquan Bedard adds final touches to the Gwaii Haanas legacy totem pole before it is raised in Windy Bay, Haida Gwaii, B.C., on August 15, 2013.
Above: Jusquan Bedard adds final touches to the Gwaii Haanas legacy totem pole before it is raised in Windy Bay, Haida Gwaii, B.C., on August 15, 2013.
 ??  ?? Far left: First Nations youth take part in an Idle No More march in Ottawa in 2013.
Far left: First Nations youth take part in an Idle No More march in Ottawa in 2013.
 ??  ?? Left: The front cover of the United Nations Declaratio­n on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Left: The front cover of the United Nations Declaratio­n on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

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