The prompt for this week:
In this lesson I say that it should be clear that the discourse on nationalism is also about ethnicity and ideologies of “race.” If you trace the historical overview of nationalism in Canada in the CanLit guide, you will find many examples of state legislation and policies that excluded and discriminated against certain peoples based on ideas about racial inferiority and capacities to assimilate. – and in turn, state legislation and policies that worked to try to rectify early policies of exclusion and racial discrimination. As the guide points out, the nation is an imagined community, whereas the state is a “governed group of people.”For this blog assignment, I would like you to research and summarize one of the state or governing activities, such as The Royal Proclamation 1763, the Indian Act 1876, Immigration Act 1910, or the Multiculturalism Act 1989 – you choose the legislation or policy or commission you find most interesting. Write a blog about your findings and in your conclusion comment on whether or not your findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility. – Dr. Erica Paterson
For this week I decided to focus on The Royal Proclamation of 1763. This proclamation is a document set out for guild lines for European settlement of Aboriginal areas in North America. King George III issued this in 1763 to try and “officially” claim this as British territory after the Seven Years War. King George issued this to claim all ownership of this new land and he did give the Aboriginals a large area of reserve in the interior of North America west of the Appalachian Mountains. He did however proclaim that settlers were forbade to take land from Aboriginal occupants unless the crown had bought if first and then sold off. This was until King George changed him mind and made sure that only the crown would be able to buy the land from the Aboriginals.
This also had significant relevance because it contributed to the cause of the American Revolution in 1775, which legally defined the North American interior west of the Appalachian Mountains for the Aboriginal peoples. This caused problems for the ever-expanding Thirteen Colonies who still wanted for land for expansion. The other issue is that the western border for this land was not specifically defined as King George wasn’t in the area and didn’t have concrete maps of the area. Having no defined line didn’t cope well with either the Aboriginals that was promised land in one area and the ever-expanding Colonies.This would make things very difficult between people trying to understand the nation that is being pushed on them and those who are trying to define them as being their own body.
In the years since there has been lots of debate about what they should do to this treaty. Some thought that this only really applied to British Columbia where the majority of the land remains un-surrendered by treaty. This however is still being legally enforced in other areas like the Yukon, Eastern Artic, parts of Quebec and the Maritime Provinces.
In the proclamation it references section 25 of the Constitution Act of 1982, this dictated that nothing in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms diminishes Aboriginals people’s rights as it expressed in the Royal Proclamation.
This makes it really hard to see in the “eyes of the law” what people’s rights should be. If there are contradictory statements out there how is anyone supposed to understand what is right? It is what you believe, or is it the law that we hold so dear?
Work cited
Historica Canada. Royal Proclamation of 1763. Web. Accessed June 26. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/royal-proclamation-of-1763/
Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3:1.” ENGL 470A Canadian Literary Genres May 2015. U of British Columbia. Web. 26 June 2015.
University of British Columbia. Royal Proclamation, 1763. Web. Accessed June 26. http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/royal-proclamation-1763.html