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
Hi Kathryn,
Thanks for this summary of the history and law.
I find it especially interesting that laws governing all of Canada can have such a different meaning for different regions. As you point out, we could see this law as only applying to BC, where most land is unceded. We have to look farther into the history of the law, why it was written and when. I saw a talk with John Ralston Saul and a panel of local Aboriginal leaders, last year at the UBC Longhouse, and was interested by a bunch of jokes about how many Aboriginal lawyers there are, and how easy it would be for a few of them to get the Ministry of Justice into shape. But on the negative side, they also talked about why there are all these Aboriginal lawyers. Since the federal government “decided they were going to fight us tooth and nail in the courts on the treaties, we had to have lawyers. We could have had doctors. It was the government of Canada that forced us to have lawyers.”
Ralston Saul, John. “The Comeback.” John Ralston Saul. n.d. Web. 29 June 2015. http://www.johnralstonsaul.com/non-fiction-books/the-comeback/
Hey Kaitie,
Thanks for the comment on my blog. I do find it interesting that the government made things different for different parts of the country based on their land.
That is sad to think that this group of people had to get their own lawyers because no one was willing to stand up for these peoples right. That they knew no one else would do it so they had to.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
-Kathryn
🙂
Hi Kathryn,
Your summary of the impact The Royal Proclamation had on the events in the American colony was incredibly intriguing. Before reading it I did not know what the major event causing their revolutionary war was, nor did I know what the state of the relations was between the colonial Americans and the Aboriginals. Some of the conflicts that arose between the settler societies and the British Empire make sense once you consider how large they had expanded. I think they spread themselves too thin and did not properly allocate their governance and people to managing relations in the colonies. In this case it’s hard to say what should be done with the treaty, a great many people would argue for and against the clause. The terms were not properly laid out, and it doesn’t appear to have been thoroughly considered. Personally I think it should be updated, and reparation provided to the Aboriginals. It’ll be interesting to see how/if it will be approached in the near future.
Landon
Hey Landon!
Thanks for reading my blog. Before doing this assignment I had no idea this was one of the leading causes of the Revolution but it certainly makes sense. Considering how much control that the British Empire had over the world at this time it is interesting to know that there wasn’t much more of these conflicts going on! You would think with so many people they would have figured something out or would give up sooner.
Most proclamations around this time were for one person to be happy and that was the King. If everything went this way then no one would get hurt. I do hope that people are able to see what hasn’t work and try to change it for the future to make everything work!
-Kathryn
Hi!
I really enjoyed your summary. I think your question really speaks to the discrepancy of attempting to create a ‘just and homogenous’ national country – like Canada. I don’t think there is anyway of creating homogeneity… It’s a vicious circle and eventually returns back to a heterogenous nation.
There’s my rant. Your post reminded me this article by Jacques Ranciere, “Who Is The Subject of the Rights of Man”. Check it out if you have a moment or read the abstract.
https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/south_atlantic_quarterly/v103/103.2ranciere.html
He discusses nationhood and cultural homogeneity and heterogeneity with the scholarship of Hannah Arendt.
Anyway, I really enjoyed your post. A lot of this I hadn’t understood previously and it was a springboard of thought for me! It truly shows the discrepancy in law. Who does the law protect? What happens when the law is contradictory.
Thanks!!
Hannah
Hey Hannah,
Before doing this I hadn’t really thought of everything that could be connected to this. Very interesting post, thank you for posting it! I enjoyed, very much. It really makes you think about that the law protects and what it doesn’t.
Thanks for reading!
-Kathryn
Seeing that you did your research on unceded territorial claims, and mentioned that British Columbia has the most at stake, could you elaborate more fore me based on your research? A lot of people have been telling me that pretty much all of the Metro Vancouver area is unceded territory, so how should I make sense of reserves? Do laws that restrict non-Indigenous people from accessing certain territories amount to a subtle but technical racism within our jurisdiction?
Hey!
It is just what I was able to understand from my reading, not completely sure what else there is. I am not familiar with the unceded area around Vancouver as I am not from around that area. I don’t believe it restricts non-indigenous peoples because that would most definitely be considered racism within our jurisdiction.
Thanks