150 Years and Counting: Fighting for Justice on the Coast For 150 years and more, First Nations, Asian Canadians and their allies have been fighting for justice on the Pacific Coast in the face of colonial dispossession and racist exclusions. This historical booklet outlines some of the stories related to the fight for justice—a struggle that continues today. It accompanies the exhibit of this same name. Editor: John Price University of Victoria Published by the project Asian Canadians on Vancouver Island: Race, Indigeneity and the Transpacific Fighting for Justice on the Coast in·dig·e·nous adjective: originating or occurring naturally in a particular place Indigenous peoples is a collective noun identifying First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples in Canada. The term ‘First Nations’ came into common usage in the 1970s to replace the inappropriate term ‘Indian’. As illustrated in the accompanying map, three large First Nations groups – the Coast Salish, the Nuu-chah-nulth, and the Kwakwaka’wakw occupied the coastal lands and seas to the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Indigenous peoples have lived on the northwest coast for thousands of years. During that time, they created sophisticated economic systems--cultivating clam gardens, nurturing camas crops, developing reef-net fishing and Credit: BC Ministry of Education and Training constructing whaling apparatus.1 Working the lands and seas productively, they also established trade routes from Alaska down to the Columbia River. The abundance of the lands allowed the coastal population to increase to 100,000 people, likely making it the most densely inhabited area in Indigenous America.2 The flourishing population also generated traditions and cultural treasures that today capture the admiration of the world. Often used to mark status, invoked in spiritual rituals, or used in ceremonies such as the potlatch, these treasures present a deep connection among the people, land, and sea: “For millennia the principles presented in origin stories were verified through the practice of oosumich and applied in daily life and ceremonial potlatches, resulting in societies that managed, for the most part, to balance the rights of individuals and groups as well as the rights of humans and the other life 3 forms.” (Nuu-chah-nulth hereditary chief Umeek, E. Richard Atleo) Reef-Net Fishing was an environmentally sensitive means for gathering salmon. Credit: Briony Penn and John Lutz, author of Contact Makuk European arrivals and colonization of the Coast were not accidents of history. For over 500 years, Europeans sought to conquer the world. Armed with Christian notions of superiority, first Spain and Portugal, and later the Russians, British, Dutch, Germans, Americans and others sought global commercial and strategic advantage in Asia, Africa and the Americas. In the Pacific, the Spanish and British clashed for control in the 1790 Nootka‘ Crisis’, both claiming sovereignty over the lands occupied by the Mowachaht and other Nuu-chah-nulth peoples.4 First Nations at first welcomed the newcomers, hoping to gain access to new products through trade. Comekela, a Mowachaht chief, boarded a 1 150 Years and Counting trading vessel returning to Macau in 1787 and stayed in China for nearly a year. Dozens of Chinese workers came to Yuquot (Friendly Cove) as part of early British fur-trading missions out of China.5 However, colonial and ethnocentric attitudes of superiority on the part of these ships’ European crews and officers soon led to frictions. Increasing Indigenous resistance led to violent clashes— Robert Gray, master of the Columbia attacked and killed dozens of people and ordered the bombing and destruction of the village of Opitsaht in 1792. Led by Chief Maquinna, the Mowachaht and their allies attacked and captured the American ship the Boston in 1803, killing most of the officers and crew.6 Diseases brought from Europe, however, soon decimated Indigenous communities, with many losing up to 90 percent of their pre-contact numbers.7 Colonization Despite the difficulties, Indigenous peoples remained determined to defend their lands and to continuously challenge colonial expansion. The British believed they had the right to colonize any area of the world. In Asia, the Chief Maquinna welcomed but also resisted British empire commercially exploited India using the East India Company, European incursions. and then colonized it. It then developed its opium trade from India to China Credit: Royal BC Museum and Archives, A-02678. and when the Chinese objected, the British went to war. They then imposed an unequal treaty and seized Hong Kong. The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was the commercial arm of the British Empire in America and in 1843 the HBC built a fort on Songhees lands that would eventually become Victoria. The 1846 border with the Americans (as laid out in the Oregon Treaty) arbitrarily cut through the traditional territories of the Nuu-chah-nulth, and Coast Salish First Nations, including WSÁNEĆ, without a word of consultation. The British government then prodded the HBC to bring in British settlers to consolidate its control of Vancouver Island. In the hope of developing respectful relations with newcomers, Indigenous peoples demanded recognition of their territories and protection of their livelihood. Brandishing gunships and cannon, the colonial government was determined to end Indigenous control of the Coast. At times it resorted to force but it also negotiated unequal treaties (the Douglas Treaties, 1850– STOLȻEȽ Elder John Elliott (Tsartlip First 54) with First Nations.8 However, this treaty-making process soon came Nation) works to revitalize language and cultural practices at ȽÁU,WELṈEW Tribal School in to an end and whatever minimal protections they might have offered were Saanich. ignored. Colonial politicians such as Joseph Trutch subsequently repudiated Credit: Darren Stone, photo, Times Colonist the idea of treaty-making. As geographer Cole Harris concluded: “Native people lost almost all their land and, with it, their means of livelihood, to an aggressively colonizing settler society.”9 2 Fighting for Justice on the Coast new-com-er noun: a person who has recently arrived in a place Given that First Nations have lived on the Coast for thousands of years, non- indigenous peoples were, and are, newcomers. In the era of the fur trade, early arrivers included Quebecers, Métis, inland First Nations, Hawaiians (Kanakas) and European peoples. However, from 1849 on, the colonial government sought mainly British settlers to solidify its hold on the area. The 1858 gold rush on the Fraser River brought in thousands of American newcomers hoping to strike it rich. Among those coming from the US were free African Americans fleeing persecution in California, as well as thousands from southern China who had come to California during the 1849 gold rush there. This influx of newcomers to Victoria and points inland created new challenges for First Nations and even for the colonial government. The governor in 1858, James Douglas, initially welcomed free African Americans as settlers.10 But they also encountered racism. Faced with white resistance to their joining the Victoria Fire Department, community leaders suggested they form a militia to defend the colony—thus was born the Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps. In this same era, enterprising businessman Of Aboriginal and Hawaiian heritage, Maria Mifflin Gibbs, was elected to Victoria City Council. Many African American Mahoi identified as Kanaka. A skilled midwife, homemaker and gardener she raised her family newcomers pre-empted and worked the land, particularly on Salt Spring on Russell Island, now part of the Gulf Islands Island where the Stark family and others settled. National Park Reserve. Credit: Salt Spring Island Archives, 20008009009. Chinese newcomers ended up in various communities along the Fraser River, at times destitute at the end of the gold rush. First Nations often helped these newcomers through difficult times. Though frictions existed between some Chinese and Indigenous peoples, they also “formed great friendships” as noted by First Nations leader and author Bev Sellars.11 Aspiring settlers from southern China formed a distinct community in Victoria’s Chinatown. Like First Nations, they often became the target of European racism. In 1864, Lee Chong, a Chinese merchant in Victoria, pleaded for equal treatment in a petition to Vancouver Island’s governor, Arthur Kennedy.12 Those of African heritage also sparred with Kennedy who refused to recognize the Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps. A captain in the corps, R.H. Johnson Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps. wrote to the Colonist newspaper: “...their enthusiasm and ardour as far as Credit: Royal BC Museum and Archives, this colony is concerned have evaporated. This mean and scandalous manner C-06124 in which they were treated upon the advent of Governor Kennedy is still fresh in their minds.”13 3 150 Years and Counting British Columbia increasingly became ‘a white man’s country’ based on the dispossession of the land and rights of First Nations, and the physical exclusion of peoples of colour from the Coast.14 The province systematically introduced discriminatory legislation and lobbied the federal government to create a colour bar against Asian immigration. The federal government imposed a ban on immigration of those of African heritage in 1911.15 First Nations, Asian Canadians and many others continuously challenged the persistent attempts at dispossession and exclusion. In 1878 the provincial legislature passed legislation to tax the Chinese living in BC $40 per year (a breathing tax). Chinese workers and merchants responded by going on strike that September: “Ladies are doing their own kitchen and housework, restaurant and hotel-keepers their own cooking, heads of families are sawing their own wood and blacking their own boots.”1 6 A leading merchant, Tai Sing, and eleven others sued the government. The Supreme Court ruled that only the federal government could pass such an act and the tax was struck down.17 The provincial government persisted, passing legislation in 1884 prohibiting Chinese individuals from pre- empting land.18 That same year the B.C.