Sovereign Intentions: Gold Mining Law and Mineral Staking in British Columbia

Abstract

Colonial gold exploration and conquest travelled throughout South and Central America before it reached British Columbia in the 1850s.  Gold rush regulations moved up the Pacific coast, and were part of the settlement of state law and resource governance. My concern in this paper is with a particular historical moment during 1858-1859 when gold mining regulations were forged in what became British Columbia.  The paper’s focus is on the regulatory devices and mineral staking regimes that make it difficult to reject mining projects in Canada, and particularly British Columbia, today.  My aim is not to be deterministic about the power of mining property law, but rather to illuminate how legal mechanisms facilitate contestation over Indigenous lands and are bound to principles that were distilled in the gold rush era.