Indigenous Studies in British Columbia

By Margery Fee

In curating this list, I am thinking about a hypothetical course in Indigenous Studies that focuses on British Columbia. Arriving in 1886, Franz Boas started his field work in Victoria, British Columbia, for a reason. Its relatively recent colonization meant that Boas’s desire to study "ancient" cultures could be satisfied. He tended to overlook the present. The Indigenous people Boas worked with most often were multilingual, literate, of mixed descent and often Christian. The brief but extremely productive visits he made to British Columbia, particularly to Alert Bay off Vancouver Island were to rapidly transforming places. Another reason for British Columbia’s centrality to Indigenous Studies: the British Columbia government adamantly refused to make treaties until 1992. Thus, some of the most important cases to do with Indigenous rights and title have come from here.