Resources

The Treaties Themselves

For copies and transcripts and translations of the treaties in SENCOTEN and Lekwungen see the Treaties Tab.

Coming out of the Conference

Twelve different settler and Indigenous historians expanded their analyses of the Vancouver Island Treaties that they had presented at the 2017 conference and these were published in 2021 as To Share Not Surrender: Indigenous and Settler Visions of Treaty Making in the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia edited by Peter Cook,, Neil Vallance, John Sutton Lutz, Graham Brazier and Hamar Foster, (UBC Press). See the table of contents.

Teachers Resources

• There is a lesson plan for teaching about the Vancouver Island Treaties on the Governor’s Letters website.

Recorded Oral Histories

• Elliott, Dave. Saltwater People, as told by Dave Elliott Sr.: A Resource Book for the Saanich Native Studies Program, edited by Janet Poth. Saanichton, BC: School District 63, 1990.
• Pagett, Frank. “105 Years in Victoria and Saanich! Chief David Recalls White Man's Coming; 80 Years Rent Unpaid”. Victoria Daily Times (Victoria, BC), 14 July 1934, 1. (Contains the oral History of David Latasse)
• For Bobby Yacklam's account see newspaper article by Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, “Greatest Real Estate Deal Recorded,” Vancouver Sunday Sun (Vancouver), 4 June 1922.
• For a transcript of Dick Whoakum's testimony before the McKenna/McBride Commission see BC Union of Indian Chiefs website. BC Union of Indian Chiefs, “UBCIC Library and Archives,”: http://www.ubcic.bc.ca/library.
• For Joe and Jenny Wyse's account see newspaper article by Beryl Cryer, “Ki'et'sa'kun of Nanaimo: Telling How Governor Douglas Renamed Him ‘Coal Tyee,’” The Victoria Daily Colonist (Victoria, BC), 5 March 1933; reproduced in Two Houses Half-buried in the Sand: Oral Traditions of the Hul'q'umi'num' Coast Salish of Kuper Island and Vancouver Island, edited by Chris Arnett, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2007, 186-92.

Published Secondary Sources (Print)

• Bowsfield, Hartwell, editor. Fort Victoria Letters 1846-1851. Winnipeg: Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1979.
• British Columbia. Papers Connected with the Indian Land Question, 1850-1875. Victoria: Queen’s Printer, 1875.
• Duff, Wilson. “The Fort Victoria Treaties.” BC Studies, 3 (1969): 3-57. [LINK TO PDF]
• Foster, Hamar. “The Saanichton Bay Marina Case: Imperial Law, Colonial History and Competing Theories of Aboriginal Title.” UBC Law Review (1989): 629-650.
• Foster, Hamar. “Letting Go the Bone: The Idea of Indian Title in British Columbia, 1849- 1927.” In Essays in the History of Canadian Law, British Columbia and the Yukon, Vol VI edited by Hamar Foster and John McLaren, 28-86. Toronto: University of Toronto Press and the Osgoode Society for Legal History, 1995. Foster, Hamar and Allen Grove. “’Trespassers on the Soil’: United States v. Tom and a New Perspective of the Short History of Treaty Making in Nineteenth Century British Columbia.” In The Power of Promises: Rethinking Indian Treaties in the Pacific Northwest, edited by Alexandra Harmon, 89-127. Seattle: University of Washington, 2008.
• Frogner, Raymond. “’Innocent Legal Fictions’: Archival Convention and the North Saanich Treaty of 1852.” Archivaria, 70 (Fall 2010): 45-94.
• Harris, Cole. Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002.
• Harris, Douglas C., “A Court Between: Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in the British Columbia Court of Appeal”, (2009) 162 BC Studies 137.
• Keddie, Grant. Songhees Pictorial: A History of the Songhees People as Seen by Outsiders, 1790-1912. Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum, 2003.
• Lutz, John. Makúk: A New History of Aboriginal-White Relations. Vancouver: UBC, 2008.
• McNeill, Kent. “Negotiated Sovereignty: Indian Treaties and the Acquisition of American and Canadian Territorial Rights in the Pacific Northwest.” In The Power of Promises: Rethinking Indian Treaties in the Pacific Northwest, edited by Alexandra Harmon, 35-55. Seattle: University of Washington, 2008.
• Alexander Morris, The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories including the Negotiations on which they were based (another reprint, dated 1991, of the original, first printed in 1880.
• Ormsby, Margaret.“Introduction,” Fort Victoria Letters 1846-1851. Hartwell Bowsfield, editor. Winnipeg: Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1979, xi-xcv
• Robert J. Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties: An Intellectual & Political Biography of Alexander Morris (Purich 2009).

Dissertations, theses, graduate research papers

• Knighton, Janice. “The Oral History of the Saanich Douglas Treaties: A Treaty for Peace.” Master’s thesis, University of Victoria, 2004.
• Shankel, George. “The Development of Indian Policy in British Columbia.” PhD dissertation, University of Washington, 1945.
• Vallance. Neil, Sharing The Land: The Formation of the Vancouver Island (or ‘Douglas’) Treaties of 1850-1854 in Historical, Legal and Comparative Context. Ph.d. Dissertation, UVic Law, 2015.
• Van Wart, Harriet. "A Bibliography and Discussion of Douglas Treaty Materials: Phase One of Research on the Tsawout First Nation's Douglas Treaty.” Master’s thesis, University of Victoria, 2001.

Court Cases

There are five major court decisions concerning the Vancouver Island Treaties. Four of them are summarized in an article by Hamar Foster and Neil Vallance published in the Victoria Daily Colonist.

• R. v. White and Bob BCCA [1964] 50 DLR (2nd) 613 The BC Court of Appeal decision is the most important of the treaty case, but is not available online and accordingly a pdf copy has been attached.
• R. v. White and Bob SCC. The Supreme Court of Canada’s short decision merely confirmed the BCCA decision:
• R v Bartleman, [1984] 55 BCLR 78 (BCCA).
• R v Morris, 2006 SCC 59 [2006] 2 SCR 915.
• Saanichton Marina Ltd. v Claxton, [1989] 3 CNLR 46.
• The fifth case is a recent decision of the Specific Claims Tribunal on a claim by the Kwakiutl First Nation for breach of the two 1851 Fort Rupert treaties, entered into near present-day Port Hardy. The Kwakiutl First Nation claimed that an open-pit coal mine should have been set aside by James Douglas as a “village site” or “enclosed field” pursuant to the written versions of the treaties. The claim was rejected. Here is a link to the decision: https://decisions.sct-trp.ca/sct/rod/en/item/520904/index.do

Videos

• Summaries of the Presentations from the 2017 Conference First Nations, Land, and James Douglas: Indigenous and Treaty Rights in the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia,1849-1864 held at the Songhees Wellness Centre in Victoria, February 24-26th 2017.
• VI Treaties: The Vancouver Island Treaties of 1850-54 2012, Presentations at the Conference on Pre-confederation Treaties 2012
• Blossom, Ashlee. “Reenactment of the Douglas Treat Signing on PKOLS.” Video. Accessed 20 August 2015.

Comparisons

Canada

• Asch, Michael. On Being Here To Stay: Treaties and Aboriginal Rights in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2013.
• Craft, Aimee. Breathing Life into the Stone Fort Treaty: An Anishinabe Understanding of Treaty One. Saskatoon: SK: Purich Publishing, 2013.
• Saskatchewan Treaties Nos. 4 & 6: see Treaty Land Sharing Network:
  Huron/Superior (“Robinson”) Treaties of 1850: Restoule v. Canada Ontario Court of Appeal 2021
• Toronto Treaties Website
• Washington Territory (“Stevens”) Treaties 1854-55
• New Zealand Nai Tahu Treaty (“Kemp’s” Deed”) 1848