This piece is co-written by two Indigenous students, Lisa Schnitzler of Cree-Métis
descent, and Skye Lacroix of Inuvialuit and Vuntut Gwitchin descent. Although the
Colonial Despatches has been supportive of our work, it is not accurate to say that every statement made
in this essay reflects the thoughts of the entire project team. This piece is an exploration
of what decolonization looks like for the Despatches and for ourselves as Indigenous women. We encourage you to combat any biases that
may arise during your reading of our truths and lived experiences.
In 2019 the Colonial Despatches team made several changes to the database, website, and project in an on-going effort
to “decolonize” the Despatches. We cannot rewrite a colonial archive or speak directly to the colonial administrators
or colonists, but we believe it is possible to make progress in decolonizing these
documents by naming them as a primary-source record of colonialism and its legacies.
We will work to develop tools that allow users to access and use the archive in order
to further the aims of decolonization.
To achieve these aims the site will include updated mentions of Indigenous place names,
mentions of specific Indigenous groups, additional biographies of Indigenous individuals,
and improved search functions for communities that use this site as a resource. We
acknowledge the need to centre Indigenous narratives and deconstruct the status quo. We recognize that this journey will not be perfect and that we will face challenges
along the way.
With funding from the Victoria Foundation, the
Colonial Despatches team embarked on an exploration of how we might include Indigenous content and perspectives
in order to decolonize an archive of colonial correspondence. The
Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs and the
First People’s Cultural Council were our grant partners, and we hope to nurture these partnerships as we continue
on this journey. We acknowledge the diversity of meanings of the term “Indigenous”
and hope that our changes to the database and content reflect the diversity and sovereignty
of different nations across the continent. For the purposes of this introduction,
we have chosen to use the word
Indigenous
to refer to the First Peoples of what some Indigenous Peoples call Turtle Island.
We take this term to include the Métis Nation, the Inuit, and First Nations, recognizing
their personhood and sovereignty as Peoples with distinct cultural practices and teachings.
- 1. Leanne Simpson, Embodied Resurgence
Practice and Coded Disruption, in As We Have Always Done: Indigenous
Freedom Through Radical Resistance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017),
192.
About the Despatches
The Colonial Despatches contains transcripts of the complete correspondence between British colonial authorities
and successive governors of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia.
These correspondence, between the Colonial Office in London and the governors on Vancouver
Island and British Columbia, provide insight into the psyche that led to the colonization
of what is now called North America.
Although the date range of the correspondence is 1846-1871, the legacy of the decisions
made within them lives on today. Before the current social order could be created
in Canada the old order had to be displaced, largely through the extinguishment of
Indigenous bodies and land title. Many of the decisions, policies, and practices mentioned in the Despatches correspondence continue to negatively affect Indigenous and other minority groups
across the country. Many of the colonial ideologies in the correspondence remain embedded
in Canada’s identity as a settler colonial state.
Many of the correspondence suggest a divine right to spread Christianity and to conquer
lands for the Crown and indicate that Canada’s foundation is built upon the dispossession
and displacement of Indigenous Peoples. This immoral perspective drove colonizers to attempt to civilize
Indigenous Peoples through deliberate assimilation efforts.
- 1. Michael Asch, Confederation Treaties and Reconciliation: Stepping Back into the Future, in Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous-Settler Relations and Earth Teachings (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 31.
- 2. Settler colonialism is different from other forms of colonialism in that settlers
come to stay and enforce their laws and norms. Settler-colonial states are structures,
not events, and the violence that occurs in these states is a product of the need
to assimilate (eliminate) the Native. It is imperative to note that settler colonialism
is ongoing. To read more about settler colonialism, please refer to J. Kēhaulani Kauanui,
A Structure, Not an Event: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity, Lateral Journal of the Cultural Studies Association 5.1 (Spring 2016), https://doi.org/10.25158/L5.1.7.
- 3. Paulette Regan, Deconstructing Canada’s Peacemaker Myth, in Unsettling the Settler Within (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010), 92.
- 4. Ibid., 82.
Shifting perspectives
Some have yet to accept the term “genocide” as applied to the treatment of Indigenous
Peoples in North America; however, we support the use of this term as it is defined
by the United Nations. More recently, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and
Girls defined Canada’s past and current colonial policies, actions and inactions towards Indigenous
Peoples [as] genocide.
We encourage people to consider critically the actions and inactions of colonial
states.
Coercive measures are embedded in colonial policies, such as the Indian Act, and continue to infringe upon Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. Among
other reasons, the assumed inferiority of Indigenous Peoples became a rationale and
justification for acquiring Indigenous lands and resources, and for the creation of
prescriptive re-education and assimilation policies, which includes the atrocious
Indian Residential School system, about which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
of Canada (TRC) has done extensive research. We in the Despatches team have much to learn from projects such as the TRC, the National Inquiry, and
others, as well as from Indigenous scholars who have studied the contemporary and
historical relationships of the settler state and Indigenous Peoples.
Many of the correspondence in the Despatches collection contain misinformation about or biases against Indigenous communities.
The correspondence often fails to acknowledge the presence of Indigenous Peoples and
rarely acknowledges Indigenous voices, in effect [denying] a critical Indigenous counter-Narrative.
Although we cannot undo these biases, we are working to better represent Indigenous
perspectives in the project.
Reconciliation has been at the forefront of many political discussions lately, yet
little action has been taken by colonial governments to remedy the relationships between
settlers and Indigenous Peoples. It is important to recognize the unavoidable relationships
between Indigenous Peoples and settlers, as Indigenous Peoples are ultimately under
the dominion of the settler colonial state. We acknowledge settlers as anyone who
is not Indigenous, and as a diverse group of people who have come to these territories
in many different ways. It is also important to acknowledge diversities among settler
people and communities and that white settlers benefit from living on Indigenous territories
more than settlers from other communities, such as Black folks and People of Colour.
Canada and British Columbia have infringed upon the political and territorial rights
of Indigenous Peoples for centuries, but this infringement has been met with continual
resistance. The colonial project is about settlers having the privilege to position themselves
as superior and to impose their own laws on Indigenous lands, a reality that is evident
in many Despatches correspondence. Indigenous Peoples are seen as abnormal and subject to the laws and
norms of settlers. The traditional practices of Indigenous Peoples are often devalued. Yet it is imperative to recognize that Indigenous Peoples have actively resisted
the colonial project and continue to maintain and assert sovereignty today.
Our call to settlers engaging with this material is to look critically at these correspondence
and to question their authority: to ask who is being left out of the story and why.
We acknowledge that archives are by definition settled places,
and we hope that our ongoing efforts to decolonize the Despatches will encourage a more holistic perspective of history. The National Inquiry states that ending the Canadian genocide of Indigenous Peoples requires an honest and active process
of decolonization and indigenization of structures, institutions, legislation and
policies.
Decolonization means more than just recognizing the injustices of colonialism: it
requires concrete action.
- 1. United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect,
The Genocide Convention, Legal Framework (2019).
- 2. National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, A Legal Analysis of Genocide: Supplementary Report of the National Inquiry into Missing
and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, (2019), 27. This definition was codified by the United Nations’ 1948 Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, becoming effective in international
law in 1951. To read the full document, please refer to The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, (entered into force 12 January 1951), art 2.
- 3. Paulette Regan, Introduction, in Unsettling the Settler Within (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010), 4. The National Centre for
Truth and Reconciliation located at the University of Manitoba, contains the reports
of the TRC at http://nctr.ca/reports.php.
- 4. Taiaiake Alfred, Forward in Unsettling the Settler Within, Paulette Regan (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), X.
- 5. Chief Stewart Phillip, Foreword, in Stolen Lands, Broken Promises: Researching the Indian Land Question in British Columbia, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, (2005).
- 6. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 6.
- 7. Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, Preface, in Stolen Lands, Broken Promises: Researching the Indian Land Question in British Columbia, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, (2005).
- 8. Yu-ting Huang and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, Introduction, in Archiving Settler Colonialism: Culture, Space and Race (London: Routledge, 2019), 2. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351142045.
- 9. National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, A Legal Analysis of Genocide: Supplementary Report of the National Inquiry into Missing
and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, (2019), 27.