This elegantly written and insightful book provides a geographical history of the Indian reserve in British Columbia. Cole Harris analyzes the impact of reserves on Native lives and livelihoods and considers how, in light of this, the Native land question might begin to be resolved. The account begins in the early 19th-century British Empire and follows Native land policy and Native resistance to it in British Columbia from the Douglas treaties in the early 1850s to the formal transfer of reserves to the Dominion in 1938. Making Native Space clarifies and informs the current debate on the Native land question. It presents the most comprehensive account available of perhaps the most critical mapping of space ever undertaken in British Columbia the drawing of the lines that separated the tiny plots of land reserved for Native people from the rest.

British Columbia, Canada, History, Indian reservations, Indian reservations British Columbia History, Indians of North America British Columbia Economic conditions, Indians of North America Canada Government relations, Indians of North America Economic conditions, Indians of North America Government relations, Indians of North America Land tenure,

Figures and IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart 1: The Colonial Period1 The Imperial Background2 The Douglas Years, 1850-643 Ideology and Land Policy, 1864-71Part 2: Province and Dominion4 The Confederation Years, 1871-765 The Joint Indian Reserve Commission, 1876-786 Sproat and the Native Voice, 1878-80Part 3: Filling in the Map7 O’Reilly, Bureaucracy, and Reserves, 1880-988 Imposing a Solution, 1898-1938Part 4: Land and Livelihood9 Native Space10 Towards a Postcolonial Land PolicyAppendix: Indian Reserves in British Columbia during the Colonial PeriodNotesSource Notes for MapsBibliographyIndex