Allied Tribes of British Columbia
The Allied Tribes of British Columbia (Allied Tribes of British Columbia) is an organization of Indian tribes founded in British Columbia , in western Canada , in 1916 . It comprised 16 tribal groups who had joined forces to maintain or enforce their land claims. It disbanded in 1927 when Indians were prohibited from exercising their rights.
Trigger for the merger
The trigger for the merger was the formation of the McKenna-McBride Commission , which had been set up to solve the "land question" and to adjust the size of the reservations . She had made good progress in her research, which had continued since 1913, and had made proposals to downsize numerous reserves. However, there were disputes about this not only within the commission, but also between the federal government and the provincial government.
The approximately 25,000 affected Indians in the province also tried to interfere. In 1916, the Indian Rights Association and the Interior Tribes of British Columbia joined forces in order to jointly oppose the decisions of the commission. Some of them had already come together the previous year to support the Nisga'a demand for a treaty.
Fight for land rights and bans
The Government of Canada Representative, WE Ditchburn, and the Provincial Representative, JW Clark, were to represent the interests of the Indians along with anthropologist James Teit . But part died in 1922, so that the Indians were again without representation. This is how the final Ditchburn-Clark Report came about , which envisaged a downsizing of the reservations, with practically no participation.
After the London Judicial Committee of the Privy Council first passed a landmark judgment in favor of a tribe (in Nigeria ) in 1921 , the allied tribes of British Columbia tried to bring their case to the royal council as well. For this purpose, three chiefs traveled to London, where they met the Canadian High Commission . This agreed to forward the relevant documents to King George V.
The government in Ottawa organized a meeting, but the responsible Deputy Superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell Scott , who pursued a tough line of assimilation , rejected the demands of the tribes. On the contrary, the Indian Act was tightened. Now the Indians were forbidden to hire lawyers without the approval of the Superintendent-General - as Scott claimed, to protect the Indians from "exploitation by lawyers and agitators".
The organization was thus deprived of its business basis and every possibility of effectiveness was blocked. The organization dissolved.
literature
- Cole Harris: Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia , Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press 2002. ISBN 0774809019
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ Cf. Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 9.9 ( Memento of the original from August 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
