From dispossession to decolonization: Towards a critical indigenous geography of Hul'qumi'num territory

This study examines historic and contemporary struggles over land and natural resources in Hul'qumi'num territory. This territory, located in British Columbia's southern Georgia Strait region, encompasses the aboriginal title claim of the Hul'qumi'num people, a Coast Salish group. I explore processes of colonization and dispossession during the latter half of the nineteenth century, examining how colonial ideas of civilization, law and property---backed by military force---aided in the breaching of Hul'qumi'num territorial sovereignty, leading to resettlement of this region. I document how resettlement schemes, the delineation of Indian reserves, and a large railway land grant divided the territory into two distinct and unequal spaces, an expansive space for white resettlement and a marginal space of indigenous confinement. I further show how these processes were marked by conflict and continual indigenous resistance.;I also explore contemporary efforts to resolve the land question in the territory, focusing on the Hul'qumi'num's engagement with the British Columbia treaty process. The Hul'qumi'num face many challenges in negotiating a modern comprehensive treaty, including the predominance of private land (almost 84 percent of the territory is privately held) and disagreement about how aboriginal title and Crown sovereignty can be reconciled. For the Crown, reconciliation is sought by redrawing and refixing the boundaries between indigenous and non-indigenous spaces. For the Hul'qumi'num reconciliation is sought through the sharing (with the Crown) of jurisdiction and control over territory. This latter approach, I argue, offers greater potential to support meaningful reconciliation between indigenous peoples and the Crown.;This study is positioned within the emerging subdiscipline of indigenous geography, which recognizes the importance of indigenous concerns and draws them into geography's mainstream. I argue that a 'critical indigenous geography'---an approach which recognizes distinctly indigenous conceptions of geography, documents historical geographies of colonialism and dispossession and their contemporary effects, and pays close attention to the agency of indigenous actors---offers a framework for geographers to contribute not only to the decolonization of the discipline but also to broader efforts to decolonize relations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in places like Canada.