'And then we will mind the law': The enforcement of federal fisheries regulations in British Columbia and the resistance of native fishers, 1894-1916

The federal fisheries regulations that were passed for British Columbia in the late 1800s restricted Native fishing outside the context of the Euro-Canadian controlled commercial salmon fishery and encouraged Natives to supply their fishing labour to cannery-owners. These regulations were geared to serve the perceived needs of the growing commercial fishery and ignored Native systems of fishing and allocating caught salmon. Department of Marine and Fisheries (DMF) authorities, particularly senior officials, subordinated Native fishing rights and cultivated a "common sense" that Native fishing, particularly the use of weirs, was unequivocally "destructive and wasteful".;It appears that Natives did not have significant influence over the creation of regulatory restrictions on their fishing, but, through various paths of resistance, Natives did affect the enforcement of regulations. Officials responsible for enforcement complained of being inadequately resourced, particularly where they were responsible for waters spanning large regions of the province. Natives took advantage of this to intimidate officers into concessions, particularly regarding the use of weirs. In addition, Natives took available opportunities to challenge the discourse of "destruction and waste". These challenges were linked with whatever forms of advocacy Natives could obtain from missionaries and Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) officials.;From 1894 to 1916, the first twenty years of the enforcement of regulatory restrictions on weirs, Natives on the Cowichan River on Vancouver Island and on the Babine River in the northern interior utilized these paths of resistance and, to an important degree, mitigated the impacts which Euro-Canadian fisheries management had on their fishing activities. These Natives did not maintain their pre-contact forms of power over the fisheries, but this thesis intends to demonstrate that they continued to play an active role in the management of the fisheries in B.C. during times when many histories portray Natives as marginalized and irrelevant in Euro-Canadian society.