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Law Indigenous Peoples

Landing Native Fisheries

Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights in British Columbia, 1849-1925

by (author) Douglas C. Harris

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2009
Category
Indigenous Peoples, Fisheries & Aquaculture, Native American, Post-Confederation (1867-), Pre-Confederation (to 1867), Fish, Natural Resources, Legal History
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774858373
    Publish Date
    Jan 2009
    List Price
    $34.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774814201
    Publish Date
    Jan 2009
    List Price
    $34.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774814195
    Publish Date
    May 2008
    List Price
    $37.95

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Description

Landing Native Fisheries reveals the contradictions and consequences of an Indian land policy premised on access to fish, on one hand, and a program of fisheries management intended to open the resource to newcomers, on the other. Beginning with the first treaties signed on Vancouver Island between 1850 and 1854, Douglas Harris maps the connections between the colonial land policy and the law governing the fisheries. In so doing, Harris rewrites the history of colonial dispossession in British Columbia, offering a new and nuanced examination of the role of law in the consolidation of power within the colonial state.

About the author

Douglas C. Harris (PhD) is the Nathan T. Nemetz Chair in Legal History and the Associate Dean Graduate Studies & Research in the Faculty of Law at the University of British Columbia. He writes and teaches in the areas of property law, legal history, fisheries law, and Aboriginal law. Professor Harris is the author of Fish, Law, and Colonialism: The Legal Capture of Salmon in British Columbia (University of Toronto Press, 2001) and Land ing Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights in British Columbia, 1849-1925 (University of British Columbia Press, 2008), which received the John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Constitutional Legal History in 2011. He is also a co-author of the leading property law casebook in Canada, A Property Law Reader: Cases, Questions, Commentary (Carswell, 2012), now in its third edition.

 

Douglas C. Harris' profile page

Awards

  • Winner, John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Constitutional Legal History
  • Commended, Lieutenant-Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing, British Columbia Historical Federation

Editorial Reviews

In this thorough and well-documented account, Harris demonstrates the importance of historical factors to the social and political geography of British Columbia.

The Canadian Geographer, 55, no 2 (2011)

Librarian Reviews

Landing Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights in British Columbia, 1849–1925

This jargon-free book explores the historical connection between reserve locations and fisheries in BC from 1850, and its effect on colonial land policy and on the law governing the fisheries. The contradictions between an Indian land policy based on access to fish and a government program of fisheries management opening the resource to newcomers, are revealed. The historical basis of the Indian food fishery is considered in this context. Maps, photographs, and tables assist the reader in assessing the geographical and historical basis for the various claims and entitlements.

Harris is a member of the Faculty of Law at the University of British Columbia.

Source: The Association of Book Publishers of BC. Canadian Aboriginal Books for Schools. 2008-2009.