Unsettling the Vancouver Island Treaties

The Vancouver Island Treaties of the 1850s, or Douglas Treaties after James Douglas, are fourteen agreements between the Colony of Vancouver Island and Indigenous Peoples. They are often situated as having been land cessions, though little evidence exists showing that these terms were made clear to Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous Chiefs were deceived, being asked to sign empty papers that were later attached to the treaties. These should be referred to as the Douglas Forms, given that treaties are oral agreements. In the cases of each treaty, continued deception was deployed and colonizers pushed beyond the bounds of what oral treaties had declared. These treaties are best understood as sharing treaties, where Indigenous nations of Vancouver Island agreed to allow settlers to share the land. They, thus, have three provisions of which should have been followed: 1) Compensation for previously occupied land and resources, 2) Continuation of this compensation for future use of land and resources, and 3) Continued negotiations.