Program

Indigenous Labour in British Columbia

October 22, 2022 from 10:45am EDT to 12:00pm EDT

Location: Lincoln Park Room J301

 

Chair: Ted McCoy

Sean Carleton, “Racism at Work: Indigenous Teachers in British Columbia’s Indian Day Schools, 1880s-1930s”

In 1935, after almost twenty years of teaching at the Alert Bay Indian Day School on Vancouver Island, George M. Luther, an Indigenous teacher, wrote to the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) in Ottawa to tender his resignation. Owing to his ill health and poverty resulting from years of 18 being poorly paid for his labour, Luther tried to negotiate a small pension – as teachers had recently secured in the province’s public schools – but he was unsuccessful. Instead, the DIA granted him two months of salary upon retirement, a total of $180. This meant that Luther’s annual salary, at the end of his career, was $1080. By comparison, the average public-school teacher in British Columbia’s elementary schools made close to $1,500. Two decades of correspondence between Luther and DIA officials about pay grievances and the lack of pedagogical support reveals the racism at work in British Columbia’s Indian Day Schools. Indeed, the DIA constantly opposed the hiring of Indigenous teachers, preferring to hire “white” teachers where possible because of their presumed superiority and advanced skill set. Nevertheless, this paper will establish that, against the wishes of the DIA, Indigenous teachers comprised a significant portion of the day school workforce in British Columbia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Moreover, surviving DIA records and correspondence offers a window into the previously undocumented working conditions, racism, and grievances these teachers experienced.

Benjamin Isitt, “Capitalist Commodification, Indigenous Labour, and Treaty-Making in Modern British Columbia”

The commodification of labour and natural resources has been a cornerstone of the capitalist mode of production everywhere, including in relation to the process of colonization of Indigenous lands and waters on the Pacific Coast of North America. Focusing on recent British Columbia history since the 1990s, this paper examines capitalist commodification and its impact on Indigenous workers, economic practices, and lands. It examines how the imperatives of private capital 19 accumulation have shaped “modern-day” treaties between Indigenous peoples and the governments of British Columbia and Canada. Treaty provisions discouraging commonly held property, and favouring privately held property, and treaty provisions protecting the economic interests of non-Indigenous capitalist entities, are examined, with particular reference to the Nisga’a and Tsawwassen treaties and other treaties currently under negotiation between Indigenous peoples and settler governments. The paper also examines the impact of capitalist commodification on treaty provisions relating to governance and political organization within Indigenous communities.

Speakers / Panelists

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    Sean Carleton

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    Benjamin Isitt