Return to search

History and politics of the 'New relationship'

This essay looks at the Government of British Columbia’s ‘New Relationship’ with indigenous people and how British Columbia’s history can inform this public policy debate. Specifically, I draw on the approach used by historian Quentin Skinner to identify two distinct periods in British Columbia’s early history, the coastal fur trade and the colonial period, and to identify how the relationship between indigenous people and Europeans was fundamentally different during these periods. After identifying the key features that made these relationships different, I challenge policymakers to look beyond the colonial period and its effect on our intellectual heritage. Through looking back to the fur trade period, I argue that we can begin to meet the promise contained in the ‘New Relationship’ and its statement of vision.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/2686
Date30 April 2010
CreatorsDonaldson, John Conor
ContributorsTully, James
Source SetsUniversity of Victoria
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web

Page generated in 0.0015 seconds