The Bare Island Bird Sanctuary and the Myth of Indigenous Consent: Land Theft and Conservation in British Columbia, 1912–16

In 1913, the Royal Commission on Indian Affairs (rcia) for the Province of British Columbia (also known as the McKenna-McBride or Indian Commission) ruled that an island reserve of the Tsawout and Tseycum First Nations of the W̱SÁNEĆ should be surrendered and sold to the province for the purposes of a bird sanctuary. In accordance with both the federal Indian Act and assurances repeatedly made at meetings with Indigenous leaders, the commission sought consent for the sale from what was then the Saanich Band of Indians. To their surprise and consternation, the W̱SÁNEĆ said no, becoming the only First Nation to successfully withhold approval and reject a decision of the royal commission. While the Bare Island Bird Sanctuary was never created, the provincial and federal governments subsequently colluded to change the law and break their promise, and, in 1920, the recommendations of the rcia’s General Report were enacted entirely without Indigenous consent. The campaign for the Bare Island Bird Sanctuary is a study of the micro-dynamics of land dispossession; an examination of the violence of a thousand cuts that brought about settler-colonial jurisdiction over Indigenous land. The failure of the Bare Island Bird Sanctuary is the exception that proves the rule, illustrating how conservation and consent were both subordinated to the settler governments’ efforts to distribute Indigenous territory profitably amongst themselves.