Laying Waste: Pre‐Emption, Dispossession, and Deputization in Colonial British Columbia

ABSTRACT Pre‐emption, a legal instrument allowing settlers to acquire Indigenous land via occupation and improvement, is a vital means of colonial dispossession in North America, yet has received relatively little critical attention. Our analysis outlines its significance, shedding new light on the way in which private property power and state authority worked together to shore up colonial jurisdiction, title, and sovereignty in British Columbia. Pre‐emption enrolled “private” actors in sustained forms of ongoing dispossession, removing the Indigenous presence from the land. Pre‐emption created the conditions for violence that was “illegal” on the face of the legislation yet was effectively granted impunity by colonial authorities. That pre‐emption was designed to take place on unsurveyed land and to the exclusion of “Indian settlements” empowered settlers to self‐administer and regulate the appropriation of land, and to define what was open for settlement and what was not, shaping the (il)legal practices of land appropriation.