Backgrounder

Historical Overview - The members of the Williams Lake Indian Band are descended from the Secwepemc or Shuswap people, and have a long history in the Williams Lake area of British Columbia. Their traditional way of life was based on Aseasonal rounds@ in which they would move or camp in cycles according to the natural resources available. Each winter, the Band would return to their permanent winter villages, characterized by their sunken structures known as Akickwillie@ or Aquigly@ houses. The village sites that are the subject of this inquiry are of great cultural importance to the band. 

The Fraser Gold Rush hit in 1858 and white settlers began to move into the area. The colony of BC was established as a result of the gold rush and an ongoing fear of American annexation. In 1859, Governor James Douglas instructed the Gold Commissioner and Magistrate, Philip Nind, to reserve the sites of all Indian villages and lands. These instructions were formalized on January 4, 1860, when Governor Douglas issued Proclamation No. 15, allowing settlers to acquire, or pre-empt unoccupied and unreserved Crown land in BC. The proclamation stated that Indian reserve or settlement areas were clearly prohibited from being occupied. The first pre-emptions at Williams Lake were recorded in 1860. Commissioner Nind reported that the Williams Lake Indian Band was starving in 1861 and asked about the establishment of a reserve for them. Governor Douglas instructed Nind to set aside a 400-500 acre reserve for the Band, but these instructions were never carried out and no land was set aside. 

The influx of white settlers into the region  resulted in rapidly changing social conditions for the Williams Lake Indian Band. Diseases like smallpox, malaria, fever, measles and dysentery decimated the population of the Band, reducing its numbers by 66 per cent between 1835 and 1890. The rapid decrease of the Indian population also complicated the protection of AIndian settlements,@ making it difficult for them to maintain a presence in the settlements they had traditionally occupied. The settler population could not understand the seasonal rounds of the band and felt the nomadic lifestyle to be Aneither civilized nor a productive use of highly prized land.@ As such, dispossessing the Indian Band of land required little justification and led to an atmosphere in which the First Nations were misunderstood and ignored by settlers as well as the provincial government.

The pre-emptions in the Williams Lake area continued. In 1871, when BC joined Confederation, the dominion government assumed responsibility for AIndians and land reserved for Indians.@ However, the province retained control over its lands and resources, the intention being that lands set aside for the use and benefit of Indians would eventually be conveyed to the dominion. Indian land became a contentious issue between the two levels of government. In 1874 the BC government passed its first post-Confederation Land Act. The dominion government disallowed the legislation, since it made no provision for lands for the Indians. The revised Land Act was approved by the dominion government in 1875, even though it still did not meet the standards of protection that the dominion government wanted applied to Indian lands. Overall, the province=s position generally favoured the settlers and the province was by and large unresponsive to requests from the dominion government officials and the Indian Reserve Commissioners to limit pre-emptions. 

In 1875, both parties agreed to form the Joint Indian Reserve Commission (JIRC) to address the Indian land question and to allot reserves. When the Commission was dissolved in 1878, G.M. Sproat became the sole Indian Reserve Commissioner, with both the dominion and the provincial governments agreeing to his appointment. Neither the JIRC nor Sproat ever met with the Williams Lake Indian Band.

By 1878, all the lots that the Band had originally settled and lived on at Missioner Creek and at the foot of Williams Lake had been acquired by settlers through the pre-emption policy, and the Williams Lake Indian Band still had no land set aside for it. Justice of the Peace William Laing-Meason wrote to Sproat on two occasions advising him of the plight of the Band and the impact the pre-emptions had on its members. Sproat reported to senior officials that the Band=s situation was the fault of the province, not the dominion. He also felt that the inaction of the provincial government was influenced by deep race prejudice. He, however, never visited the Band.

In 1879, Chief William of the Williams Lake Indian Band wrote a letter to the editor of the British Daily Colonist, protesting against the conditions under which his people were forced to live: AThe land on which my people lived for five hundred years was taken by a white man; he has piles of wheat and herds of cattle. We have nothing B not an acre Y Her majesty sent me a coat, two ploughs and some turnip seed. The coat will not keep away the hunger; the ploughs are idle and the seed is useless because we have no land.@

Peter O=Reilly was the sole Indian Reserve Commissioner from 1880 to 1898. O=Reilly visited the Indian Band in 1881 and in his report described the Chief=s complaints regarding the delay in setting aside land for his people. He also acknowledged the presence of an Aold Indian Church,@ winter houses and burial grounds at Missioner Creek. He set aside 14 reserves for the Band, with a total acreage of 5,634 acres, including 1,464 acres of pre-empted land purchased from non-native settlers. However, none of the reserves were located at the original village sites, the two areas that are the subject of the inquiry. In 1894, an additional 168.76 acres was allotted at Carpenter Mountain.

In 1912, the McKenna-McBride Commission was established Ato settle all differences between the Governments of the Dominion and the Province respecting Indian lands and Indian Affairs generally in the Province of British Columbia.@ Members of the Commission traveled throughout BC setting aside lands for reserve purposes. In 1914, Chief Baptiste William of the Williams Lake Indian Band appeared before the Commission asking for more land owing to the rocky nature of the reserves and outlined grievances related to the pre-emption of its original village sites. In 1915, the McKenna-McBride Commission confirmed the same 15 reserves for the Williams Lake Indian Band that had originally been set aside by O=Reilly. Provincial Order in Council PC 911 transferred the lands for the 15 reserves to the federal Crown on July 26, 1923. In 1938 only reserves 1B6 and 15 had been transferred to the Band. The graveyards on reserves 7B14 were deleted since the burial sites were on pre-empted lands and the government was unwilling to purchase them.