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Douglas C. Harris, Landing Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights in British Columbia, 1849-1925.

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Douglas C. Harris, Landing Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights in British Columbia, 1849-1925 (Vancouver: UBC Press 2008)

HARRIS'S CHIEF objective in writing this book is to lend support to the First Nations in British Columbia who have been negotiating with the BC government to settle land claims and associated rights ever since 1871 when the province joined Confederation. In particular, Harris takes great pains to delineate "reserve geography" through the use of detailed maps that appear throughout the book as well as in an appendix. These maps demarcate the land set aside from 1849 to 1925 as reserves. Well over half of that land was established to create access and rights to important adjacent fisheries. In other words, the principal argument in this very meticulously conducted study is that in the case of the First Nations of British Columbia, the setting aside of often small plots of land for the various bands was expressly done to secure access to important traditional fishing sites. That is, the land base cannot be dissociated from the adjacent water and the resources it contained. Since, apart from a very few treaties, most of the land and resources comprising the province of British Columbia were not "alienated" from the indigenous inhabitants who, for the most part,...