Violence That Dispossesses: Continuity on the Settler Colonial Timeline

This article considers what role and responsibility historians may have when faced with settler society’s tendency to be freshly shocked each time it learns (again) about a colonial horror from its past that was, in fact, already long well known by many. Following an introduction, my argument unfolds in five sections. First, I engage a mostly Indigenous scholarship to suggest replotting British Columbia’s timeline as a continuum, or continuous process, of ongoing violence that illuminates connections across myriad forms of violence. Second, I reflect on an earlier, mostly non-Indigenous historiography about physical force and violence in British Columbia. Third, with this scholarship as context, I use an experimental format to present a catalogue of dispossession drawn from transcripts of the Royal Commission on Indian Affairs for the Province of British Columbia (1913–1916). These accounts demonstrate that settlers relied on physical violence during the foundational pre-emption and Crown granting processes to an extent that warrants greater attention. Fourth, I suggest that some important implications follow from this for understandings of British Columbia’s past and present. Fifth, I argue that taking the long view of settler-on-Indigenous violence as a continuum helps clarify connections among forms of violence, particularly in relation to the materiality of forced physical dispossession, and, in so doing, moves us closer to telling histories that are not just for the winners.