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Conference sheds new light on Douglas Treaties

Three-day symposium runs out of the Songhees Wellness Centre Friday, Saturday and Sunday
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The view of Victoria on June 13

The people of Vancouver Island want to know just what’s on those original Douglas Treaties, and this weekend’s conference sets about to pull the curtain back a little further on the mystery of how they were drawn up and delivered.

The three-day symposium runs out of the Songhees Wellness Centre Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and is called First Nations, Land and James Douglas: Indigenous and Treaty Rights in the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia.

It started as an idea that we thought would bring together academics and lawyer types, and has grown to so much more, said John Lutz, professor and chair of the University of Victoria’s Department of History.

“It’s taken on quite a different shape than we initially planned. We initially thought we’d have only a few lawyers and other keeners,” Lutz said.

Once Lutz and company reached out to the Songhees Wellness Centre and other First Nations members of the area, the response was massive. Clearly, there was a latent demand, as all 300 spots sold out. Lutz believes he could have sold double. He also believes it’s only the second time in B.C.’s modern history that more than 100 settlers and 100 indigenous people will get together to talk respectfully in the same room.

“It just doesn’t happen, it was one of the goals for us to bring people together,” Lutz said.

The topics will range but mostly focus on the treaties and how they were interpreted then as well as now.

In one tale of Wsanec oral history, it was said that Pkols was the site where Hudson’s Bay Company men convinced Wsanec people to sign their name on a treaty in trade for HBC blankets and English pounds (unusable to the locals). And in that oral history, the Wsanec were of the understanding the treaty was a rent paid for on a seasonal basis.

Of the conference participants, more than 100 people are coming from the First Nations groups who are part of the Te’mexw Treaty Association (comprised of the Becher Bay, Malahat, Nanoose, Songhees and T’souke First Nations) that wishes to renegotiate those treaties signed in the 1850s.

As Lutz researched the B.C. treaties it occurred to him how little the modern population knows about them.

“Another irony to this is that we teach about the treaties in our high schools, we teach about the Prairie treaties, and there’s little or no curriculum about our [B.C.] treaties.”

This weekend’s lectures will be recorded, including all interviewing presenters, and it will all be posted online, Lutz said. The symposium starts on Thursday with a special presentation at RBCM, when copies of the original treaties were rolled out of archives and put out for a viewing.

Friday starts with a tour of the Songhees Traditional Territory in James Bay, led by the Songhees knowledge keepers. That’s followed by a welcome by Songhees Chief Ron Sam and presentation by keynote speaker Saanich Elder John Elliott.

On Saturday, Elliot and Songhees’ Dr. Elmer George will gift the Royal B.C. Museum a translation of the Vancouver Island Douglas Treaties into SENCOTEN and Lekwungen.

Elliot and George will then discuss the meaning of the treaty text in their languages and what it might have meant to their ancestors. The treaties of other lands, such as the Kwakiutl nation (Fort Rupert), will also be discussed.

Lutz and research partner Graham Brazier will discuss the end of treaty making.

For the full schedule visit hcmc.uvic.ca/songheesconference/index.html.