The Terror of the Coast: Land Alienation and Colonial War on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, 1849–1863 by Chris Arnett (review)

Book Reviews 36I 'Circles of time' is a metaphor for the Aboriginal understanding of history, specifically, and life in general. It represents the interconnected- . ness of humans with Mother Earth through the endless journeying of the Sun. As the Sun cycles the passage of clays on Earth, so too does it cycle human activities. Combined with the circles oftime is the idea that events have an inside and an outside understanding. The inside understanding is connected to all things, while the outside understanding is connected only to itself and those who adhere to it. History, which is linear and human-focused, is the outside understanding, while Aboriginal oral traditions, connected as they are to the Earth and its cycles, are the inside understanding. With these two conceptualizations, McNab provides the reader with an understanding for Aboriginal participation in land claims negotiations and their resistance to assimilation. He also provides an understanding ofhow history, as it has been practised, has failed to present the Aboriginal view oflife on Turtle Island. In the first instance, given that non-Aboriginals have little appreciation for the connectedness between humans and the Earth, Aboriginal peoples dare not leave it in nonAboriginal keeping. Non-Aboriginals will simply not care for the Earth as they should because they recognize no connection with it, except in how it can serve them. Land claims negotiations are, therefore, according to McNab, not just about land exchanges but about caring for Mother Earth. In the second instance, because history has made the Earth the servant ofhuman progress, Aboriginal peoples, cast by historians as the antithesis ofprogress, have been pushed aside, while their understandings ofthe Earth have been denied all legitimacy. Ifland claims are to be resolved, then non-Native governments have to understand Earth from the inside and historians have to assist in developing this understanding by recognizing the value of Native oral traditions. It is in the exploration ofthese ideas that McNab's book proves its worth, not in the chronological narratives of various land claims negotiations. If readers can get beyond the meagre fare offered by the narratives, then they will experience something much more palatable and satisfying. JEAN L. MANORE Trent University The Terror ofthe Coast: Land Alienation and Colonial War on Vancouver Island and the GulfIslands, 1849-1863. CHRIS ARNETT. Burnaby, BC: Talon Books 1999· Pp. 352, illus. $18.95 Cross-cultural understandings have never been easily achieved. For European expansionists of the l8oos, and for the many mainstream 362 The Canadian Historical Review Canadians today who have inherited their beliefs and historical memories , Indian treaties were conceived as agreements over what remnant of the land and sovereignty would be reserved for Native communities. They were, and are, regarded as being about what land and jurisdiction the settler society would 'give' the Natives, rather than what the indigenous community might give the settlers. In The Terror ofthe Coast, Chris Arnett provides a commendable account of mid-nineteenth-century Coast Salish motivations for entering treaty agreements with the hwunitum ('hungry people') newcomers. Earlier histories of British Columbia's colonial era have ascribed particular motivations to Aboriginal behaviours. Arnett argues that these interpretations derived from ethnocentric assumptions about a universal nature ofhuman interests. His study documents a series ofwhat have been regarded as unconnected violent cross-cultural clashes and shows that they were, in fact, coherently understood and linked within the minds ofthe Cowichan people. For the Cowichan, the killing of settlers who ventured beyond the boundaries ofrecognized colonial settlements and onto Native family-owned properties was a justified application of Aboriginal trespass law. The Cowichan came to regard the ever-escalating colonial military and judicial response to these continued efforts at exercising self-government as hypocritical and treacherous. Among the most insightful ofArnett's contributions is his thesis that Vancouver Island's Halkomelem First Nations perceived the early 'Douglas treaties' within the framework of Coast Salish potlatch exchange ceremonies. The paltry 'treaty payments' received by the Victoria and Nanaimo area 'chiefs,' and witnessed by the Cowichan leadership, were likely regarded as 'witness gifts' intended to prove the government 's integrity when it promised Native people continued freedom to hunt and fish on all unoccupied lands. From a Coast...