Shortly after British settlers established the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849, governor James Douglas signed a flurry of treaties with the region’s First Nations to secure lands for fur trapping, mining and other activities.
Known as the Douglas Treaties, the 14 agreements between 1850 and 1854 might have seemed at the time like a template for future arrangements with British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples, who occupied lands stretching from modern-day Vancouver to the northern border with Yukon. Instead, the province stopped signing such agreements — a result of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s refusal to continue funding negotiations — and reached virtually no other treaties for the next 150 years.
