https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3203-6705
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Abstract
This paper is a series of tales of sea level rise on the coastal floodplain of Surrey, British Columbia. It begins with the Indigenous tales of the Great Flood that inform Coast Salish collective identity. This collective identity becomes permanently altered as illustrated in tales about how colonial tools of maps and surveys dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their lands while inflicting ecosystem damage. The paper concludes with tales that contemplate an expanded definition to “land reclamation”—one that provides a framework for flood adaptation and ecosystem restoration, while making space for a decolonized future urbanism on the floodplain.
Acknowledgements
I extend my thanks to Don Welsh of the Semiahmoo First Nation for generously sharing his knowledge, and to the JAE theme editors Lisa Findley and Marc J Neveu, and reviewer(s) for their invaluable feedback that helped shape the paper.
Notes
Notes
1 Keith Carlson, Albert Jules McHalsie, and Jan Perrier, A Stó:lō-Coast Salish Historical Atlas (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2001), 162.
2 The Stó:lō are regarded as a subgroup of the Coast Salish, which represents people from a larger geographical area in the Pacific Northwest Coast extending from British Columbia to Oregon. Both terms are used throughout the paper to reflect the varying degrees of specificity from the sources referenced. The use of the term “Coast Salish” is also meant to be inclusive of tribes and nations who do not identify as Stó:lō, such as the Semiahmoo. This is a reminder of the complexity of overlapping and shared territories of Indigenous groups.
3 Carlson et al., A Stó:lō-Coast Salish Historical Atlas, 162.
4 Wayne P. Suttles, The Economic Life of the Coast Salish of Haro and Rosario Straits (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1974), 27–29.
5 British Columbia Assembly of First Nations, “Semiahmoo,” accessed December 20, 2020, https://www.bcafn.ca/first-nations-bc/lower-mainland-southwest/semiahmoo.
6 The coastal floodplain occupies approximately 20 percent of the municipal land area and sits within the agricultural land reserve.
7 Ausenco Sandwell, “Climate Change Adaption Guidelines for Sea Dikes and Coastal Flood Hazard Land Use: Sea Dike Guidelines,” BC Ministry of Environment Project No. 143111 Rev. 0, (Victoria, B.C.: Ministry of Environment, January 27, 2011).
8 Norman Hart Lerman and Betty Keller, eds., Legends of the River People (Vancouver: November House, 1976), 23–24.
9 Lerman and Keller, Legends of the River People, 25.
10 Different terminology is used for the original inhabitants of Canada. “Indigenous” is used internationally and by transnational organizations like the United Nations. “Aboriginal” was popularized in Canada following its usage in the Constitution Act of 1982. “First Nations” describes the Indigenous peoples of Canada who are not Métis or Inuit. “Indian” is considered inappropriate and outdated, but still used in legal contexts; it is also widely used in the United States. “Native” is another antiquated term that is still used today to encompass First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. First Nations Studies Program—The University of British Columbia, Indigenous Foundations, “Terminology,” accessed December 20, 2020, https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/terminology/.
11 Chief Harley Chappell’s telling of the story of the Great Flood has been paraphrased from a video that was a part of the “Che’ Semiahmah-Sen, Che’ Shesh Whe Weleq-sen Si’am (I Am Semiahmoo, I Am Survivor of the Flood)” exhibition at the Museum of Surrey, 2020–2021.
12 Wendy C. Wickwire, “To See Ourselves as the Other’s Other: Nlaka’pamux Contact Narratives,” The Canadian Historical Review 75:1 (March, 1994): 1–20; Keith Thor Carlson, “Reflections on Indigenous History and Memory: Reconstructing and Reconsidering Contact,” in Myth and Memory: Stories of Indigenous-European Contact, ed. John S. Lutz (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 52.
13 Keith Thor Carlson, The Power of Place, the Problem of Time: Aboriginal Identity and Historical Consciousness in the Cauldron of Colonialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 80.
14 John J. Clague, Nicholas J. Roberts, Brendan Miller, Brian Menounos, and Brent Goehring, “A Huge Flood in the Fraser River Valley, British Columbia, Near the Pleistocene Termination,” Geomorphology 374 (2021).
15 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Tsunami Historical Series: Cascadia—1700,” Science On a Sphere, accessed December 5, 2020, https://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/tsunami-historical-series-cascadia-1700/.
16 Joseph Trutch, “Report on the Lower Fraser Indian Reserves,” August 28, 1867, British Columbia. Papers Connected with the Indian Land Question 1850–1875 (Victoria: Richard Wolfenden, Government Printer, 1875), 42.
17 Robin Fisher, “Joseph Trutch and Indian Land Policy,” BC Studies 12:3 (1971): 5.
18 “The Red and the White,” The British Columbian, July 9, 1864; Powell to Attorney-General, January 12, 1874, British Columbia. Papers, 125–126.
19 Governor James Douglas to Edward Lytton, August 15, 1859, Dispatch No. 199, Colonial Office, 60:5, no. 10041, 13.
20 Carlson, The Power of Place, 171.
21 This legislation defined the initial rate of cultivation of land and required the construction of a log house with a shingled roof that was at least 20’ (W) x 30’ (L) x 10’ (H), amongst other rules. The Colonial Secretary to the Chief Commission of Lands and Works, July 2, 1862, British Columbia. Papers, 25.
22 Cole Harris, Making Native Space (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002), 36.
23 Carlson, The Power of Place, 215.
24 At the time, “Indian affairs” was the official colonial term for matters related to Indigenous peoples. Although the use of the term “Indian” is now seen as politically incorrect, it is still used in legal settings. In this paper, “Indian” is also used to reference the terminology found in historical letters.
25 Wilson Duff, The Indian History of British Columbia, Vol. 1: The Impact of the White Man (Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum, 1992), 85.
26 Trutch was able to collect tolls for the Alexandra Suspension Bridge for seven years, having surveyed its site. K. Jane Watt, Surrey: A City of Stories (Surrey, BC: City of Surrey, Heritage Services, 2017), 30.
27 The settler-colonial project was an international business and Trutch revealed his personal financial interests in it through his exchange of letters with his brother John. Brenna Bhandar, Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 54–55.
28 Trutch to Sir John A. Macdonald, October 14, 1872, Sir John. A Macdonald Papers, vol. 278, Library and Archives Canada.
29 Trutch to the Acting Colonial Secretary, August 28, 1867, British Columbia. Papers, 41.
30 As an example, on April 27, 1863, Douglas wrote to then Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works R.C. Moody, stating: “Notwithstanding my particular instructions to you, that in laying out Indian Reserves the wishes of the Natives themselves, with respect to boundaries, should in all cases be complied with, I hear very general complaints of the smallness of the areas set apart for their use.” Governor Douglas to the Chief Commission of Lands and Works, April 27, 1863, British Columbia. Papers, 26–27.
31 Mr. Nind to the Honorable the Colonial Secretary, July 17, 1865, British Columbia. Papers, 29.
32 Trutch to the Acting Colonial Secretary, January 17, 1866, British Columbia. Papers, 32–33.
33 Robin Fisher, “Joseph Trutch and Indian Land Policy,” BC Studies 12:3 (1971): 12.
34 The gendered reference here reflects property laws at that time, when women of any race were not allowed to preempt land.
35 Carlson, The Power of Place, 177.
36 Mills to Sproat, August 3, 1877, Canada Indian Reserve Commission, Correspondence. See also Robin Fisher, “Joseph Trutch and Indian Land Policy,” BC Studies 12:3 (1971): 31–32.
37 “Speech by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Colonial Secretary to a Company of Royal Engineers, Leaving London in 1858 for British Columbia.” Manuscript from UBC Special Collections.
38 Bjørn Sletto, “Special Issue: Indigenous Cartographies,” Cultural Geographies 16:2 (2009): 147.
39 The dining table alludes to the Coast Salish aphorism “when the tide is out, the table is set.”
40 Fisheries and Oceans Canada, “Reasons for shellfish harvesting area closures,” accessed December 5, 2020, https://dfo-mpo.gc.ca/shellfish-mollusques/reasons-raisons-eng.htm.
41 Emma S. Norman, “Who’s Counting? Spatial Politics, Ecocolonisation and the Politics of Calculation in Boundary Bay,” Area 45, no. 2 (London, 2013): 179–187.
42 Chuck Davis, The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2011), 260.
43 Unfamiliar with the particularities of Native affairs in British Columbia, the Colonial Office was highly reliant on the advice of the officials on the ground.
44 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1011–1012.
45 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, 1010, 1069, emphasis by author.
46 Peter A. Walker and Pauline E. Peters, “Maps, Metaphors, and Meanings: Boundary Struggles and Village Forest Use on Private and State Land in Malawi,” Society & Natural Resources 14:5: 412, https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920119750.
47 The “Next Big One” is the overdue megathrust earthquake and tsunami event expected in the Cascadia region in the near future.
48 Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 13, doi:10.5749/minnesota/9780816679645.001.0001.
49 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability—Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 26.
50 UN General Assembly, Article 32.1, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, resolution adopted by the General Assembly, September 13, 2007, A/RES/61/295.
51 UN General Assembly, Article 29.1, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
52 Keller Easterling, Subtraction (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014), 4.
53 Lance H. Gunderson and C.S. Holling, Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems (Washington D.C.: Island Press, 2002).
54 Aqua fluxus as defined by Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha is counter to terra firma in the land-water divide.
55 Fisheries and Oceans Canada, “Reasons for shellfish harvesting area closures.”
56 The study area from this report includes Mud Bay and Boundary Bay. Robert W. Butler and R. Wayne Campbell, “The Birds of the Fraser River Delta: Populations, Ecology and International Significance,” Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment Canada, Occasional Paper 65 (1987), 16.
57 Habitat Group, Fraser River Estuary Study—Habitat Report, Fraser River Estuary Steering Committee, Government of Canada and Province of British Columbia (1978), 7.
58 Dredging of the Nicomekl and Serpentine Rivers has ceased since the 1980s, but continue for the Fraser River to maintain navigable channels. Northwest Hydraulic Consultants Ltd., “Mud Bay Coastal Geomorphology Study” in Prioritizing Infrastructure and Ecosystem Risk Phase 1 Report (MCIP15330), City of Surrey, February 28, 2018.
59 Chief Harley Chappell, “Semiahmoo First Nation Blackie Spit History and Flood Song,” City of Surrey, October 18, 2018, YouTube video, 27:01, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWBDHb3yZps&t=13s; Leonard Charles Ham, “Seasonality, Shell Midden Layers, and Coast Salish Subsistence Activities at the Crescent Beach Site, DgRr 1” (Ph.D. diss., The University of British Columbia, 1982).
60 The employment of innovative soft infrastructure technologies from “Oyster-tecture” by Kate Orff of SCAPE would be fitting in a location like Boundary Bay, which has a history of oyster farming.
61 Brian Thom, “The Paradox of Boundaries in Coast Salish Territories,” Cultural Geographies 16 (2009): 179–205.
62 John Agnew writes in the context of international relations where the enforcement of boundaries is motivated by the need to defend sovereignty. This can also be applied to the boundaries of Indian reserves nested within a nation-state. He argues that a historical-geographical consciousness would help break this “territorial trap” that is conceived as a “timeless space.” John Agnew, “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory,” Review of International Political Economy 1, no. 1 (1994): 53–80.
63 Brian Thom presents this example in reference to Tim Ingold’s use of “meshwork” as a way to express the complex relational epistemologies of the Coast Salish peoples.
64 Carlson, The Power of Place, 55.
65 Jeff Oliver, Landscapes and Social Transformations on the Northwest Coast: Colonial Encounters in the Fraser Valley (Tucson, Arizona, The University of Arizona Press, 2010), 196–199.
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Arthur Leung
Arthur Leung is an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia. He is also an architect practicing on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations—where Vancouver is located today. His research focuses on resilient design in urban contexts at risk of natural hazards and disasters.