Fish, Law, and Colonialism: The Legal Capture of Salmon in British Columbia

Fish, Law, and Colonialism recounts the human conflict over fish and fishing in British Columbia and of how that conflict was shaped by law. Pacific salmon fisheries, owned and managed by Aboriginal peoples, were transformed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by commercial and sport fisheries backed by the Canadian state and its law. Through detailed case studies of the conflicts over fish weirs on the Cowichan and Babine rivers, Douglas Harris describes the evolving legal apparatus that dispossessed Aboriginal peoples of their fisheries. Building upon themes developed in literatures on state law and local custom, and law and colonialism, he examines the contested nature of the colonial encounter on the scale of a river. In doing so, Harris reveals the many divisions both within and between government departments, local settler societies, and Aboriginal communities.