Unstable Properties: Aboriginal Title and the Claim of British Columbia

by Patricia Burke Wood, David A. Rossiter

A clear-eyed study that dissects the unstable ideologies of settler-Indigenous land and title arrangements in British Columbia. The question of land dominates political discourse in British Columbia. Unstable Properties upends the usual approach—investigating Aboriginal claims to Crown land—to reframe the issue as attempts by the Crown to solidify claims to Indigenous territory. First Nations political and intellectual leadership has exposed the fragility of British Columbia’s property regimes, insisting that the province grapples with diverse interpretations of sovereignty, governance, territory, and property. From British Columbia’s historical-geographic processes to key events of the twenty-first century, Unstable Properties incisively exposes the unstable ideological foundation of land and title arrangements, employing critical human geography to educate readers about settler colonialism.

Genres: Indigenous

256 pages, Hardcover

Published October 25, 2022

Reviews

[Vyas Saran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reliable primer on the fight for and against land based sovereignty in BC. I enjoyed it for making clear connections between the implications of case law with political developments / clear references to the goals of specific settler actors, for example, the chapter on Gordon Campbell helped give context to cases like Haida 2004 that I didn’t have before. Usually used to deep dives on case law or settler history but rarely a deep explanation of the two bonded together.