The Bare Island Bird Sanctuary and the Myth of Indigenous Consent: Land Theft and Conservation in British Columbia, 1912–16.

The article focuses on the 1913 campaign by the British Columbia Natural History Society (NHS) and the 1912–16 Royal Commission on Indian Affairs (RCIA) to convert X̱O¸X̱DEȽ (Bare Island), a reserve of the Tsawout and Tseycum First Nations of the W̱SÁNEĆ, into a bird sanctuary. Despite repeated assurances under the Indian Act that Indigenous consent was required, the W̱SÁNEĆ refused to surrender the island, marking the only successful Indigenous rejection of a royal commission decision in British Columbia. In response, provincial and federal governments amended laws to bypass Indigenous consent, ultimately implementing reserve land reductions without approval, exemplifying settler-colonial strategies that subordinated conservation and consent to territorial dispossession. The case illustrates the complex interplay between conservationist groups, settler governments, and Indigenous sovereignty, highlighting ongoing tensions around land rights and the myth of Indigenous consent in Canadian colonial history.