Soren C. Larsen , The University of Kansas. sclarsen@ku.edu

Political Borders, Ethnic Relations, and Regional Identity in Northern British Columbia

The European resettlement of British Columbia entailed the monumental cartographic and political task of delineating new, colonial borders: preemption lots, Indian reserves, town plats, railroad and telegraph lines. These boundaries enforced colonial power, enabling immigrant governments to discount and seize indigenous territories as an allegedly natural part of the resettlement process itself. During the twentieth century, the intensification of resource capitalism in the province¹s northern interior sparked a second period of deterritorialization, one that impinged on natives and settlers alike. Hydroelectric reservoirs forced the removal of entire communities, for example, whereas provincial timber licenses trumped local logging ³limits² and traplines. However, northern communities have been reformulating their senses of identity in the past decades as part of a broader politics of regional territoriality. As a consequence of these politics, neighboring native and settler groups have, in some cases, formed relationships that hinge on the shared geographical predicament of living in a resource hinterland. This paper examines the colonial, capitalist, and locally produced borders in Southside, a rural region in the province¹s north-central interior. In particular, it stresses the ways in which both native and Eurocanadian residents have used these borders in everyday discourse to redefine ethnic relations and to sanction local knowledge as the appropriate source of regional political power. In this way, the new borders of local territorial initiatives‹ecological preserves, land claims areas, community forests‹are active in fostering social interaction between ethnic groups that historically have been separated from one another.

Keywords: political geography, borders, regional identity, ethnic relations, indigenous peoples