Claiming the Land by Daniel Marshall
Literary Nonfiction. California Interest. Native American Studies. This trailblazing history focuses on a single year, 1858, the year of the Fraser River gold rush--the third great mass migration of gold seekers after the Californian and Australian rushes in search of a new El Dorado. Marshall's history becomes an adventure, prospecting the rich pay streaks of British Columbia's founding event and the gold fever that gripped populations all along the Pacific Slope. Marshall unsettles many of our most taken-for-granted assumptions: he shows how foreign miner-militias crossed the 49th parallel, taking the law into their own hands, and conducting extermination campaigns against Indigenous peoples while forcibly claiming the land. Drawing on new evidence, Marshall explores the three principal cultures of the goldfields--those of the fur trade (both Native and the Hudson's Bay Company), Californian, and British world views. The year 1858 was a year of chaos unlike any other in British Columbia and American Pacific Northwest history. It produced not only violence but the formal inauguration of colonialism, Native reserves and, ultimately, the expansion of Canada to the Pacific Slope. Among the haunting legacies of this rush are the cryptic place names that remain--such as American Creek, Texas Bar, Boston Bar, and New York Bar--while the unresolved question of Indigenous sovereignty continues to claim the land.
Daniel Marshall is Senior Lecturer in Literature in the School of Communication and Creative Arts, and the Convenor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a past president of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center for LGBTQ Studies at the City University of New York and at the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research at London South Bank University.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781553805021 |
| ISBN 10 | 155380502X |
| Title | Claiming the Land |
| Author | Daniel Marshall |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Ronsdale Press |
| Year published | 2018-06-01 |
| Number of pages | 406 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |