Unceded: Understanding British Columbia’s Colonial Past and Why it Matters Now

Review By John Sutton Lutz

July 29, 2026

This book is a gift to British Columbian’s scratching their heads over the constant media about Indigenous treaties and Indigenous title court cases. It is an easy-to-read explanation of how our colonial history broke with British law in failing to secure treaty agreements in the 19th century, the long-term damage done to First Nations, and the ramifications for B.C. today.

George Abbott is particularly well placed to write this book. Raised in Sicamous, B.C. and elected as a Liberal to the BC legislature in 1996, he served as minister in several portfolios including Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation. After leaving politics in 2013 he completed a PhD in Governance and Politics in 2019 and now he serves as the Chief Commissioner of the BC Treaty Commission.

The book of fourteen chapters divides into three sections. The first reviews BC’s Colonial and early national history, starting with a chapter showing that were real alternatives to the path ultimately followed. Chapter one shows how James Douglas, BC’s first governor (and Vancouver Island’s second) started the colonies down a path where treaty making was inaugurated, where Indigenous leaders were asked what lands they needed and wanted for their reserves, and Indigenous people had equal opportunity to homestead (pre-empt) land in common with the newcomers. Douglas was forced out of office in 1864, and the next chapters describe how his successors took an opposite view. The colonial governors that succeeded him left the management of Indigenous people to Joseph Trutch, Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works, who saw them as obstacles to the re-settlement of the colony by white capitalists, and was blatantly and explicitly racist in his treatment of Indigenous People. Trutch oversaw the allocation of new, miniscule reserves often without land or water for agriculture in place of Douglas’ expansive ones, while he also removed their opportunity to pre-empt land. In these acts, Indigenous people were cut off from the wealth of the province, and the result was long-term poverty through to today.

The next chapters show how Trutch’s approach became provincial policy for the century after Confederation with Canada in 1871, while Indigenous people consistently insisted on their ownership of BC’s land and resources. Again, Abbott shows that there were alternative paths as the federal government repeatedly tried and failed to persuade BC to be more generous with reserves. Two chapters review the 1912-1915 McKenna McBride Royal Commission meant to “settle” the Indian land question, and Abbott, in offering testimony of Indigenous leaders from around the province, effectively demonstrates their heartbreaking situation.

The second section focusses on the total disregard of the Cheslatta people in the 1950s and Tsay Keh Dene in the 1960s as they watched their traditional territories, graveyards and villages flooded to provide hydroelectric power for Alcan and BC Hydro respectively, power all British Columbians benefit from today.

The final section describes the road away from the Trutch approach, as British Columbia was forced by a series of Supreme Court decisions to acknowledge and deal with Indigenous title. Chapters Ten to Fourteen review how the administrations from W.A.C. Bennett to David Eby have both aided and frustrated the road to acknowledging Indigenous rights and title, including new insights from the premiership of Gordon Campbell when Abbott served as lead on the Indigenous file.

While the first two sections cover ground others have been over, Abbott pulls the scholarship together in a more accessible, compelling narrative that clearly shows how the mistreatment of Indigenous people in the first century of settlement created the moral and legal basis for current treaty and reconciliation efforts. The third section is the most original part of the book and offers an insider’s look at the fits, starts, and missteps as modern administrations have ducked, swerved and, sometimes, faced, the daunting task of redress. As Abbott says, this part of the story is still being written.