Donaldson, John Conor2010-04-302010-04-3020102010-04-30http://hdl.handle.net/1828/2686This essay looks at the Government of British Columbia’s ‘New Relationship’ with indigenous people and how British Columbia’s history can inform this public policy debate. Specifically, I draw on the approach used by historian Quentin Skinner to identify two distinct periods in British Columbia’s early history, the coastal fur trade and the colonial period, and to identify how the relationship between indigenous people and Europeans was fundamentally different during these periods. After identifying the key features that made these relationships different, I challenge policymakers to look beyond the colonial period and its effect on our intellectual heritage. Through looking back to the fur trade period, I argue that we can begin to meet the promise contained in the ‘New Relationship’ and its statement of vision.enAvailable to the World Wide WebBritish ColumbiaAboriginal rightspublic policyQuentin SkinnerHistoryUVic Subject Index::Humanities and Social Sciences::Political ScienceThesis