Bounded Land: Reflections on Settler Colonialism in Canada, Cole Harris

Canada is a bounded land – a nation situated between rock and cold to the north and a border to the south. Cole Harris traces how society was reorganized – for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike – when Europeans resettled this distinctive land. Through a series of vignettes that focus on people’s experiences on the ground, he exposes the underlying architecture of colonialism, from first contacts, to the immigrant experience in early Canada, to the dispossession of First Nations. In the process, he unearths fresh insights on the influence of Indigenous peoples and argues that Canada’s boundedness is ultimately drawing it toward its Indigenous roots.

Introduction

Part 1: Early Encounters

The Fraser Canyon Encountered

Imagining and Claiming the Land

Voices of Smallpox around the Strait of Georgia

Part 2: Early Settlements