A Bounded Land

Book excerpt: Canada is a country of bounded spaces – a nation situated between rock and cold to the north and a political border to the south. In A Bounded Land, Cole Harris seeks answers to a sweeping question: How was society 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, Harris exposes the underlying architecture of settler colonialism as it grew and evolved, from the first glimpses of new lands and peoples, to the immigrant experience in early Canada, to the dispossession and resettlement of First Nations in British Columbia. By considering the whole territory that became Canada over 500 years and focusing on sites of colonial domination rather than settler texts, Harris unearths fresh insights on the continuing and growing influence of Indigenous peoples and argues that Canada’s boundedness is ultimately drawing the country toward its Indigenous roots.