(Photo by the Government of British Columbia via Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED)
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Successful social movements have built great support across various marginalized communities to fight oppression collectively. Yet, the solidarity that helped these movements succeed often came about in unexpected places. This kind of solidarity happened between Chinese and Musqueam communities, who united their histories of oppression through the Chinese Market Gardens on Musqueam Reserve Two.
Musqueam Histories of Exclusion
Vancouver sits on the unceded traditional and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. The Musqueam have lived on their land for over 4,000 years and place significant importance on waterways like the Fraser River Delta. Musqueam Reserve Two sits along the Fraser River Delta, just over 100 meters from the University of British Columbia’s endowment lands. Today, many Musqueam people continue to live on the reserve and call it home. However, as Musqueam woman Leona Sparrow states, the creation of reserves displaced Musqueam people:
“We were cornered into this little spot. [It has] been decimated in terms of access to the territory. A lot of restrictions were enforced through the Indian Act and through being a part of the City of Vancouver without a choice, without consultation. [That has] been pretty traumatic for the community.”
The federal government displaced Musqueam from many of their traditional homelands. When they moved to Reserve Two, the federal government continued to impose policies of settler colonialism, such as tracking Musqueam movements off-reserve and threatening loss of band membership. The Indian Act, a policy by the federal government deciding who had status and who did not, also intimately affected the Musqueam community, particularly Musqueam women. As Musqueam elder Larry Grant recounts, “If a woman married a non-status person, they would have to give up their status as well.”
The policing and regulation of Musqueam women who married non-Musqueam men affected the family of Larry Grant. His mother, Agnes Grant, was Musqueam, and his father, Hong Tim Hing, was Chinese, whom both met at Chinese Market Gardens. Because Agnes married Hong, she lost her status under the Indian Act. As a result, she was forced to live off Reserve Two and lived with Hong in Chinatown. She did not want to be away from her Musqueam community after moving between the two spaces of Reserve Two to Chinatown to raise her children. Grant recounts the impact the Indian Act had on his family: “The Indian Act tore apart family structures. It was an odd mindset for a child to understand.”
Chinese Histories of Exclusion
While Musqueam faced exclusion policies by the Canadian government, so did Chinese immigrants settling in Vancouver. For instance, in 1885, the federal government set a $50 “head tax” on all Chinese immigrants coming to Canada. The head tax was a racist policy that aimed to prevent Chinese immigration to Canada. While the head tax — on a foreign policy front — meant to stop Chinese immigration, the government created domestic policies that excluded immigrants from participating in the Canadian economy, such as banning Chinese immigrants from voting, practicing medicine, and even limiting their ability to purchase land. With limited access to land in Vancouver, Chinese immigrants had little space to support themselves and their families.
Musqueam-Chinese Placemaking
While the Musqueam were allotted a small portion of their traditional and ancestral lands in 1884, the provincial government passed a law that barred Chinese immigrants from buying “Crown lands” in British Columbia. Because Chinese immigrants were greatly limited in buying and working land in Vancouver, the Musqueam Nation leased Chinese immigrants portions of their land to farm. It is here where both communities co-created Chinese Market Gardens on Musqueam Reserve Two. These markets were important to the City of Vancouver, as they supplied produce to nearby areas and neighbourhoods. By 1917, there were “18 Musqueam Chinese [land] leases.”
The relationship between Chinese Vancouverites and the Musqueam people was reciprocal. Edmond Leong, a Chinese man who grew up at the Chinese Market Gardens on Musqueam land, highlighted the support the communities provided one another: “[The Musqueam people were] good to our family. They were good to us because we were the tenants of their land. Everybody helped each other.” These shared affinity spaces also allowed Musqueam women and Chinese men to meet one another and ultimately form families, such as Agnes Grant and Hong Tim Hing, who raised their children between the reserve and Chinatown. These families resisted settler colonial policies of separation and exclusion by building their community around the Chinese Market Gardens.
From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, however, the Department of Indian Affairs arranged a lease for the Musqueam community, where some farmland would go to the Shaughnessy Golf Club. The department did not fully inform the Musqueam Nation’s council of its “true value” and how much the lease would benefit the golf club over the community, so the council took them to the Federal Court of Canada in 1975 for “breach of trust.” Although the Federal Court of Appeal later denied the court’s decision to “[reward] ten million dollars” to the council, the Supreme Court of Canada approved it, guaranteeing the council’s win.
For those who continued to live in the Chinese Market Gardens, these families were leased housing and provided annual leases. The market gardens and their memories linger nostalgically in the minds of those who lived as residents. Musqueam elder Howard E. Grant recounts a story from his grandfather Seymour Grant, illustrating the relationships between the Chinese and Musqueam peoples. When several Chinese individuals heard Musqueam drums from their winter ceremony, they approached Seymour Grant. They asked, “Would we be able to come and watch and listen? They asked to enter our longhouse. They came with an offering of fruit for that house. They wanted to be part of our community.” Despite the current leasing of the lands to the golf course, the community that the Musqueam and Chinese communities built together was a space of mutual support, curiosity, cultural connection, and reciprocity, remaining relevant to this day.
Solidarities of the Future
The Musqueam Nation’s willingness to open their home to Chinese immigrants facing exclusion reveals the power of building community together and creating alternative pathways of living outside settler colonial ones. Knowing these histories now is critical to challenge and question those settler histories taught in B.C. classrooms and inspire future solidarities between different communities facing oppression. It is necessary to make changes in our education that represent these trailblazers. Besides, how we teach history to young students should inspire future solidarity, like the Musqueam and Chinese communities who fought together, in their unique way, against each other’s oppression.
Edited by Anthony Hablak and Bethlehem Samson
