ABSTRACT

This chapter begins with the premise that indigenous dispossession and prohibitions on Indian migration in the British Empire were overlapping and conjoined legal practices that demand closer and more careful attention. By transporting Indian migrants across the Pacific to Vancouver, the voyage was to defy the racial inclusions and exclusions through which British subjecthood and mobility was determined. The British North America Act, opined Chief Justice Macdonald, awarded the Parliament of Canada sovereign power over immigration. Imperial citizenship was mobilized as a basis from which to make claims to sovereignty and mobility and to critique the Dominion's immigration policies. It provided one expression through which British Indians could forcefully assert their own demands for inclusion and equality within the imperial family. Ultimately, Canada was authorized by the British North America Act to pass laws in the interests of peace, order and good government.