15 Punjabi Migration to
Northwestern British Columbia
Labour and the First Nations
Kamala Elizabeth Nayar

Introduction
Apart from its Indigenous peoples, Canada has largely been, and continues
to be, built on the migration and settlement of people from diverse ethnic,
cultural, religious, and national backgrounds, most of them seeking greater
economic opportunity. While Canada’s diversity is built on centuries of im­
migration, the country has not always welcomed or celebrated ethnic and
cultural diversity. In fact, in the late nineteenth century and the beginning
of the twentieth century, Canada was Nativist and really only permitted
non-European ethnic groups into Canada to ﬁll the country’s manual labour
needs. Of course, Canada’s colonial ties with the British Empire played a role
in the initial migration of people from India. While “East Indians” – the term
used by British colonizers and later by the Canadian government – managed
to enter Canada to work, they were, however, not welcomed as citizens and
lived largely as a segregated labour group.1
The initial wave of “East Indian” immigrants was primarily young Pun­
jabi men who mainly sought work to earn money to send back home. The
predominantly Punjabi Sikh – but also Punjabi Hindu and Punjabi Muslim –
immigrants initially migrated to British Columbia when the dominion needed
manual labour for its growing natural resources industries. At the same time,
Canada became known in India as an attractive place for economic advance­
ment. With limited English-language and occupational skills, Punjabis found
jobs in logging camps and sawmills, in railway construction, on cattle farms,
and in fruit orchards, by and large, the manual labour that non-immigrants
did not want to do.2
Punjabis typically found employment at sawmills in Greater Vancouver
(such as Alberta Lumber Company on False Creek and Fraser Mills in Bur­
quitlam) and on Vancouver Island (like Mayo Company Mill in Paldi and
Hillcrest Lumber Company near Duncan). But, by the 1950s, many of these
sawmills either had reached a saturation point or were in decline because
of changes in British Columbia’s forestry industry.3 As a consequence, Pun­
jabi immigrants were forced to move to more remote areas in the interior
or northern regions of the province in order to ﬁnd work. Even though
DOI: 10.4324/9781003499787-15

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migrating to the remote Skeena region in northwestern British Columbia
provided Punjabis employment opportunities,4 it also led to inevitable in­
teractions with the First Nations, since the region’s population largely con­
sisted then, as it does now, of Indigenous peoples. Much to the Punjabis’ surprise,
they encountered anti-immigrant sentiment from various Indigenous people.
However, this resentment seems to have been more the by-product of the
First Nations’ long-standing conﬂict with colonial settlers and the Canadian
government.
The purpose of this chapter is to examine how Punjabis migrated to, and
settled in, small towns of the Skeena region, such as Prince Rupert, Port Ed­
ward, and Terrace.5 More speciﬁcally, this chapter delineates the relationship
between migration patterns and employment and demonstrates how settle­
ment in small remote towns of the Skeena resulted in complex intercultural
dynamics, including various immigrant groups (like the Punjabi one) and
Indigenous peoples – a topic that has by and large been overlooked by aca­
demics and policymakers.6 In doing so, the chapter signiﬁcantly underscores
the socio-historical signiﬁcance of the Punjabi-Indigenous dynamic, since
it reveals how Canada’s policies created double standards, by giving immi­
grants greater privilege than what the government had intended for the First
Nations.
This study about the Punjabi migration experience in the Skeena region
is an extension of a major study of Punjabis in British Columbia, which was
carried out between 2006 and 2012.7 The Punjabi immigrants surveyed for
this chapter predominantly migrated from Punjab to northwestern British
Columbia during the 1960s up to the 1990s. The research involved over one
hundred semi-structured interviews conducted with Punjabi men and women
and their adult children. Participants volunteered to be interviewed to discuss
the social, economic, cultural, and political issues that they found pertinent
to their experiences of the Skeena region. During the interview process, cer­
tain trends were observed regarding Punjabis migrating to, and integrating
into, the Skeena region. Interviews were also conducted with other mem­
bers of society. For instance, Indigenous people were interviewed in order
to gather corroborative data, especially with regard to their perspectives on
intercultural relations apropos the local ﬁshery industries.
This chapter consists of three parts. The ﬁrst examines Punjabi migration
to the remote towns of northwestern British Columbia in search of manual
labour in British Columbia’s resource industries; the second analyses the spe­
ciﬁc intercultural dynamic between Punjabis and Indigenous peoples; and
the third explores the double standards created by the Canadian government
policies intended for immigrants and Indigenous peoples.
In Search of Employment and Working in the Skeena
Since the ﬁrst wave of Punjabi immigrants arrived in British Columbia in
the early 1900s, Punjabis have been associated with lumber labour in the

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province.8 And, like the early Punjabi settlers, the initial migration of Pun­
jabis to Prince Rupert also primarily consisted of “single” men in search of
employment so that they could support their families.9 As aforementioned,
by the 1950s, the sawmills in Greater Vancouver and Vancouver Island either
had reached a saturation point or were in decline due to both technological
advancement and the decrease in logging Douglas ﬁr. Hence, many Punjabi
immigrants were forced to move to more isolated areas in the central inte­
rior (like Quesnel and Williams Lake) and northern interior (such as Prince
George and Mackenzie) of the province to ﬁnd work. Accordingly, many
Punjabis were willing to traverse through the unfamiliar terrain of interior
and northern regions under challenging conditions in the hope of ﬁnding
employment, especially since they had travelled much farther from their
homeland in the pursuit of greater economic opportunities.10 In this spirit,
Punjabi men began to settle in the Skeena region during the 1960s, when the
region was experiencing steady growth as a result of the booming forestry
and ﬁshery industries.
Forestry

Upon their arrival in British Columbia, Punjabi immigrants immediately
looked for work at mills either in Greater Vancouver or on Vancouver Island,
depending on the whereabouts of members of their family, clan or village.
If in Vancouver during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Punjabi immigrants
would typically seek employment at the Punjabi-owned and operated Yukon
Lumber Co., often to no avail. Notwithstanding, Punjabis would hear by
word of mouth how Sohen Singh Gill (owner of Yukon Lumber Co.) also
owned Prince Rupert Sawmills Ltd, which – in contrast to the Vancouver
mills – needed labourers.11 The establishment of a Punjabi-owned sawmill in
Prince Rupert (est. 1958) certainly served as the catalyst for the initial migra­
tion of Punjabis to the Skeena region.
The initial cohort of Punjabi immigrants hired at Prince Rupert Sawmills ar­
rived in 1960 when the mill began its operations. The men lived at the bunkhouse
located on the actual sawmill site. In fact, during the 1960s, the bunkhouse served
as the centre of the Punjabi community, with only a handful of families living in
rented basement suites in the Prince Rupert community. When the Prince Rupert
sawmill ran two shifts at its peak of operations, there were about 75 men living
in the bunkhouse. By the early 1970s, however, only about ten men lived in the
bunkhouse, as production slowed down and most men moved to the town to
establish their families. Even when the sawmill slowed down and permanently
shut down in 1975, Punjabis continued to live in the Skeena region, because there
were several other sawmills in Terrace with work also becoming available at the
Columbia Cellulose pulp and paper mill on Watson Island (est. 1951), only 8
kilometres from Prince Rupert.12
Punjabi immigrants were pleased to transfer to the wood room – where
logs are debarked and processed into wood chips to feed the mill – on Watson

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Island because the work was less physically demanding and the wages were
higher. Nevertheless, there was a wage gap between the labour in the wood
room and the skilled trade work in the actual pulp and paper mill. Although
the work in the former was similar to Prince Rupert Sawmill (albeit with more
advanced machinery), the latter required trade certiﬁcation. While most Pun­
jabis began by working in the wood room, those with secondary education
and/or technical training could progress into more skilled labour positions
in the actual pulp and paper mill, because they could take advantage of the
training programs offered by their employer or the local community college
in Prince Rupert and Terrace.13
Since the earlier Punjabi migrants mainly came through the family spon­
sorship program and most arrived with minimal education and English skills,
they were usually conﬁned to manual or semi-skilled work in the mills be­
cause they lacked the opportunity to upgrade their skills. However, follow­
ing Canada’s institution of the point system (est. 1967) – when the country
began to accept independent immigrants with skills and experience – Punjabi
immigrants increasingly arrived with higher levels of education and English
skills, which gave them better opportunities to work in the trades, acquire a
profession, or even venture into business.14 While opportunities to upgrade
did exist, Punjabi men did not always have the time to take advantage of
them, since the men were often under tremendous pressure to earn money in
order to survive and support their families.
Whether engaged in manual, semi-skilled, or trades work, Punjabi im­
migrants experienced many economic and social challenges. In attempting
to overcome these challenges, Punjabis relied on their cultural heritage as
a source of adaptive strength. Coming from an agricultural society, many
Punjabis brought with them their strong kinship networks and their value of
landownership, both of which proved to be very valuable in fostering resil­
ience in their adaptation and integration into Canadian society. First, Pun­
jabis established a chain of kinship migration to the Skeena region through
marriages or by encouraging family members in Punjab to join them. Second,
they tended to save and pool resources to buy homes and survive economic
hardships. Even when a house had been paid off, Punjabis often expanded
their landholdings by purchasing investment properties. For instance, early
Punjabi immigrants in Skeena even bought real estate in Greater Vancouver.
These investment properties would later be used by their children when in
pursuit of their post-secondary education. Not only did this practice help the
children, but it also created a buffer during the economic downturn born of
the decline in the resource industries in the early 2000s.
Canneries

As Punjabi men settled in the region throughout the 1960s and 1970s, they
were gradually joined by their ﬁancées or wives. Upon their arrival, Punjabi
women – out of economic necessity – also began to participate in the paid

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workforce. In contrast to Punjabi men, however, Punjabi women mainly
found work in the thriving ﬁsheries. Following the pattern of many Indig­
enous and other immigrant women, Punjabi women began working in the
canneries. (Indeed, Indigenous women worked throughout the history of
British Columbia’s salmon canning industry,15 while immigrant women from
various ethnic backgrounds later followed this work pattern. This was the
case especially after the Second World War when there was a boom in both
immigration and the resource industries.) Similar to the experiences of some
Punjabi men, educated Punjabi women also had to settle for manual or semi­
skilled labour in the canneries, since their credentials acquired in India were
not transferable or recognized in Canada. Notwithstanding, once educated
Punjabi women became more ﬂuent in conversational English, some of them
managed to venture into other types of employment (such as running daycares or working as bank tellers).
Punjabi women primarily did seasonal work in the salmon canneries.
More speciﬁcally, Punjabi women worked throughout the ﬁshing season,
during the spring and summer months (from May to early September), and
accumulated enough hours so that they could collect employment insurance (EI)
throughout the remaining months of the year. During the ﬁshing season, Pun­
jabi women also took advantage of any opportunities to work overtime, as it
enabled them to make extra money and accumulate additional hours for EI.
In spite of the economic opportunity, it was difficult for Punjabi women to
leave their children with an “outsider” (i.e., a babysitter) when working out­
side the home. Leaving children with a “stranger” was a practice completely
foreign to them.
The cannery not only provided Punjabi women the opportunity to earn
money and experience economic independence; it also provided them a plat­
form for social networking, which was especially beneﬁcial during the 1960s
and 1970s when a consolidated Punjabi community did not exist.16 While
Punjabi women acquired economic and social beneﬁts in entering the work­
force, they also had to contend with anti-immigrant sentiment while working
on the canning lines.
The First Nations and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
The local experience of Punjabi immigrants in the Skeena region has certainly
been a dynamic one. Since the region’s population largely consists of Indige­
nous peoples, interaction with them was inevitable. In contrast to Punjabi im­
migrants living in Greater Vancouver, Punjabis residing in the Skeena region
found themselves on a regular basis interacting with Indigenous peoples, a
population Punjabis knew very little about. In fact, many Punjabi immigrants
merely and unassumingly thought of Indigenous peoples as tribal (jungalee).
Ironically, it was common for Punjabis to be mistaken for Indigenous.
While British colonial settlers categorized people from India as “East
Indian” in order to distinguish them from the “Native Indian,” when talking

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among themselves Punjabis preferred referring to Indigenous peoples as taike.
The Punjabi word taike literally means “[family] from my father’s eldest
brother (taia).” Based on the Punjabi family structure, the term is an ex­
pression of respect for those who came ﬁrst. Given the history of the First
Nations, taike is an appropriate term because it is both respectful and re­
lational. However, Punjabis, from the 1960s through to the early 1990s,
used the word in a derogatory manner by attaching negative stereotypes
of Indigenous peoples to the word. Since Punjabis had limited knowledge of
the First Nations, they learned many of these stereotypes at the workplace.
Indeed, upon joining the Skeena region’s workforce, Punjabis found that their
Anglo-Canadian supervisors attributed to them the same negative stereotypes
that the supervisors held about Indigenous peoples. One of those common stereo­
types was that Indigenous peoples were “lazy” and “unreliable.”17 Subsequently,
Punjabis found themselves having to contend with these prejudices and often felt
compelled to show their supervisors that – in contrast to Indigenous workers –
they were in fact “hardworking,” “dependable,” and willing to work overtime.
In their efforts to prove that they were immigrants that company managers could
count on, Punjabi immigrants inadvertently reinforced the negative stereotypes
often used against Indigenous peoples.
While Punjabis recognized that they shared with Indigenous people simi­
lar physical features (like brown skin colour, and dark eyes and hair) and
cultural values (such as a collective orientation and religious worldview),
they did not completely know the First Nations’ experience of land dispos­
session and cultural devastation. More speciﬁcally, they did not understand
the exact nature of what had happened to Indigenous peoples, including the
abuses endured in the Indian residential school system.18 Hence, Punjabis
were perplexed when they experienced anti-immigrant sentiment from Indig­
enous peoples, especially since Punjabis belong to a visible minority group
that had experienced colonization under the British Crown. In fact, a Punjabi
man remembered bringing up this matter with an Indigenous man: “I went
to a beer parlour with two other Punjabis. A Native Indian man wanted to
ﬁght us. I told him, ‘Why don’t you ﬁght the white people? It was the white
man who took your land.’ He didn’t say anything. He did not know how to
answer the question. He just took off.”19
Simultaneously, Indigenous peoples felt insecure and threatened by the
Punjabis they saw arriving in the Skeena region because Punjabis were seem­
ingly taking their jobs and purchasing homes on First Nations ancestral and
unceded territory. There are many Punjabi accounts of Indigenous people
shouting “Hey, you . . . Hindoo, get off our land” or “Hey, you . . . Hindoo,
go back to your country.”20 The term “Hindoo” – regardless of whether one
is Hindu, Sikh, or Muslim – was used by Anglo-Canadians to refer to “East
Indian” in a derogatory manner in British Columbia at that time, which some
Indigenous people also attached to Punjabis. This anti-immigrant sentiment
was often in the form of overt verbal, and sometimes physical, aggression
from some of the Indigenous people at the workplace or in the town.

232 Kamala Elizabeth Nayar
It is important to mention here that Punjabis were actually not the ﬁrst
immigrants to experience such resentment. Rather, throughout the decades,
Indigenous peoples feared that various foreigners were coming to steal their
jobs in the canneries and purchase property on their ancestral territory. A
woman of the Ts’msyen Nation explained the long-standing threat that In­
digenous people felt about foreigners:
When there are newcomers, we [First Nations] see them as ‘strangers.’
We feared they were coming to take our jobs. When the Chinese came
to build the railways, there was tension. When the Japanese came to
ﬁsh, there was tension. When the Portuguese came to work in the can­
neries, we didn’t like it. [First Nations] women feared the Punjabis
[would take] their jobs and overtime work, especially when they saw
how they brought in their relatives to work.21
This response to newcomers is understandable, given the long-standing con­
ﬂict between the First Nations and colonial settlers over cultural devastation,
unresolved land claims, and regulation over resource extraction. Indeed, co­
lonial settlers forced Indigenous peoples to live on reserves and regulated
their lives, while the settlers proﬁted from natural resource industries and
individual land ownership.22
Because there were few Indigenous workers in the sawmills, and pulp
and paper mills, it was more common for Punjabi men to experience antiimmigrant attitudes in the towns. On the contrary, Punjabi women expe­
rienced more anti-immigrant sentiment in the canneries when they began
participating in the ﬁshery industry in the 1970s. This sentiment undoubt­
edly stemmed from Indigenous peoples wanting to protect their place in the
industry, especially since coastal Indigenous peoples took great pride in their
cultural knowledge and skills of harvesting the sea. Moreover, while Indig­
enous ﬁshermen and cannery workers were familiar with foreigners arriving
and working in the industry, the timing of the arrival of Punjabis coincided
with unionization, which resulted in higher wages and better working condi­
tions.23 Indigenous peoples also felt more dispensable due to the decreasing
demand for their traditional knowledge and skills as a result of cannery tech­
nological advancement.24
In the face of the anti-immigrant sentiment in the canneries, Punjabi immi­
grant workers began turning to unions for support. While union representa­
tives mostly listened to Punjabi complaints about anti-immigrant sentiment,
three concrete intercultural-labour issues emerged in the ﬁsheries, which the
United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union (UFAWU) representatives could
effectively mediate25: (1) Punjabi women not being promoted to better types
of cannery work as per seniority; (2) the lack of Punjabi representation at the
level of ﬂoor supervision; and (3) a petition against Punjabis speaking in their
mother tongue on the Prince Rupert – Port Edward bus as well as in the lunch­
rooms.26 Indeed, some Punjabi women took to the union their complaints

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233

about how they were kept at the lower job of washing the ﬁsh or not pro­
moted to ﬂoor supervisor, despite their seniority. As these issues ﬁt within the
framework of labour management relations, the union could address them
by assessing the informal work-based networks that were responsible for hir­
ing, job assignment, and promotion.27
Along with the fear of Punjabi immigrants advancing in various cannery
positions, Indigenous peoples largely voiced dismay at Punjabis’ tendency
to speak among themselves in their own language, especially when in the
presence of non-Punjabi workers. Punjabi immigrants speaking in their own
language struck many Indigenous peoples as both disrespectful and unfair –
disrespectful because it evoked in non-Punjabi workers insecure feelings of
being mocked, and unfair due to First Nations’ experience of cultural devas­
tation in general and, more speciﬁcally, of Indigenous peoples being punished
for speaking their traditional language in the Indian residential schools.28
As mentioned previously, in the late 1970s some Indigenous ﬁshery work­
ers circulated a petition requesting that no one on the Prince Rupert-Port
Edward bus or in cannery lunchrooms should be allowed to speak “East In­
dian.” After the union determined that the petition could pass if it presented
an English-only policy, the Indigenous petitioners dropped their request,
since it would have had to be applied to everyone, including themselves. In
addressing these issues, the union unintentionally emerged as an “intercul­
tural mediator” for Punjabis in the workplace.29 That said, not all Punjabi
women felt comfortable approaching the union or management with their
concerns. Their reluctance can be explained by the women lacking conversa­
tional English skills, experiencing cultural barriers (e.g., asserting themselves
with their supervisors), and feeling insecure as new immigrants often do in a
new milieu.
When Punjabi men encountered Indigenous verbal and physical aggres­
sion, they responded by sticking up for themselves and creating cultural, re­
ligious, and social space for their community. In contrast, Punjabi women
varied in their responses: from “speaking up” to “sucking it in.” Signiﬁ­
cantly, some Punjabi women, who were more ﬂuent in conversational Eng­
lish and therefore more easily able to overcome communication and cultural
barriers, had friendly interactions with Indigenous peoples.30 In fact, all the
Punjabis interviewed were initially very reluctant to speak in retrospect of
the resentment that they had experienced from Indigenous people. This hesi­
tancy to talk about that resentment was directly related to the fact that these
experiences had been something of the past, with the Punjabis having since
developed a sense of camaraderie with the people in the Skeena region, as
well as their now being much more cognizant of the plight of the First Na­
tions in Canada.
From a First Nations perspective, Indigenous peoples generally felt insecure in
the workplace and towns of the Skeena region, especially if they had pronounced
Indigenous physical features. This feeling of insecurity was easily evoked in In­
digenous peoples because they were treated – in their own words – as “third-class

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Kamala Elizabeth Nayar

citizens.” Being called “dirty Indians” by Anglo-Canadians was a common oc­
currence. A woman from the Haida Nation explained her Indigenous perspective
on the intercultural dynamic in the Skeena:
First Nations with darker skin experienced a lot of racism. If in a store,
the storeowners would watch them for stealing. In the Chinese restau­
rant, they would serve the Chinese people or anyone else before the
First Nations. You don’t notice too much when you are young; you just
take what is there. The darker Indians experienced a lot of racism from
the whites. . . . So many years ago, Europeans came to take their life,
their kids. We were to be made “more human” and our land was taken
away. The people who came used up the resources; we did not waste.
First Nations were and have been wary of people coming, including the
East Indians. First Nations did not know who were the East Indians
and did not trust them. We interacted with each other but we did not
know each other’s history. There was no understanding because we did
not know the histories.31
Indeed, the limited understanding and acknowledgement of the “Other’s”
story became a source of intercultural tension. Over time, Punjabis began to real­
ize the differences in their colonial experiences, especially with regard to the
cultural devastation of the First Nations communities (such as the latter’s loss
of language and its broken family system as a result of the Indian residential
school system).
The Punjabi-Indigenous dynamic that emerged in the Skeena region is very
signiﬁcant as it reﬂects both the tension that existed between the “third-class”
Indigenous peoples and the “second-class” Punjabis, and the mutual feelings
of insecurity in an environment where both Indigenous peoples and Punjabis
were perceived as inferior by the Anglo establishment in the Skeena region.
The Paradox of Canada’s Multiculturalism Policy
The tension that emerged between “second-class” Punjabi and “third-class”
Indigenous peoples in the Skeena region also signiﬁcantly underscores the
double standards created by Canadian government policies meant for im­
migrants and Indigenous peoples. The initial period of Punjabi migration to
the Skeena region signiﬁcantly occurred when Canada was instituting the
immigration point system and Canada’s practice of multiculturalism was in
its early stages. In need of semi-skilled labour and professionals, Canada
began to shift away from the quota system32 and move towards the points
system, which widened the doors for “East Indian” migration.33 With the
introduction of the point system (est. 1967), “East Indians,” increasingly
arrived equipped with some educational and language skills, which enabled
them to upgrade their credentials in Canada so that they could move to a
more skilled job.34

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Besides the changes to Canadian immigration law, the country’s introduction
of its Multiculturalism Policy in 1971 provided better opportunities for “East
Indian” immigrants to maintain their cultural and religious traditions. This
multicultural orientation was in contrast to the earlier practice of assimilation,
during which immigrants felt immense pressure to assimilate into Canada’s
dominant Anglo society.35 While the government attempted to effect change
through its Multiculturalism Policy, many visible ethnic minority groups still
encountered a great deal of hostility, prejudice, and racial stereotyping. In its
interest to advance social equality, Canada adopted the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms (est. 1982), the Employment Equity Act (est. 1986), and the Cana­
dian Multiculturalism Act (est. 1988).
As the Canadian government was widening its doors to the immigration
of non-European ethnic groups (est. 1967) and establishing the Multicultur­
alism Policy (est. 1971) to both accommodate immigrants and promote a
more positive attitude towards ethnic and cultural diversity, these initiatives
were instituted when the government was paradoxically also pushing for the
assimilation of Indigenous peoples. More speciﬁcally, in 1969 the Liberal
government – under the leadership of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau
and his Minister of Indian Affairs, Jean Chrétien – issued a white paper on
Indian policy that proposed to abolish the Indian Act in order to eliminate
special status for Canada’s Indigenous peoples and to press forward instead
a policy of cultural assimilation.36 Did the Canadian government not foresee
or envision Indigenous peoples interacting with immigrants during the era of
the Multiculturalism Policy?
By granting immigrants – whether naturalized or not – greater privileges
than it intended to give to Indigenous peoples, the Liberal government created
double standards with its policy of multiculturalism. These double standards
were a sensitive and, at times, a contentious issue. As aforementioned, the fact
that immigrants were allowed to speak their own language and keep their
culture struck many Indigenous peoples as both unfair and disrespectful.
Although the Indian Act (est. 1876) led to Indigenous peoples being viewed
and rendered as separate from Canadian society, they had not existed as if in
a “silo.” Throughout the twentieth century, and especially after the Second
World War, the separation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous spaces
(including those inhabited by colonial settlers and twentieth-century immi­
grants) was undermined. As a result of the growth and concentration of the
Skeena region’s resource industries, Indigenous peoples often migrated from
their ancestral villages or reserves to the region’s multiethnic towns, such as
Prince Rupert. While the industrialization of British Columbia provided In­
digenous peoples with wage-labour in the resource industries, it was largely
made possible through earlier government initiatives that devastated the First
Nations’ traditional way of life. For example, the federal government enforced
conservation laws and regulations aimed to acquire control over land and
water, imposed the policy of “civilization and assimilation” on Indigenous
peoples, and criminalized the potlatch.37

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When Punjabis began migrating in the 1960s and 1970s to the Skeena
region and were in the process of establishing themselves and their commu­
nity, Indigenous peoples had their own struggle; it was one embedded in a
long-standing history of colonial oppression and trauma that, at that time,
Canadian society remained oblivious to or even deliberately overlooked. In­
deed, Indigenous peoples had their own issues, such as seeking acknowledge­
ment and reparations for the harms caused by the government and striving
for self-determination.38 While the Punjabi-Indigenous dynamic reﬂects the
insecurity both groups felt in the Skeena resource towns, it also signiﬁcantly
sheds light on the paradox of Multiculturalism Policy as the policy relates
to the double standards felt by Indigenous peoples, providing them with yet
another reason to mistrust government policy.39
Epilogue
During the mid-1990s, a steady decline in the resource industries in the
Skeena region resulted in employment uncertainty and loss. The eventual
bust in the lumber industry (2000–2003) and ﬁsheries (2010–2015) forced
many Punjabis to either look for other employment or leave the region and
resettle in larger urban centres or other provinces. In the case of the Punjabi
men who chose to remain in the Skeena, they tended to ﬁnd jobs in retail,
as longshoremen at the expanding Prince Rupert port, as taxi drivers, or as
small business owners. Punjabi women, on the other hand, typically found
jobs in retail or the hospitality industry, while others received training to
work in other sectors like health or education. Ironically, the gradual decline
and bust in the resource industries created comradeship and solidarity among
the workers, irrespective of ethnicity, religion, or culture.
In an increasingly globalizing world since the 2000s, Canada has been
adapting to global economic forces that have had an inevitable impact on
immigration policy. For instance, due to the saturation of Canada’s me­
tropolises, there have been government initiatives encouraging immigrants
to settle in the smaller urban centres or towns, including bringing profes­
sionals (such as educators, health care professionals, accountants, chefs) to
work in the Skeena region where housing and the cost of living tend to be
less than in the metropolises. More recently, there has been a rapid increase
in South Asians immigrating through the international student program
and foreign workers’ program. In fact, more than 200 international stu­
dents have arrived in Prince Rupert over the last several years (since 2020).
This newer wave of South Asians is arriving at a time when the Punjabi
community is well-established and Punjabis are known to be active con­
tributors to the Skeena communities even as intercultural relations have
been and continue to be, evolving with Indigenous peoples. For example,
Indigenous and new immigrant youth are collaborating on creating a “mul­
ticultural” garden, with which they are learning to work and feast together
on common ground.40

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237

Over the past several decades, individual efforts and community-building
initiatives (like the annual Sea Festival or seasonal sporting events) have cer­
tainly enhanced intercultural relations in the Skeena region.41 In addition,
better recognition of, and initiatives for, Indigenous peoples, along with ac­
knowledgement of the trauma inﬂicted on the First Nations through govern­
ment programs like the Indian Residential School System – especially since
the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada report in
201542 – have also been critical contributing factors in improving intercul­
tural relations in the Skeena region.
As for the newer immigrants, they are more effectively learning about In­
digenous peoples, in comparison to what was available back in the 1960s
up to the early 1990s. And, while Punjabis continue to refer to Indigenous
peoples as taike, they are for the most part using the term as an expression of
respect for those who came ﬁrst. Even so, while initial steps have been taken
to help Indigenous families and communities both heal and reclaim their cul­
ture and language, there is still much more collaborative and concerted effort
that needs to be done.
Acknowledgements: Thanks are owed to the 0.6% Faculty PD Fund, Kwantlen
Polytechnic University, for a research grant that allowed me to carry out the
project.
Notes
1 Kamala Elizabeth Nayar, “Religion, Resiliency and Citizenship: The Journey of
a Vancouver Sikh Pioneer,” in Sikh Diaspora: Theory, Agency, and Experience
(Numen Book Series, vol. 144), ed. Michael Hawley (Leiden: Brill Academic
Publishers, 2013), 105; Hugh Johnston, “Group Identity in an Emigrant Worker
Community: The Example of Sikhs in Early Twentieth Century British Colum­
bia,” BC Studies 148 (Winter 2005/06): 3–23.
2 Nayar, “Religion, Resiliency and Citizenship,” 105–113; Kamala Elizabeth Nayar,
Punjabis in British Columbia: Location, Labour, First Nations and Multicultural­
ism (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012), 26; Kamala
Elizabeth Nayar, The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver: Three Generations amid Tra­
dition, Modernity, and Multiculturalism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2004), 16; James Gaylord Chadney, “The Formation of Ethnic Communities,
Lessons from Vancouver Sikhs,” in Sikh History and Religion in the 20th Cen­
tury, ed. Joseph T. O’Connell, Milton Israel and Willard Oxtoby (Toronto: Centre
for South Asian Studies, University of Toronto, 1988), 185–199; Peter W. Ward,
White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy toward Orientals in
British Columbia (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002),
80–81; Paramjit S. Judge, Punjabis in Canada: A Study of Formation of an Ethnic
Community (Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1994), 1–17.
3 Nayar, Punjabis in British Columbia, 26–27.
4 The Skeena region comprises the area surrounding the Skeena River, which is the
second-longest river in British Columbia. The Skeena River has been a critical
transportation route for the Coast Ts’msyen, who migrated to the lower region of
the Skeena. Ts’msyen (“inside the Skeena River”) is a broad category of people of
the Paciﬁc North Coast linked by language and culture: (1) the Coast Ts’msyen;
(2) the Southern Ts’msyen, who live on the coast and islands to the south of

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Kamala Elizabeth Nayar

the Skeena River; (3) the Nisga’a, who live on the Nass River; and (4) the Gitx­
san, who live on the upper Skeena beyond the canyon and Kitselas. See Marjorie
M. Halpin and Margaret Seguin, “Tsimshian Peoples: Southern Tsimshian, Coast
Tsimshian, Nishga, and Gitksan,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol.
7, ed. Wayne Suttles (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1990), 267–269,
267–285, 282.
5 While the small towns of the Skeena region are located on traditional Ts’msyen
territory, there are Indigenous peoples from other surrounding nations, including
the Nisga’a, Haida, Haisla, and Gitxsan. Apart from the local Indigenous peoples,
many waves of ethnic migration arrived in the region during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. The early migrants to the Skeena region were primarily Brit­
ish, arriving either directly from the United Kingdom or from eastern Canada,
southern British Columbia, or the United States. The region also drew people
from other parts of the world, including northern Europe (Norway), Eastern Eu­
rope (Poland, Ukraine, the old Yugoslavia), southern Europe (Italy, Portugal),
and Asia (China, Japan). Nayar, The Punjabis in British Columbia, 179; Dr. Rich­
ard Geddes Large, Prince Rupert: A Gateway to Alaska and the Paciﬁc, vol. 2
(Vancouver: Mitchell Press, 1983), 35.
6 Even the literature on decolonizing urban spaces focus on the relations between
Indigenous and colonial settlers. For instance, see Sarah de Leeuw and Sarah
Hunt, “Unsettling Decolonizing Geographies,” Geography Compass 12, no. 7
(2018): e12376-n/a. That said, some work has been done on intercultural rela­
tions between urban Indigenous peoples and newcomers as they live side-by-side
in the inner city, such as John Gyepi-Garbrah, Ryab Walker and Joseph Garcea,
“Indigeneity, Immigrant Newcomers and Interculturalism in Winnipeg, Canada,”
Urban Studies 51, no. 9 (2014): 1795–1811; Parvin Ghorayshi, “Diversity and
Interculturalism: Learning from Winnipeg’s Inner City,” Canadian Journal of Ur­
ban Research 19, no. 1 (2010): 89–104.
7 Nayar, The Punjabis in British Columbia.
8 Nayar, “Religion, Resiliency and Citizenship,” 103–113; Johnston, “Group Identity
in an Emigrant Worker Community,” 3–23; Archana B. Verma, The Making of
Little Punjab in Canada (New Delhi: Sage, 2002).
9 Some of the Punjabi male immigrants were, in fact, married but lived like non-family
men. However, in contrast to the early 1900s when Punjabi men were unable to
bring over their wives and children, in the 1960s Punjabis would sponsor family
members once they could afford to. Nayar, “Religion, Resiliency and Citizenship,”
105; Johnston, “Group Identity in an Emigrant Worker Community,” 3–4.
10 For instance, Punjabi Male 1.12, interview, 18 May 2006, Prince Rupert, BC;
Punjabi Male 1.27, interview, 3 August 2009, Surrey, BC. See also, Nayar, Punjabis
in British Columbia, 36–38.
11 Sohen Singh Gill (1911–1971) was born in the Punjab and arrived in Canada
in 1931 at the age of 21. He had no formal education and began working at a
wood-fuel company called Dryland Fuels. After one and a half years, Sohen Gill
decided to quit working for Dryland Fuels and start his own family fuel trucking
business under the ﬁrm name of Sohen Brothers Co. From 1931 to 1940, the com­
pany gradually acquired more contracts and eventually increased its operation
by adding a ﬂeet of trucks to the business. The company was proﬁtable and was
regarded as the largest dry wood-fuel company in Vancouver. Later, Sohen Gill
ventured into the forestry industry with the building a sawmill in 1946, under the
ﬁrm name of Yukon Lumber Co. Following his success with Yukon Lumber Co.,
Sohen Gill decided to pursue only the sawmill business by establishing two more
sawmills in British Columbia. That is, he built a second sawmill called Pine Lake
Lumber (est. 1954) in Spuzzum and a third sawmill called Prince Rupert Sawmills
(est. 1958) in Prince Rupert. Nayar, Punjabis in British Columbia, 31–32.

Punjabi Migration to Northwestern British Columbia

239

12 Nayar, Punjabis of British Columbia, 38–45.
13 Ibid., 43–45.
14 Ravi Pendakur, Immigrants and the Labour Force: Policy, Regulation, and Im­
pact (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 78–82.
15 The ﬁrst cannery on the Skeena River was built in 1877 and the ﬁrst one on the
Nass River began operations in 1881. During the 1870s, Indigenous peoples had to
adjust to the colonial imposed capitalist economy, when the ﬁsh-canning industry
was established in British Columbia. As a consequence, the Indigenous peoples lost
control over their traditional livelihood of ﬁshing. That is, the dominion set aside
a small portion of ﬁsheries for the First Nations while it opened up the resource to
large-scale production and an increasingly complex distribution system for AngloCanadians. Rolf Knight, Indians at Work: An Informal History of Native Indian
Labour in British Columbia 1858–1930 (Vancouver: New Star Books, 1978),
179–184, 20; Douglas C. Harris, Landing Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves and
Fishing Rights in British Columbia 1849–1925 (Vancouver: University of British
Columbia Press, 2008), 189; Diane Newell, Tangled Webs of History: Indians and
the Law in Canada’s Paciﬁc Coast Fisheries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1993), 46–65.
16 Nayar, Punjabis of British Columbia, 93–108.
17 For a critical analysis of the various negative stereotypes that Anglo-Canadians
have held about Indigenous peoples, see John S. Lutz, Makuk: A New History
of Aboriginal-White Relations (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,
2008).
18 Indian residential school system (IRSS) refers to the many Christian missionary
operated schools that the Canadian government administered as part of its larger
aim to assimilate Indigenous peoples into Canadian society. Indigenous children
were forcibly removed from families and often endured physical, mental, psycho­
logical, and sexual abuses while attending the schools. While no single date marks
the institution of the system (though such schools existed prior to Confederation),
Native education policy was backed by the Indian Act (est. 1887) and its assimi­
lationist policies. For more information on the IRRS, see James R. Miller, Shin­
gwaulk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1996).
19 Punjabi Male 1.21, interview, 16 January 2009, Surrey, BC. Cited in Nayar, Pun­
jabis in British Columbia, 154.
20 For example, Punjabi Male 1.12, interview, 18 May 2006, Prince Rupert, BC;
Punjabi Male 1.22, interview, 9 May 2009, Surrey, BC; Punjabi Male 2.8, inter­
view, 15 August 2009, Surrey BC; Punjabi Female 1.8, interview, 14 September 2009,
Surrey, BC; Punjabi Female 1.3, interview, 6 September 2008, Langley, BC.
21 Ts’msyen 3, interview, 12 June 2009, Prince Rupert, BC. Cited in Nayar, Punjabis
in British Columbia, 152.
22 Brenna Bhandar, Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of
Ownership (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 60.
23 It was only in 1956 when Indigenous peoples as workers were extended equal
treatment in the ﬁsheries and allowed to join the labour union. Alicja Muszyn­
ski, Cheap Wage Labour: Race and Gender in the Fisheries of British Columbia
(Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 202–207.
24 Nayar, Punjabis in British Columbia, 154.
25 The United Fishermen Allied Workers’ Union (UFAWU) was established in 1945
and has been the main labour organization in the ﬁsheries. In contrast to the
early part of the twentieth century, when unions excluded visible minorities join­
ing their ranks, UFAWU allowed women and Chinese labourers to sign up. In
fact, following the Second World War, unions in general had come to realize that
they needed both female and ethnic support in order to build their bargaining

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Kamala Elizabeth Nayar

power. Muszynski, Cheap Wage Labour, 180–182; Stuart Jamieson and Percy
Gladstone, “Unionism in the Fishing Industry of British Columbia,” Canadian
Journal of Economics and Political Science 16, no. 1 (1950): 9–11.
26 Organized Labour 2, interview, 29 May 2007, Prince Rupert, BC. Nayar, Punjabis
in British Columbia, 169.
27 Nayar, Punjabis in British Columbia, 168–170.
28 Kamala Elizabeth Nayar and ‘Liyaa’mlaxha, “The Journey of a Ts’msyen Resi­
dential School Survivor: Resiliency and Healing in Multi-Ethnic Milieus,” BC
Studies, no. 183 (Autumn 2014): 87.
29 See Nayar, Punjabis in British Columbia, 171.
30 For instance, Punjabi Female 1.14, interview, 23 January 2009, Delta, BC; Pun­
jabi Female 1.16, interview, 27 February 2009, Surrey, BC. See Nayar, Punjabis
in British Columbia, 187–188.
31 Haida 1, interview, 30 May 2009, Prince Rupert, BC. Cited in Nayar, Punjabis in
British Columbia, 189.
32 With the federal government’s institution of the Canadian Citizenship Act on 1 Janu­
ary 1947, all legal residents became recognized as Canadian citizens (i.e., there was no
legal recognition of Canadian citizens prior to the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947).
With the introduction of the family sponsorship system in 1951, immediate family
members were also permitted to migrate to Canada. For “East Indians,” there was a
quota of merely 50 “East Indian” immigrants a year; in 1957 the quota was increased
to three hundred, which remained in force until 1962.
33 Ravi Pendakur, Immigrants and the Labour Force: Policy, Regulation, and
Impact (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 78–82.
34 While “East Indians” beneﬁted from the point system, transferability of their
credentials, which gave Punjabis points to migrate, emerged as a contentious;
that is, an education and/or employment experience from a developing country
(such as India) did not translate to Canadian employment in their chosen ﬁeld.
Pendakur, Immigrants and the Labour Force, 67, 156; Nayar, Punjabis in British
Columbia, 97–99.
35 In the 1950s, “East Indian” immigrants still felt pressure to adopt the Western
lifestyle if they wished to be accepted as members of mainstream Canadian society.
Assimilation, with the resulting disconnectedness from their heritage, was a great
challenge for many “East Indian” immigrants and their children. Such children
of immigrants often experienced confusion and anxiety in the face of having to
reject or deny their background in order to “ﬁt in” or to be accepted, even as they
encountered racial and cultural discrimination.
36 Weaver provides an excellent analysis of the development of the White Paper.
Sally M. Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy: The Hidden Agenda, 1968–70
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981). Currently, Indigenous peoples hold
different views on whether or not to dismantle the Indian Act. For a critical analy­
sis of the Indian Act’s impact on Indigenous peoples, see Mary-Ellen Kelm and
Keith D. Smith, Talking Back to the Indian Act: Critical Reading in Settler Colo­
nial Histories (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018).
37 The potlatch is a gift-giving feast practice by Indigenous peoples of the Paciﬁc North­
west. The practice gave authority to names and positions through public declaration
and conferred upon the house chief the authority to govern resource use, succes­
sion, alliances, marriages, and other important matters that affected the power and
prestige of the house. For an in-depth analysis of the spiritual and social signiﬁcance
of receiving an immortal name, see Christopher F. Roth, Becoming Tsimshian: The
Social Life of Names (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008).
38 It was only in 1951, after the federal government lifted the ban on soliciting
funds for First Nations legal land claims, when Indigenous peoples could legally

Punjabi Migration to Northwestern British Columbia

241

mobilize and lobby to achieve self-determination through land claims and selfgovernance. Subsequently, since the 1960s various First Nation groups have been
working towards self-determination. For instance, the Nisga’a people of the Nass
Valley have mobilized for land claims and self-governance. See Terry Fenge and
Jim Aldridge, Keeping Promises: The Royal Proclamation of 1763, Aboriginal
Rights and Treaties in Canada (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 2015); Daniel Raunet, Without Surrender, without Consent: A History of
the Nishga Land Claims (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1984).
39 Nayar and ‘Liyaa’mlaxha, “The Journey of a Ts’msyen Residential School
Survivor,” 87.
40 Kimberley Millar, “New Immigrants and Indigenous Youth Plant Garden of Flavor
and Commonality,” Prince Rupert Northern View, Thursday, 25 August 2022, p. A5.
41 For instance, see Nayar, Punjabis in British Columbia.
42 See Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), The Final Report of the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 6 vols. (Montreal & Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015).

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