[BCMA] FBCA hybrid speaker event: Smallpox Chiefs: Bioterrorism and Power in the Pacific Northwest Dr. John Lutz Sunday, April 27th 2025 | 2:00pm – 3:00pm

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv]

*apologies for cross posting

Dear colleagues,
Please join the Friends of the BC Archives for our final speaker event before the summer.

Smallpox Chiefs: Bioterrorism and Power in the Pacific Northwest
Dr. John Lutz
Sunday, April 27th 2025 | 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Conference Hall, Royal BC Museum or via Zoom
Register for Zoom Here: https://us06web.zoom.us/…/register/I1Aj1nscTeuS3AGRQEyAGg<https://us06web.zoom.us/.../register/I1Aj1nscTeuS3AGRQEyAGg>
This presentation examines one probable origin of the commonly told story in the past and today that smallpox was deliberately spread by Whites in the process of colonizing the Pacific Northwest.  While there is one documented attempt in the Pacific Northwest to trade smallpox- infected blankets into an Indigenous population, there are at least 10 documented examples of European leaders threatening to spread smallpox as a punishment for past or potential actions by Indigenous people.  Sometimes a smallpox epidemic followed these threats. This presentation will look at the circumstances and the effects of these threats.
John Lutz is a professor of History at the University of Victoria. His research focuses on Indigenous-settler relations and the history of racism in the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of Makúk: A New History of Aboriginal-White Relations,  a co-editor of the collection Towards a New Ethnohistory: Community Engaged Scholarship Among the People of the River and a co-editor of To Share Not Surrender: Indigenous and Settler Visions of Treaty Making in the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. He currently works with the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSANEC First Nations on their litigation efforts to enforce their treaty rights.



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