Micronations Sign “Alcatraz Accords” Environmental Treaty at Central Italy Summit

(photo by the author)

Though “Springtime of Nations” is in many ways a news blog, rarely do I present first-person reportage on these pages.  Earlier this month, however, I was an invited speaker at the 3rd PoliNation conference, at the Free Republic of Alcatraz, in the Umbrian mountains of Italy, and was able to witness the signing of a first-of-its-kind environmental treaty by heads of state and other representatives of some of the world’s most high-profile micronations.

Daily life in the Free Republic of Alcatraz, with some of its 111 inhabitants

(photo by the author)

Titled the Alcatraz Environmental Treaty of 2015, the document, signed on July 5th, charges that “the large states of the world have been ineffective and their efforts have been lacking in intention and execution concerning efforts to improve the environment, preserve existing natural resources, and reduce carbon emissions to slow the change of the climate.”  Signatories agree to set a global example through responsible ecological stewardship in their own (usually tiny) territories, especially bee populations; to urge the preservation of Antarctica as a nature preserve set aside for scientific research only, even after the expiration of the Antarctic Treaty in 2020; to create “highly localized sub-currencies that will promote the local production and consumption of goods and produce”; to support efforts “to clean the human-generated debris from the oceans and reduce the ‘garbage patches’”; and to financial restructuring to reduce poverty and inequality.

Queen Carolyn and other dignitaries work on a draft of the final environmental treaty

(photo by the author)

In addition, the treaty demands, “for every square foot of land or glacier lost to melting ice sheets and rising ocean levels, compensation from the large landed nations of one square meter of dry/non-threatened land so that we may relocate the climate refugees that will be created as a result of the rising waters.”  (See my recent article which addresses the issue of the survival of low-elevation nations in a warmer planet with higher sea levels.)  You can read the full text of the treaty here.

For the Principality of Aigues-Mortes, one of the world’s lowest-elevation nations,
rising sea levels are no small matter.

Signatories of the treaty are Queen Carolyn of Ladonia; Grand Duke Niels of Flandrensis; President Iacopo Fo of Alcatraz; the Republic of Benny André Lund; Prince Jean-Pierre IV of Aigues-Mortes; Emperor Olivier of Angyalistan; Sogoln Yg Ysca, president of the Institut Fomoire; and a delegation from the otherwise acephalous (leaderless) Bunte Republik Neustadt.  Other nations have since expressed an interest in adding their names to the treaty.

At Alcatraz

(photo by the author)

The Royal Republic of Ladonia is a 1-square-kilometer art installation of sorts on the coast of Sweden, founded by Lars Vilks, a Latvian–Swedish avant-garde artist now living an underground, Salman Rushdie–style existence due to being targeted by jihadists for his cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.  (The apparent oxymoron in Ladonia’s full name is reconciled through their unique form of government, remony (republic + monarchy).

Ladonia is an unusual place

The Grand Duchy of Flandrensis, founded by Niels Vermeersch of Belgium, claims five islands off the coast of Antarctica, arguing that the Antarctic Treaty bars territorial claims by states but not individuals such as soi-disant heads of state.

The Republicof (sic; one word) Benny André Lund is a native of Norway, born in 1977, who has styled himself as a sovereign nation of one.  He has changed his name legally to this phrase, including the first name Republicof.

The Republic of Benny André Lund and his flag

(photo by the author)

The Principality of Aigues-Mortes is a small town on the coast of France’s Provence region, centered on a Medieval castle, which promotes tourism as well as causes such as sustainability, including through the use of its local currency, the tune, serving a function much like that outlined in the Alcatraz treaty.  One invited speaker, the Belgian journalist Julien Oeuillet, called Aigues-Mortes the world’s most successful micronation.

Vive la microfrancophonie!

(photo by the author)

The Empire of Angyalistan, founded in 1999 and active in environmental causes, is a nation whose territory is the horizon: it is always around us and can never be reached.

Emperor Olivier explains Angyalistan

(photo by the author)

The Formori Institute (Institut Fomoire), mostly found in the French-speaking world, is a landless international nation (structured much like a fraternal order) which claims for itself the heritage of the Formori (a.k.a. Fomorians or Fomoire), a legendary race of chthonic demi-gods who were defeated, according to Irish mythology, by the Tuatha Dé Danann, the pantheon of pre-Christian Celtic deities.  (The present writer had the honor of being inducted into the Formori’s House of the Yew.  Contact me privately if you are curious about my name in the (re)constructed Formoric tongue; I am still a novice in Formori protocols and confidentiality.)

A Formori induction ceremony, at the PoliNation conference

(photo by the author)

The Colorful Republic of Newtown (Bunte Republik Neustadt), in the former East Germany, is a leaderless micronation, much in the style of Copenhagen’s Christiania community, which is the focus of an annual music and cultural festival drawing more than 100,000 people to Dresden’s Neustadt neighborhood, which is where all the funky artist types were living when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.  It sets itself against the forces of conformity, homogenization, gentrification, and the fragmentation of community in the new Germany.  (I was also made a citizen of the B.R.N., I am proud to say.)

The foreign minister of the Bunte Republik Neustadt with, to his left, the B.R.N. flag,
featuring a gleefully-pirated trademarked image in place of the old D.D.R.’s Masonic device

(photo by the author)

As for the host community of the conference, the Free Republic of Alcatraz (Libera Repubblica di Alcatraz) is an area of private land near Perugia in the stunningly beautiful hills of Italy’s central, landlocked region of Umbria.  It was founded by Jacopo Fo, son of Dario Fo, the Italian winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature, and a writer and sex guru in his own right.  The Free University of Alcatraz (Libera Università di Alcatraz) has a full calendar of dance workshops, art exhibitions, conferences, music festivals, and other events and also advocates sustainability and strong local community by example.

A map showing the territories of the Free Republic of Alcatraz, in the central Italian highlands.
(Darn!  I missed the gnome village.)

Other dignitaries at the conference include King Bruno of Noseland, a patch of land surrounded by northern Switzerland’s Canton of Argovia (Aargau), which has its own currency.  Its king is also producer of a documentary about micronations.  One of the conference’s organizers, Emperor George II of Atlantium (a territory surrounded by New South Wales, Australia), was unable to attend, due to illness—to my disappointment, since he has been a supporter of my book Let’s Split! and is helpful to my work in other ways.

Bruno, king of Noseland

(photo by the author)

Other highlights of the conference included a talk by the Austrian anthropologist Irina Ulrika Andel on the micronation phenomenon; a presentation on the Principality of Outer Baldonia by the Canadian historian Lachlan MacKinnon; presentations by nearly all of the micronations listed above (the playing of the Noselandic national anthem, “sung” through the nose, was a highlight); and an official statement by Queen Carolyn to announce that, contrary to what some sources on the World Wide Web still state, Ladonia is no longer in a state of war with Sweden or any other nation.  (In further state business, Her Majesty sealed a mutual-recognition accord with the Empire of Austenasia at a hastily arranged meeting at Heathrow airport en route back to her home in the United States.)

Jacopo Fo, circulating at the conference

(photo by the author)

As Oeuillet, the Belgian journalist (and author of a new book on impostor noblemen), put it at the conference, today’s micronations are conducting private activity using the language and symbols of public institutions, and the best of them are doing things that the recognized public institutions should be doing but aren’t.  When it comes to climate change, maybe these “silly” and “self-styled” monarchs and heads of state can nonetheless help prod the real powers that be to move in the right direction.

A group photo of the participants in the PoliNation conference, swiped from the ArciPerugia website.
I am at the lower right.

In fact, during my stay in Alcatraz, the news came in over the radio that voters in Greece had thumbed their nose at the European Union (E.U.) in general and at Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, in particular by rejecting the austerity measures proposed to help keep Greece in the euro zone.  In jubilant celebration, Alcatraz’s queen, Eleonora Albanese, passed out grappa for everyone.  Not, of course, because a “Grexit” would necessarily be the best thing or because anyone knows which course might be best for the people of Greece and the rest of southern Europe—but most of all, I gather, because, in geopolitics, Going Big isn’t working, and something has to give.

Eleonora Albanese, Queen of Alcatraz

(photo by the author)

[You can read more about Atlantium, Ladonia, and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Let’s Split! was on display at the PoliNation conference, but you can buy your copy here.

(photo by the author)

Militant “Patriot” Who Declared Separate “Freedom County” among Missing in Washington State Mudslide

Among the missing in this month’s deadly mudslide in Oso, Washington, was a prominent secessionist from western Washington’s ultra-conservative “Christian Patriot” and “sovereign citizen” movements.

The now-presumed-dead activist, Thom Satterlee, age 65, came to public attention in the 1990s as a proponent of splitting the rural parts of Snohomish County away to form a new jurisdiction to be called Freedom County.  That push was prompted by environmental rules to protect wetlands which Snohomish County conservatives felt impinged upon property rights.  (A more mainstream proposal around the same time would have created Skykomish County from most of eastern Snohomish County and part of adjacent King County (whose seat is Seattle).)

Satterlee and an associate, John Stokes, went so far as filing a complaint with the United Nations in 1997 against the State of Washington for its refusal to create Freedom County.  (The U.N. declined to intervene.)  (Stokes later attracted controversy as host of a Kalispell, Montana, pro-militia radio talk show called The Edge, where he spun theories such as one that the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was not a right-wing militiaman but was in fact an agent provocateur from the Sierra Club.  Stokes, who has referred to environmentalists as “green Nazis … pure, unadulterated satanic evil … vile vomit,” also made headlines by marking Earth Day with the burning of a giant green swastika.)

An Earth Day publicity stunt by pro–Freedom County activist
and hate-radio shock jock John Stokes

Later, Satterlee drew the attention of the Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) for trying to pay taxes with, as the hate-group-monitoring organization the Southern Poverty Law Center (S.P.C.L.) put it, “pseudo-legal ‘liens’ filed against a federal judge in Seattle over his handling of a conspiracy and weapons case against a group of western Washington militiamen.”

One proposed flag for Freedom County, Washington

But the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) got involved when Satterlee and some of his associates declared that they would arrest the Snohomish County sheriff, Rick Bart, if he wandered across the “border” into what they they had unilaterally declared a fully established “Freedom County” after a 1993 petition campaign.  Freedom County’s own sheriff was a “sovereign citizens” activist known only as Fnu Lnu (sic).  In 2002, Satterlee was convicted of running an illegal law practice.

The current flag of Snohomish County represents a row of
airline passengers assuming crash positions.

There are also indications in his writings that Satterlee subscribed to a set of beliefs called “Christian Identity,” common in “Christian Patriot” circles.  Christian Identity beliefs state that today’s Jews are in fact impostors and that white Anglo-Saxons are the actual “Chosen People” of the Old Testament.  Some strains of Christian Identity thought (such as the “twin seed theory”) hold that nonwhites are descendants of Eve mating with Satan in the Garden of Eden.

Thom and Marcy Satterlee, now presumed dead

Satterlee and his wife, Marlese (“Marcy”), age 61, are both unaccounted for and are, along with their daughter and her fiancé, among the 13 still considered missing after the destruction of their home in the March 22nd landslide.  Thirty residents have been confirmed dead by the recovery of their bodies.

Jackbooted thugs from the Muslim socialist Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) infringing on the rights of Freedom County residents by pulling
their dead bodiesfrom the muck with your tax dollars.

Thanks to William Abernathy for alerting me to this story.

[You can read more about right-wing militia activity in the Pacific Northwest and the “sovereign citizens” and “Christian identity” movements, as well as numerous separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Raëlian Free-Love UFO Cult Comes Out in Favor of Independent Cascadia

The idea of an independent nation called Cascadia in North America’s temperate northwest, received a thumbs-up this week from an unexpected source: the Raëlian Movement, a mostly Quebec-based flying-saucer religion.

The most commonly seen flag of Cascadia (the “Doug Fir Flag”)

A spokesman for the group, David Dunsmore, said that Cascadia fits the Raëlian ideology of small communities and local government.  For one thing, subdivision of larger countries into smaller states “allows for humanity to become potentially more peaceful and harmonious because the dangers of smaller countries having large military to go to war with each other—they don’t have the means to do that.”

One proposal for Cascadia’s borders.  (There are many.)

More or less inspired by Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel Ecotopia, which imagined an egalitarian, environmentally-minded state formed by Oregon, Washington, and most of California seceding from the United States, the idea picked up in a vague and directionless way through the 1980s and ’90s.  A flag was designed in 1994, and in 2001 the Cascadian National Party (C.N.P.) was founded, but timing was not on its side: it was announced on September 9th, and two days later the nation’s attention focused elsewhere.  (By an eerie coincidence, another Pacific Northwest regionalist movement had the same publicity problem, down to the number of days involved: the imaginary State of Jefferson, built out of parts of northern California and southern Oregon, had its first gubernatorial election on December 5, 1941.)  The C.N.P.’s original idea was to form Cascadia from Washington, Oregon, and Canada’s province of British Columbia.  The map on its website today omits B.C.  The rival Cascadia Independence Project has a more bioregionalist vision: its Cascadia has as its eastern border the Continental Divide along the ridge of the Rockies; it stops just short of Anchorage, Alaska, in the north and just short of the San Francisco Bay Area in the south.  It is not clear which version the Raëlians, or their leader Raël, formerly a French race-car driver named Claude Vorilhon, prefers.

Based on Raël’s book, Aliens Took Me to Their Planet, published, coincidentally, the same year as Ecotopia, the group teaches that humanity is the product of genetic seeding by extraterrestrials and is enthusiastically sex-positive, pro-nudist, and anti-clerical.  Last year, as reported at the time in this blog, Raëlians came out in opposition to Quebec’s separatist ruling party, the Parti Québécois (P.Q.), for its bigoted campaign against the display of religious symbols.  The Québécois proposals were designed specifically to target Muslim religious dress, in a bid to pander to francophone anti-immigrant sentiment.  Oddly, a Raëlian bishop opposed the banning of religious displays but opined instead that all religious texts that contained homophobic, religious-chauvinist, or patriarchal ideas should be censored by the state.

Raël

Raëlians have a history of flamboyant bids for media attention.  In 2002, they claimed—falsely, as it turned out, that the Raëlian-based genetics firm Clonaid had created the first human clone; ...

...; since 2008, Raëlians have promoted a national and international “Go Topless Day”; ...

...; earlier this year the Raëlian-run company Clitoraid was chased out of Burkina Faso for founding an institution called the Pleasure Hospital, whose mission is surgical reparation of damage done by female genital cutting; ...

...; and, in a surprisingly tone-deaf public-relations move, they continue to promote the revival of the swastika as a positive symbol ...

They claim to be the numerically largest U.F.O. religion in the world.  On the other hand, that is not so surprising, considering that some of their competition do not exactly have very effective membership-growth strategies ...

(Heaven’s Gate, 1997)

The Cascadia movement has long thirsted for some kind of legitimacy.  They may still have a bit further to go.

[You can read more about Cascadia and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Related articles from this blog:
“Greenpeace Declares Independent ‘Glacier Republic’ in Chile’s Andes” (March 2014)

“‘Western Canada’ Separatists Throw in the Towel” (Feb. 2014)

“Quebec Free-Love Saucer Cult Joins Muslim-Headscarf Debate, Suggests Censoring Religious Texts” (Oct. 2013)
“Quebec Separatists Challenge Canadian Tolerance with Proposed Islamic-Headscarf Ban” (Sept. 2013)
“Vancouver Islanders Hope to Be Canada’s 11th Province, and Its Greenest” (Aug. 2013)
“Which Part of ‘Wet’suwet’en Territory’ Don’t They Understand?” (Nov. 2012)

Greenpeace Declares Independent “Glacier Republic” in Chile’s Andes

March 5th, 2014, was independence day for South America’s newest nation—or is it just a publicity stunt?  Well, it has a flag and embassies and seems to be quite serious.  It is called the Glacier Republic, and it consists of the 23,000 square kilometers or so of the Republic of Chile’s territory that is covered by glaciers. The republic was declared by the international environmental organization Greenpeace to call attention to the fact that Chile does not take care of its glaciers, which make up 82% of the continent’s total glacier-covered land.  More specifically, glaciers are ill-defined under Chilean law, which classifies them as neither public nor private—a loophole that this week’s declaration of independence exploits.

82% of South America’s glaciers are in Chile—or
at least they used to be.

The announcement of the new state (known in Spanish as la República Glaciar) was made March 5th in a full-page ad in the New York Times (reproduced below).  As the director of Greenpeace Chile, Matías Asún, explained, “Glacier Republic was founded because in Chile there is a legal loophole that does not recognize these huge ice masses as part of its sovereignty.  Neither the constitution nor the water code mentions glaciers as public goods that need to be protected actively.  Chile is one of the few countries without a law to protect glaciers, and that has allowed mining companies to become their main threat.”  Greenpeace explains that Chile can have the territories back when it agrees to take proper charge of them.

The Glacier Republic maintains its capital, according to Greenpeace, in a tent erected high in the Andes Mountains in an as yet undisclosed location, in the Patagonia region shared by Argentina and Chile where all of South America’s glaciers lie.  It seems quite possible that the as yet unnamed capital will exceed the current record held by La Paz, Bolivia (11,942 feet), for the national capital at the highest altitude above sea level.

Nicanor Parra, age 99, is one of Glacier Republic’s first citizens.

Readers can visit the Glacier Republic website and apply for a passport.  Among the first batch of citizens is the flamboyant Chilean “anti-poet” Nicanor Parra, one of Latin America’s most revered writers.  Since Parra is 99 years old, it is not clear if he will make the trek to visit his new fatherland.

Is there a special rule where professional poets are allowed
to cover their faces in anguish in their passport photos?

This is not Greenpeace’s first foray into micronationalism.  In 1997, Greenpeace activists declared the British-administered island outcropping of Rockall to be an independent country called Waveland and erected a flag there (see below).  Rockall, like Chile’s glaciers, is territorially ambiguous.  Though governed by the United Kingdom as part of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides council area (as erstwhile “counties” are now called), it is also subject to claims by the Republic of Ireland (as part of County Donegal), as part of the Republic of Iceland, and as part of the Kingdom of Denmark (as part of the autonomous and occasionally separatist Faroe Islands).  The uninhabited islet—it is too small to have any source of freshwater—is about equidistant between those four nations.  A Scottish separatist named Nick Hancock set out last year to break Greenpeace’s 42-day record with a 60-second squat on Rockall, during which time he was to unfurl a “Yes Scotland” banner promoting Scotland’s independence from the U.K.

There has still been no official response to the Glacier Republic declaration from the Chilean government.  The country is not known for its tolerance of separatism.  Chilean authorities use heavy-handed tactics to suppress the independence movement on Easter Island, and in the Chilean mainland Mapuche Indian activists in the land struggle are routinely rounded up and tried and prosecuted as “terrorists,” to an extent that has alarmed international-rights organizations.

Scottish nationalist Nick Hancock and the plastic “pod”
in which he plans to dwell for 60 days on Rockall

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Related article from this blog:
“Breaking News: Easter Island Wants to Split from Chile, Join French Polynesia” (Jan. 2013)

Vancouver Islanders Hope to Be Canada’s 11th Province, and Its Greenest

Some residents of Canada’s southwesternmost flank, British Columbia’s Vancouver Island, are hoping to make their large, lush land mass the newest province, to accompany the 10 others and the three territories of the Arctic.

This June, two environmental activists, Laurie Gourlay and Scott Akenhead launched something called the Vancouver Island Province Initiative.  (Akenhead is president of the Mid-Island Sustainability and Stewardship Initiative, of which Gourlay is also a member.)  At the moment, it is merely a website (see it here), but petitions to the federal Parliament in Ottawa and the B.C. provincial parliament in Victoria are already being prepared.  They aim to establish the island as its own province by May 16, 2021, which is the 150th anniversary of B.C.’s accession to the Canadian federation.

... and maybe to Canada’s 11th province, as well.

Unlike, say, the movement for the vast northern reaches of Ontario to secede as a separate province, the Vancouver Island provincehood movement comes from the left of the political spectrum, not the right.  In particular, the environmental movement in B.C. in particular and in Canada generally has been galvanized of late by plans by Enbridge, Inc., to build a Northern Gateway Pipeline to bring natural gas from Alberta’s tar sands to the ecologically and economically sensitive inlets around Kitimat, B.C., in the province’s northern mainland coast.  Vancouver Island itself, which is often called simply “the Island” by British Columbians, is no stranger to environmental activism either.  It was here, at Clayoquot Sound in the 1990s, that environmental groups and multi-national timber corporations held a standoff over the very survival of the Island’s vast temperate rainforests.  On both the coasts and the mainland, First Nations people have also been at the forefront of this kind of activism.

Vancouver Island used to be separate, as students of Canadian history know.  Before there was a Canada, in 1849, the British Colony of Vancouver Island was created, as part of the resolution of the long-simmering question of who—the Americans or the British—would control the Oregon Country and points north.  In 1866 it was merged into the Colony of British Columbia, which was then just the mainland, with a capital at New Westminster, now a suburb of the mainland’s largest city—also called, confusingly, Vancouver.  Vancouver Island’s capital, Victoria, became the capital of the new amalgamated colony, which joined the four-year-young independent dominion of Canada in 1871.

The old Oregon Country (not too dissimilar in its boundaries from today’s “Cascadia”)

Over the years there have been several attempts to redraw the region’s boundaries.  In the 1950s and ’60s, B.C.’s far-right premier, W. A. C. “Wacky” Bennett, wanted B.C. to leave Canada, and to take the Yukon Territory with it.  Starting very seriously in the 1990s, B.C.’s First Nations people began challenging the legitimacy of the Canadian and B.C. state structures by pointing out that no treaties had ever been signed for the vast majority of the province’s territory, thus making it, according to constitutional-level documents like the Royal Proclamation of 1763, unceded Indian territory illegally occupied by Canada.  And a mostly symbolic environmentalist movement to create an independent nation of Cascadia, consisting at the very least of Oregon and Washington, often includes B.C. in its aspirations as well.  (The idea is far more popular in Oregon and Washington than in B.C.)

The flag of Cascadia

If Vancouver Island did secede, it would be Canada’s second-smallest province, after Prince Edward Island, but, with more than a quarter-million people, it would just nudge past New Brunswick to become the eighth-most-populous.  It would also have more than six times as many people as Canada’s three territories—Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon—put together.  After the loss of Vancouver Island, B.C. would still retain its position as the third-largest province, behind Ontario and Quebec.

More significantly for its prospects, it would become one of the most left-leaning and environmentally-minded provinces.  It would probably take a far more aggressively line in enhancing First Nations sovereignty and protecting natural systems from corporate pillage.  In line with that, it would be able to be far more dependent on tourism than on the resource-extraction industries like mining, pipelines, and especially timber that characterize the mainland economy.  Vancouverites—people of the City of Vancouver, that is, on the mainland—are likely to fight the secession if it ever becomes a serious concern.  Without the Island, the left-leaning city will need to work harder to push progressive policies past the conservative interior of the province.  Much of the arid southern interior is ranchland, with a Wild West feel and more in common with Alberta (“the Texas of Canada”) than with the coasts.

Wet’suwet’en environmental activists in northern B.C. last year

As indicated, it is already confusing that the City of Vancouver is not on Vancouver Island.  Without Vancouver Island and Victoria, what remains of B.C. would be tempted to make Vancouver its new capital, but just to avoid further confusion it might make sense to give New Westminster its day in the sun.  Then again, Vancouver Island might choose an indigenous name for itself.  But that would mean deciding which of the island’s many indigenous Salish and Wakashan languages would be so privileged.  A linguistically hybrid name, like that of Burkina Faso, is one possibility.

There is also the question of who else might decide to join the new province.  The Queen Charlotte Islands, now renamed Haida Gwaii, whose indigenous Haida nation is often at the forefront of environmental activism, is one candidate.  So might be a number of the smaller islands, from the Georgia Strait near Vancouver and Victoria all the way to the large islands of Tsimshian territory to the north.

Would Haida Gwaii, for example, be better off in B.C.,
in the Province of Vancouver Island, or even on its own?

Since it used to be its own colony, Vancouver Island already has—or had—its own flag.  With its prominent Union Jack in the canton, it would need revising.

Vancouver Island’s flag when it was a separate colony, from 1849 to 1866.

I recommend some sort of First Nations design—the route chosen by Nunavut with its flag (see below).  After all, Vancouver Island’s indigenous people, and those of the B.C. and Alaska coasts more generally, have one of the most robust and distinctive graphic-arts traditions in the world.

Nunavut’s flag

But it would be very hard to top the stunning design that British Columbia itself chose for itself in 1960.

British Columbia’s current flag

That flag alone might be worth staying in B.C.  Eh?

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]