21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality

by Bob Joseph

Agriculture was one objective chosen as the path for Indians to follow to become “civilized.” But many reserves were located in areas that were unsuitable for agriculture.

The great aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system and assimilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Dominion as speedily as they are fit to change. JOHN A. MACDONALD, 18851

The early fur traders used alcohol, along with other items, to barter with Indians for furs. It was a common ploy to supply a great quantity of alcohol to the Indian traders prior to the negotiation process.

“We are having this trouble because we are reaping the harvest of 50 years or more of making the Indian a second-class citizen. We are going to have to make up our minds whether we are going to keep the Indian bottled up in a sort of Canadian apartheid or whether we are going to let him become a good citizen.”

Indians would often consume their alcohol rapidly to avoid being arrested and fined. This led to the myth, which continues today, that Indians can’t tolerate alcohol.

most populations that are “dissembled by colonialism experience drug and alcohol problems.” He has observed that it takes many generations to resolve these problems.6

we can see that there has been a breakdown to the social fabric of communities as a result of Indian residential schools and Canadian Indian policies of assimilation.

The parents and the children were affected by residential schools: the parents suffered the trauma of losing their children and the children suffered the trauma of feeling abandoned by their parents.

As a result, these children were not raised in kind, caring, loving families or communities. Instead they grew up in prison-like environments where they learned prisoner survivor skills, and most of the children were completely traumatized by the experience.

The federal government believed that true assimilation could be attained only by legally abolishing all cultural practices. Hence, under the Indian Act, the government created the potlatch law in 1884, making the potlatch and other cultural ceremonies, such as the Sun Dance, illegal.

Recognizing the potlatch as integral to the culture of coastal Indians, the government targeted it with particular force.

And so it began: the most aggressive and destructive of all Indian Act policies.

Residential schools brought immeasurable human suffering to the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples, the effects of which continue to reverberate through generations of families and many communities.

The goal of the schools was to “kill the Indian in the child,”12 but tragically it was the children themselves who died in overwhelming numbers at these schools.

“It is quite within the mark to say that fifty per cent of the children who passed through these schools did not live to benefit from the education which they had received therein”14

If parents or guardians did not readily hand over their children to the Indian agent, the Indian Act gave power to the agent to enter the family home and seize the children, often with the help of the local constabulary or by the constabulary alone.

Their education often degenerated into exploited child labour.

The schools, primarily managed by Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and United churches and a government wanting to shed the financial responsibility of Indians, were chronically underfunded. The buildings were drafty and unsanitary and food for the children was insufficient and often rotten.

The schools were also breeding grounds for diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza.

The children who simply could not survive in this harsh and terrifying environment died at such a rate that it came to the attention of Dr. Peter Bryce, a medical doctor hired by the Department of the Interior to manage public health issues in both the Immigration Department and Indian Affairs.

Regarding the health of the pupils, the report states that 24 per cent of all the pupils which had been in the schools were known to be dead, while of one school on the File Hills reserve, which gave a complete return to date, 75 per cent were dead at the end of the 16 years since the school opened.17

Pope Benedict XVI expressed his “sorrow” to an Assembly of First Nations delegation for the abuse and “deplorable” treatment that Indigenous students suffered at Roman Catholic Church–run residential schools.

what is known as the Sixties Scoop, babies and children were taken from their parents and placed in boarding schools or with Euro-Canadian families.

“Children continue to be apprehended at alarming rates under circumstances deemed to be ‘child neglect’ that are instead related to issues of poverty.”22 The Sixties Scoop continued until the 1980s.

The legacy of the residential school system continues to impact Indigenous people, families, and communities. On its doorstep we can lay the responsibility for the high poverty rates, the large number of Indigenous children in foster care, the disproportionate number of incarcerated I...

LATE 1880S TO EARLY 1960S It was through language that children received their cultural heritage from parents and community. It was the vital connection that civilizers knew had to be cut if progress was to be made. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 19963

However, when they crossed the threshold of these imposing buildings, all they knew, including their language, was forbidden. The educators were given the mandate that the children had to learn to read, write, understand, and speak English at all costs.

When children returned home for a visit or finished school, they frequently felt alien in their families because they had been taught that their language, culture, and traditions were evil.

Many generations suffered from the trauma of not being allowed to speak their Indigenous language and, as a result, many Indigenous languages today are in severe danger of disappearing.

In oral societies, when the words are gone, so are the histories, the value systems, the spiritual, ecological knowledge, the worldviews, the stories and the songs. It is an irreplaceable loss. The loss of a language severs the connection between a people and their culture.

Prior to World War I, Indians had few means of connecting with other communities so they had no idea if the conditions and treatment they were subjected to was standard practice or unique. Ironically, it was fighting in a war on a distant continent that brought them together.

Although Indians were exempt from conscription because they were not considered “citizens” of Canada and did not have the right to vote, an estimated 4,000 Indigenous people enlisted in World War I.

An additional motivation was the fear that if the Allies lost the war, the treaties held with the Crown would cease to exist.

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the League of Indians of Canada didn’t last very long. And given the generous attitudes and encouragements of the government, another Native political organization wouldn’t be attempted until after World War II.

Of course, Indian political organizations didn’t disappear just because the government didn’t like them. They went underground.

I don’t know if this is a true story, but I believe it. More than that, I like it. It makes us sound downright... subversive.10

This made it illegal for Indians to hire lawyers or raise money to hire legal counsel.

This amendment, coupled with it being illegal for Indians to form political organizations, created a very real barrier to Indians pursuing land claims and human rights actions.

The Indian Act also directed where Indians were allowed to seek amusement. By prohibiting Indians from going to pool rooms, the government was ensuring they did not amuse themselves in the same pursuits as non-Indians.

Indians were expected to spend the majority of their time engaged in industrious pursuits as opposed to leisure pursuits.

The Indian Act, 1985 continues a form of control in that the Governor General has the authority to make regulations regarding the operation, supervision, and control of pool rooms, dance halls, and other places of amusement on-reserve.14

Christian faith-based settlers and policy makers generally were dismissive of Indigenous spirituality and creation beliefs.

When these children returned home, they frequently felt disassociated from their family and culture after many years of being told that their former lives were invalid and their spirituality and beliefs were pagan and primitive.

Many generations of residential school survivors have struggled with the very real sense that they do not belong to either their community or the world beyond their community.

“And I looked at my dad, I looked at my mom, I looked at my dad again. You know what? I hated them. I just absolutely hated my own parents. Not because I thought they abandoned me; I hated their brown faces. I hated them because they were Indians.”3

The loss of culture and connection to the land experienced today by Indigenous people is considered a contributing factor to the high rate of suicide in Indigenous communities.

Métis people were not excluded from voting as few were covered by treaties and there was nothing to justify disqualifying them.

The fact that so many Indigenous people served with distinction in World War II was one of the reasons that the federal government concluded that the time had come for all Indigenous Peoples to have the full rights of citizenship after the war ended.

The horrors of World War II made Canadians aware of human rights and that there were people on their own soil—the very people who had contributed so much to the Allied victory—who were living in appalling conditions.

The tragic reality is that what should have been a positive and respectful code of conduct degenerated over time into one in which government policies led to cultural genocide, assimilation, theft of land, denial of treaty and constitutional rights, racism, and increasingly punitive laws meant to control every aspect of the lives and deaths of the original inhabitants of what is now Canadian territory.