With the first seven of the numbered treaties signed, and First Nations living on reserves, the government could now open up former First Nation territory to settlers. However, it still had a responsibility for the welfare of First Nations people and its aim now was to assimilate the Indigenous population which would eventually reduce government responsibility and cost. To do this, the government in 1876 brought in the Indian Act.
The Indian Act was an attempt to codify rights promised to Indigenous peoples in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 while at the same time enforcing Euro-Canadian standards of "civilization". The purpose of the act, as stated by its drafters, was to administer Indian affairs in such a way that Indian people would feel compelled to renounce their Indian status and join Canadian civilization as full members, a process called enfranchisement.
Indigenous
people with the franchise became official citizens of Canada, were allowed to
vote for representatives, were expected to pay taxes, and lived
"off-reserve". By contrast, groups of people who lived on a reserve
were subject to a different set of rights and obligations.
In other words, “enfranchisement” meant the relinquishing of Indian status to
become a Canadian citizen.
The Indian Act
under-mined Indigenous peoples’ identity, sovereignty, and nationhood.
Indigenous peoples were classified as Indians and were seen as children or
wards of the state with little autonomy or control of their own affairs, and were subject to a wide array of
regulations.
In order to
become a Canadian citizen bearing all rights and privileges, an Indian person
had to meet one of two sets of the criteria. Under the first set, one had to be
literate in English or French, be debt free, and have managed one’s land as
property (through farming) for at least three years. Never mind these criteria made
citizenship a lofty goal for most people who resided in Canada at the time.
Under the second
set, one could become a citizen upon entering a profession as a lawyer,
teacher, minister, or doctor. The enfranchisement program was unpopular, and
very few Indigenous people pursued it.
To further
assimilate the Indigenous populations, the Indian Act also abolished
traditional forms of governance and inserted laws that brought local government
under state control. Leadership roles of women, hereditary chiefs, and elders
were replaced with a patriarchal, male-only elective system, largely under the
control of the local Indian Agent. Leadership positions were simplified and
categorized into “chiefs” and “band councillors”.
All their activities were overseen and directed by the Crown, and leaders could be removed from their posts at any time, for any reason. Band government effectively lost all of their law-making capacity, and the Department of Indian Affairs eventually gained full control of Indian resources, land, and finances. The Indian Act also defined who was considered an Indian under the law.
It stated that an Indian was "any male person of Indian blood reputed to belong to a particular band." Indian status also applied to "any child of such person" and to "any woman who is or was lawfully married to such person." A person lost status if they graduated from university, or became a minister, doctor, or lawyer.
The provisions regarding a woman’s status were particularly extreme. Women with status lost their rights if they married a non-status person. A woman’s status rights flowed entirely through her husband. A non-status woman who married a man with status would gain status herself. A status woman who married a status man had her band membership tied to his so she was no longer a member of her own band, and she lost her status entirely if she was widowed or abandoned by her husband.
The assimilation goal of the Indian Act was to bring all people together under one form of law and one way of life. In 1884, the Indian Act was amended to ban ceremonies such as the Potlatch and the Sun Dance. The word potlatch itself means “to give” and a potlatch involves gift giving and feasting that can last for weeks. They are held at special occasions such as naming ceremonies, change of leadership, births, and deaths. The cultural event of the potlatch is significant in that it upholds the legal traditions of the Northwest Coastal people with the redistribution of wealth, refinement of oral histories, and affirmation of territorial boundaries. The more one would give, the more honour and respect one would earn.
Since these customs reject the Western value of private property ownership and individualism, potlatches were viewed as a major barrier to assimilation. Because Indigenous peoples relied heavily on oral history as a means of cultural preservation, banning of these celebrations also resulted in a major breakdown in the ability of older generations to share important stories about laws and traditions with younger generations.
Subsequent amendments required First Nations children to attend industrial or residential schools (1894 and 1920). In 1927, the Act made it illegal for First Nations peoples and communities to hire lawyers or bring about land claims against the government without the government’s consent. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Indian Act was used to support the illegal pass system (which restricted the movement of First Nations peoples off reserves) and the permit system which regulated the sale of goods off reserves.
It wasn’t until March 31 1960 the Canada Elections Act was
repealed in order to grant the federal vote to Status Indians and in 1985 the discriminatory rules around women’s status were removed.
Perhaps the most destructive of all
government Indian Act policies, with regards to Indigenous peoples, was the
setting up of the Residential School system. The Indian
residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. Attendance was
mandatory. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and
administered by Christian churches.
The school system was
created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own native culture and language in
order to assimilate them into the dominant
Canadian culture, and to “kill the Indian in the child”. Over the course
of the system's more than hundred-year existence, around 150,000 children were
placed in 130 residential schools nationally.
Under Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, the government adopted the residential industrial school
system of the United States, a partnership between the government and various
church organizations. An amendment to the Indian Act in 1894, under Prime
Minister Mackenzie Bowell, made attendance at day schools, industrial schools, or residential schools compulsory for all First Nations
children. Due to the remote nature of many communities and lack of schools, residential
schools were the only way for many families to comply and children were often
forcibly removed from their homes by the R.C.M.P.
The schools were intentionally located at substantial distances from Indigenous communities to minimize contact between families and their children. Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed argued for schools at greater distances to reduce family visits, which he thought counteracted efforts to assimilate Indigenous children. Parental visits were further restricted by the use of a pass system designed to confine Indigenous peoples to reserves.
The residential school system harmed Indigenous children significantly by removing them from their families, depriving them of their ancestral languages, and exposing many of them to physical and sexual abuse. Disconnected from their families and culture and forced to speak English or French, students who attended the residential school system often graduated being unable to fit into their communities but remaining subject to racist attitudes in mainstream Canadian society.
Students in the
residential school system were faced with a multitude of abuses by teachers and
administrators, including sexual and physical assault. They suffered from
malnourishment and harsh discipline that would not have been tolerated in any
other Canadian school system. Corporal punishment was often justified by a belief that it was
the only way to save souls or punish and deter runaways, whose injuries or
death sustained in their efforts to return home would become the legal
responsibility of the school.
Overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate heating, and a lack of medical care led to high rates of influenza and tuberculosis. Federal policies that tied funding to enrollment numbers led to sick children being enrolled to boost numbers, thus introducing and spreading disease. The problem of unhealthy children was further exacerbated by the conditions of the schools themselves with overcrowding, poor ventilation, poor water quality and inadequate sewage systems.
Until the late
1950s, when the federal government shifted to a day school integration model,
residential schools were severely underfunded and often relied on the forced labour of
their students to maintain their facilities, although it was presented as
training for artisanal skills.
The work was arduous, and severely compromised the academic and social
development of the students. During this period, Canadian government scientists
also performed nutritional tests on students and kept some students
undernourished as the control sample.
The system ultimately proved successful in disrupting the transmission of Indigenous practices and beliefs across generations. The legacy of the system has been linked to an increased prevalence of post-traumatic stress, alcoholism, substance abuse, suicide, and intergenerational trauma which persists within Indigenous communities to this day. It was bad enough the federal government was racist and completely distorted its fiduciary responsibilities, but that the various Christian churches would be complicit in such a gross violation of their core beliefs simply illustrates the hypocrisy of organized religion.