Indigenous Canada is a 12-lesson Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that explores Indigenous histories and contemporary issues in Canada. From an Indigenous perspective, this course explores key issues facing Indigenous peoples today from a historical and critical perspective highlighting national and local Indigenous-settler relations. Topics for the 12 lessons include the fur trade and other exchange relationships, land claims and environmental impacts, legal systems and rights, political conflicts and alliances, Indigenous political activism, and contemporary Indigenous life, art and its expressions.
Outside Influences Part 2
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From the course by University of Alberta
Indigenous Canada
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From the lesson
New Rules, New Game
This lesson begins with a discussion about what is distinctive in Indigenous legal traditions. Explores impacts of policies put in place as British North America attempted to solidify itself geographically and socially. Examines the ways in which the Indian Act contributed to assimilation.
Meet the Instructors
Dr. Tracy BearAssistant Professor
Faculty of Native Studies & Dept. of Women's and Gender Studies
Dr. Paul GareauAssistant Professor
Faculty of Native Studies
[MUSIC]
James Douglas, appointed as the Hudson's Bay Company's
Chief Factor in 1851, enacted several land title policies.
They were based on the same agreements made in New Zealand with
the Māori in 1840.
It's worth nothing that the Māori and
the British had two very different interpretations of these agreements.
To the British this meant while Indigenous people had a right of occupancy,
they did not have title to the land.
Only groups with a settled form of government by colonial standards and
existing as farmers cultivating the land could hold title.
So, if Indigenous people wanted land titles, they had to
abandon their hunting lifestyle and embrace one of agriculture.
You will recall that the British regarded the Indigenous population
as having an uncivilized lifestyle because they were not settled farmers.
Some groups, like the Métis who were particularly well organized,
embraced farming lifestyles when subsistence hunting became more and
more difficult.
They did not entirely abandon their hunting lifestyle, instead,
they diversified their economic ventures to increase their chances of survival.
Under legal terms and policies meant to attract immigrants, and thereby
consolidate Britain's territorial claims,
settlers flooded into Canada over the course of the 19th century.
Indigenous peoples witnessed the collapse of their economies
due to resource depletion and the settler occupation of their territorial lands.
As discussed in our chapters on treaties,
many Indigenous leaders entered into Numbered Treaties with the state.
They hoped to protect the future for themselves, and
their children, in a rapidly changing world.
In 1876, the Indian Act formally combined new and
old legislative provisions that aimed to assimilate the Indigenous population.
The Indian Act undermined Indigenous peoples’ identity,
sovereignty and nationhood.
Indigenous people were classified as Indians and were seen as children or
wards of the state.
Indian Act Indians had little autonomy or control and
were subject to an array of regulations.
One of the most significant parts of the act exist within the rules of citizenship.
Enfranchisement meant relinquishing Indian status to become a Canadian citizen.
Theoretically, enfranchisement would reduce the population of Indians,
thereby reducing government responsibility and costs.
In order to become a Canadian citizen bearing all rights and
privileges, an Indian person have to meet one of two sets of criteria.
Under the first set, one have to be literate in English or
French, be debt free, and
have manage one's land as property through farming for at least three (3) years.
This criteria made citizenship a lofty goal for
most people who resided in Canada.
Under the second set, one could become a citizen upon entering a profession
as a lawyer, teacher, minister, or doctor.
An enfranchisement program was unpopular, and very few Indigenous people pursued it.
The enfranchisement policy continued to change over time and
was finally removed from the Indian Act in 1985.
To further assimilate the Indigenous populations,
the Indian Act abolished traditional forms of governance and
inserted laws that brought local government under state control.
Leadership rules 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 lawmaking capacity, and
the Department of Indian Affairs eventually gained
full control of Indian resources, land, and finances.
The assimilatory 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.
The word potlatch itself means to give.
Popular with Coast Salish peoples, it involves gift giving and feasting, and
can last for weeks.
They're held at occasions such as naming ceremonies,
change of leadership, births, and deaths.
The cultural events of the potlatch is significant in that it
upholds legal traditions of the Coast Salish with a redistribution of wealth,
refinement of oral histories, and affirmation of territorial boundaries.
The respect that families would earn by hosting a potlatch would
be directly related to their generosity of gift giving and great feasting.
The more one would give, the more honour and respect one would earn.
Since these events reject the Western value of private property ownership and
individualism, potlatches were reviewed as a major barrier to assimilation.
Remember that Indigenous peoples relied heavily on oral history as a means of
cultural preservation.
The banning of these celebrations also resulted in a major breakdown of
the ability of older generations to share important stories about laws and
traditions with younger generations.
[MUSIC]
This provision of the Indian Act was in place for close to 75 years
and what that did was it prevented the passing down of our oral history.
It prevented the passing down of our values.
It meant an interruption of the respected forms of government that we used to have,
and we did have forms of government be they oral and
not in writing before any of the Europeans came to this country.
We had a system that worked for us.
We respected each other.
We had ways of dealing with disputes.
[MUSIC]
The potlatch continued to be held in secret despite the risk and
terrible consequence.
If caught holding a potlatch, Indigenous people faced imprisonment, and
their sacred ceremonial items such as masks, bentwood boxes, and
totem poles could be confiscated and sold.
Finally, in 1951, this section of the Indian Act was dropped,
as well as Section 141, which effectively denied legal counsel to Indians and
Indian bands for the purposes of making claims on the government.
These changes were made as result of a reconsideration of the treatment
of Indigenous people of Canada in the aftermath of World War II.
However, it was not until 1996 that another assimilatory tool
of the Indian Act, the residential school system, came to an end.
For over one hundred years it attempted to erase any sense
of cultural identity held by Indigenous children.
[MUSIC]
>> I receive a lot of e-mails, letters, and
I get a lot of questions when I give lectures.
I give lectures all over the United States, Canada, and
increasingly in Europe about DNA testing and Native American identity and history.
And it is very common for me to get especially e-mails and
questions at lectures where people are saying, “I have a
Great-great grandmother.”
It's often a women that they claim in their history.
Often in the United States, they'll say that they're Cherokee.
That will probably be different in Canada.
And they're wondering about which company they can go to for
which kind of DNA test to prove that they have Native American ancestry.
And it's really interesting to learn about the science and
then to hear all of these stories,
I've probably, by this point,
had hundreds of people ask me this very similar type of question
and I will give them advice because I feel like that's the right thing to do and
I'll send them to professional genealogists,
I'll tell them which listserv to go to to find out which companies offer which
kinds of tests.
And it depends on which ancestor your claiming on whether it's your maternal or
paternal line etc., as to which kind of test you would take.
But one of the interesting things to me is that among non-Indigenous people or
previously identified, you know, self- identified non-Indigenous people, they have
this idea that's very pervasive, that it's about individual ancestry.
And if they just find an ancestor that they can prove genetically,
they can make some kind of truthful claim to being Indigenous or
being a member of a particular tribe.
Number one, that tells me they have no understanding of the politics of
tribal membership and enrolment and it's very complicated.
We who grow up around these communities and have family members who are both
members or not members understand how complicated this is,
and the long difficult history of our colonial relationships with
the federal governments.
They don't have any clue about that.
In their minds, being Native American or
being First Nations is about claiming an ancestor.
It's about genetics.
It's only about ancestry.
They don't deal with it's political entities.
They view us in terms of race and ethnicity as far as I can tell,
and they think that they can realize a new racial or
ethnic identity by taking a DNA test.
And this, it's not that biological ancestry doesn't matter in our community.
Right? It's not that we don't have children
who then we then claim and raise as our own,
who are our biological offspring, and we care about our biological ancestors; but,
that's not the total definition of what it is to be a member of our community, right?
And so we care very much about being socially entangled with communities,
and about, you know, you want to be claimed by your community.
You don't just have the right as an individual to go claim to be a member of
a community that does not know you, within which you have not be socialized and
that does not claim you.
Then the question comes up by a lot of people who are trying to make the claims
to ancestry.
Well, it wasn't okay to be Native American back in the 19th century.
We passed as white in the United States.
Sometimes people say that they were forced to identify as African American.
And they couldn't identify as Native American because of the way that
race works down there.
So I get a lot of people who say, well, I didn't have a choice or
my ancestors didn't have a choice.
That's sad, that's a sad part of history.
But it doesn't mean you as an individual 850 years later have an absolute right,
to complain to be a member of a community that has not claimed you.
And so I worry about that and I worry about these DNA testing companies and
these scientists who have all of the power of gene talk on their side.
Gene talk is incredibly, culturally powerful in these two nations.
I worry that they will have too much cultural power and
say over how Indigenous identity is defined.
And so this is why I think it's really important for
Indigenous communities to get a handle on the science and
to be speaking out publicly about how we are doing membership and belonging,
in ways that are a little bit more complicated than a DNA test can reveal.
[MUSIC]
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