The first day of July each year is observed as Canada Day, to commemorate the coming into effect on this day in 1867 of the British North America Act. Under this Act of Confederation, Britain’s three North American colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada united to form the self-governing Dominion of Canada, while still remaining part of the British Empire. This year’s celebrations were deliberately low-key, partly because of the ongoing pandemic, and also in response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s call to treat the day as ‘a time for reflection’. Celebratory events such as parades, outdoor concerts, parties, firework displays, air and maritime shows, sporting events, and historical re-enactments were either cancelled, conducted virtually, or scaled back. In their place, there were marches, rallies and vigils, frequently involving orange-shirted protestors, alongside attacks on statues and other commemorative features of Canada’s troubled past .
Recent discoveries, using ground-penetrating radar, of over a thousand mass unmarked graves of Indigenous children, on or near the grounds of Indian Residential Schools, have yet again focused attention on Canada’s discredited residential school system, one of many issues troubling its Aboriginal peoples. The First Nations, once commonly known as “Indians”, are the largest of the three major groupings of Canada’s Aboriginals, the others being the Inuit and the Métis (of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry). The First Nations currently number over a million and are grouped into 634 recognised communities or Bands.
The two key themes of “assimilation” into mainstream society and “civilisation” defined Canadian policies towards Indian peoples, now more appropriately known as the First Nations in recognition of their territorial sovereignty. The infamous residential schools were set up with a view to assimilate Indigenous children and turn them into subservient members of a Euro-centric society. These unfortunates were forcibly removed from their families, to be instructed in the same curriculum as other Canadian children, although to a lower standard. They were forced to abandon their native language, mode of dress, religion, and cultural heritage, made to undertake maintenance work, and subjected to unrelenting psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. More than 150,000 Indigenous children were thus “educated” on the cheap between 1857 and 1996, in a network of 132 mandatory residential schools across Canada. The living conditions were cramped and insanitary, and widespread mistreatment and ill health led to many untimely deaths. Some earlier residential schools were industrial schools, designed to teach children a useful trade. From 1892 onwards, residential schools were established by Christian churches of different denominations, especially the Catholic Church, in partnership with the federal government. The last residential school, in Saskatchewan, only closed in 1996. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, set up in 1991, documented the negative impact of this system of schooling on the children, their families, and communities in its report in 1996. In 2007, the federal government eventually announced a compensation package for residential school survivors in the form of the Common Experience Package. Prime Minister Stephen Harper then issued the first public apology on behalf of the federal government on 11 June 2008 in the House of Commons.
The official dispossession of Indian lands began with the Crown Lands Protection Act of 1839, by which they were classified as Crown lands. The Gradual Civilisation Act of 1857, however, provided “Civilized” Indigenous people incentives in the form of 50-acre land grants. A key objective of the National Policy, introduced by Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, in 1879, was population growth in Western Canada-to be achieved by the enticement of European migrants. A precedent had already been set when Homesteaders were promised 40-acre plots of free land under the Dominion Lands Act of 1871. Meanwhile, the government continued to acquire other Indian lands through a series of unequal treaties, while confining their occupants to specially designated reserves. Today’s First Nations reserves are often short on basic amenities such as clean water, gas and electricity. The housing is frequently of poor quality, provisions for education and healthcare are limited, and employment opportunities lacking.
The Indian Act 1876 was the first overarching attempt at legally defining and regulating Canada’s Indigenous people. All existing legislation was consolidated into the Act, which created a new political system of Band Councils to replace traditional structures of village organisation. The Act was amended on numerous occasions, almost yearly between 1876 and 1927, mainly to speed up the assimilation and civilisation of so-called “Status Indians”.
Indigenous grievances in Canada arise from many sources. They relate not only to historical injustices but also reflect current disadvantages. A recent reawakening of Indigenous people has manifested itself in such initiatives as the grassroots Idle No More movement, the independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission (which declared a “cultural genocide” in 2015), and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Canada’s current image as a progressive, tolerant, and multicultural nation has been dented by recent revelations of mistreatment of its Aboriginal peoples, although in all fairness some of the blame must also fall on the preceding British Empire, with the earliest government-sponsored residential school dating back to 1831. While some important positive steps have been taken, more work needs to be done to help Canada’s dispossessed Aboriginal citizens reclaim their lost lands and Indigenous names, advance themselves economically, and to receive adequate recompense for past state-inflicted injustices. Given the observed trajectory of human history, this would appear to be a tall order but not altogether beyond the realms of possibility.
Ashis Banerjee.