The United States’ shameful treatment of Native Americans as the U.S. expanded westward is well known. Did similar abuses occur in Canada?
Non-Canadian checking in, here. You may want to read this page, which eventually wanders into a discussion of Canadian expansion into the West. However, I must warn you that Dick Shovel’s website is highly opinionated and I have uncovered errors in the past in some of his posted papers.
As an American involved in American Indian Affairs, my general impression is that Canada’s vast open spaces and comparatively small population allowed the First Nations to survive the colonization and expansion experience with more political autonomy and less reprehensible treatment (notice I say only less).
However, non-native expansion into the most desireable areas of Canada seems to have been just as inexorable and complete as that of the United States. A few years ago, when I was vacationing in Victoria, Canada, I shared a hotel with a tribe, the name of which I unfortunately cannot recall. They were there to perform a ceremonial service on their sacred land, which just happened to be the grounds of the hotel itself. According to the people to whom I spoke, the land had been boosted from the tribe sometime in the 1800s, and they now live some distance away. Canadian politeness being legendary, they are now permitted to come by yearly and perform their (extremely loud!) services right there in the main lobby, but I don’t think anyone is considering handing the hotel over to the tribe.
Canada has plenty of blemishes on its record when it comes to Aboriginals, but most occurred long after colonization- residential schools, coerced sterilisation, ignoring legal rights.
The Canadian treatment of the Northwest Coast cultures was particular unfortunate. Most of the NW Coast peoples practiced some form of Potlatch. This is a very complicated ceremony which I’m not particularly qualified to explain, but it involved saving up for long periods of time in order to give away enormous quantities of goods, as well as songs, dances, and secret society memberships that were owned and had to be passed on to heirs. To the missionaries, this looked very unthrifty and prevented the people from learning to practice proper protestant virtues like hard steady work, self-sufficiency, etc. So the potlatches were outlawed. Anyone giving one or attending one was arrested, and many of the beautiful and extremely valuable ceremonial masks and carvings were confiscated.
Some peoples, especially the Kwakiutl, continued holding potlatches in secret, using all sorts of clever disguises (church meetings, birthday parties, etc.) to disguise what they were doing, but inevitably a lot of the cultural knowledge was lost. If people had owned dances and songs that they hadn’t been able to pass on to their heirs, these were forgotten. Especially a lot of the artistic knowledge about the symbolism of the carvings was almost lost.
Potlatches were only made legal in the 1950s. Now they are held fairly frequently, and the government has returned some of the artwork it took. It’s remarkable how much of the culture survived underground, but it sure wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of the Canadian government. (The U.S. government outlawed potlatches too, but they weren’t as big a deal here.)
What I have seen in Southern Canada varies greatly from that which I have seen in the North. In the North, people are people, no matter what the colour. In the South, Natives (as we refer to them) are treated like a less-than-human minority. I grew up in Southern Alberta, between two Cree reservations - Peigan and Blackfoot. I was surrounded by Native culture as a child, and was also very aware of how the people were mistreated.
When I was older and had occasion to move to the Nortwest Territories, I noticed that it was very different. The Inuit and Native population of the NWT are treated the same as anyone would expect people to be treated.
I spent a year in Ontario, living in Kingston. I don’t believe I saw even one native person the entire time I was there. I understand that the native population of the area did not survive colonization by the British. Last I heard, there were no longer Natives in Newfoundland, either.
As was mentioned by Cat Fight, our Aboriginal people have been subjected to worse abuses since treaties were signed. Currently in the North, they are dealing with residential school abuses. A friend of mine from Grise Fjord tells me of her mother’s mother being sent to a sanitorium in the south (Ontario) for tuberculosis, and never coming home - in addition to that, her remains were lost. Adeline’s mother received a large settlement from the Government of Canada for that.
She can’t visit her mother’s grave, but she can vacation in Hawaii for six months at a time.
Just a small correction Ginger, but those weren’t Cree reservations, they are Blackfoot. Blackfoot in this case referring to both a specific tribe ( the Siksika proper ) and a larger confederation of related tribes ( also referred to as Siksika ), that includes the Piegans and Kainah ( Blood ). It was/is a largish group of closely associated Algonquian-speaking tribes that straddled the U.S./Canada border. They have bothe the above-mentioned reservations in Canada and one across the border in Montana ( actually southern Piegans, I think , but again they are refered to as Blackfoots ).
The Cree are a completely separate and wide-ranging people, though distantly related ( they also speak an Algonquian tongue ). Perhaps some were settled in those nominally Blackfoot reservations?
- Tamerlane
I was incorrect in labelling the Peigans and Bloods as Cree. It has been many years since I’ve lived there. There are, however, Cree-French Metis in northern Alberta and in Southern NWT. At least, according to the Mandevilles, Cardinals, and Mercredis - people I am related to through marriage.
Newfoundland and Labrador is a big province, Ginger. I know you’re thinking of the Beothuk, who are extinct, but there are [Innu, Inuit, Mi’kmaq and Metis in the province.
[url=http://members.aol.com/lredtail/candian.html] This page](http://www.mun.ca/rels/native/) addresses the OP somewhat: