I was reading about the “Indian Wars” in the US and it mentioned that bands of Plains Indians were sometimes chased north across the border into Canada. That brings up a few questions in my mind:
Were the US Army troops authorized to follow the Native Americans into Canada in a effort to capture and transport them to the reservations?
Were the Canadians in the area generally tolerant of the Native Americans or were there similar reservations in Canada to the ones in the US?
Did large groups of Native Americans setttle in Canada (or Mexico) as a result of the harrassment in the US?
When were Native Americans officially given the right to vote in the US or Canada?
Do Native Americans pay federal or state income taxes?
Hard to answer all of your questions regarding Canadian aboriginals succinctly, but here is a quick backgrounder on the current definitions of aboriginals in Canada. I doubt American troops would have been allowed to cross into Canada to capture Native Americans. They may have done so, but it probably wasn’t legal. I don’t know how the American Indian Wars affected Native American immigration into Canada.
Canada has “reserves” not “reservations”. I don’t know how they differ from the U.S. reservations as far as administration and intended purpose, but I do know that the development and history of the reserves is very different. First Nation reserves in Canada are technically federally controlled lands. The legal title of the land belongs to the Queen, but the land is set aside for the benefit of aboriginal communities. Land treaty rights get far more complicated though.
In Canada, aboriginal peoples were given the right to vote in federal elections as late as 1960.
As for taxes, in Canada aboriginals pay taxes as other Canadians do, but there are exemptions under the Indian Act. Métis and Inuit are generally not eligible for most of the exemptions (if any) as they are generally for Status Indians (see CBC link).
To make a long story short, yes, the tribes that signed treaties with the Canadian government would have land reserved for their use. However, they also had (and still have) the right to hunt and fish on the rest of the land they ceded to the government, assuming it wasn’t being used for settlement or development.
Several plains tribes had territory spread across the border, and their understanding and recognition of the legitimacy of that border may not have been great. Blackfoot, Blood, Peigan all had territory on both sides of the border. I think they were all part of the greater Sioux nation. There was also migrations spurred by European colonization; Cree moved west for instance, displacing Blackfoot and others. There is still cultural animosity between Blackfoot and Cree. European settlement of western Canada lagged that of the western US somewhat and there is not a lot known about earlier migrations.
Sitting Bull led his people into Saskatchewan for a few years after Little Bighorn.
Not just Native Americans were crossing the border either, American whiskey traders were crossing the border to ply their wares, and this resulted in chaos and tragedy. The Cypress Hills Massacre was the impetus for the formation of the North West Mounted Police to bring order to the situation and assert Canadian sovereignty . The NWMP became the main liaison with the Native Americans in western Canada and were central in the treaty negotiations and their eventual settlement onto the reserves. It is a sad story.
On checking, it is the Nakoda that are related to the Sioux. They also originally had territory on both sides of the border. The Blackfoot, Blood and Peigan were enemies of the Sioux.
Actually the Blackfoot are their own people, the Blackfoot Nation consists of the Peigan, Blood, Siksika, and Blackfeet (USA).
Many plains tribes had land that spanned the border.
US troops were not given the right to invade our borders, and the best they could do is to petition Canada to apprehend and deliver the person to them, which for example in the case of Sitting Bull, they did not do so. Sitting Bull only left Canada due to famine.
Although Canada was not nearly as aggressive in its persecution of Natives, Canada not a utopia. Residential Schools, erosion of culture, and reserves that were a minute part of the land tribes once roamed were only part of the crimes here.
The tax exemptions are rather convoluted. For example, income made on reserve is not taxable but if you get a city job it is taxed. Sales tax on many things is not charged in reserve stores and if a status Indian is buying a car, they’d be tax exempt - but on every day purchases, not so much.
The distinction between ‘reservation’ and ‘reserve’ is not a major one in practice, but it is based in a rather significant difference in the underlying political theory, which might be worth looking at.
If you or I own a house, our ownership is in ‘fee simple’. In Britain or the Commonwealth, that is a holdover from feudal terminology; it means that Her Majesty is pleased to allow us complete and free use of our lands, subject to any limitations from zoning and public nuisance statutes, and the payment of property taxes. In the U.S. “Her Majesty” is replaced by the corporate “We the People” in a federal system, with some sovereignty ceded to the Federal government and some retained by the states. If you rent, the fee simple is held by your landlord and you hold from him by leasehold.
This is true for all of Canada, for the Eastern U.S. and the Old Northwest and Old Southwest; Louisiana Purchase areas derive from the French Imperium ceding land to the U.S., and California/Mexican Cession/Gadsden Purchase from Mexico winning independence from Spain and then ceding lands to the U.S. Similar discussions apply to Oregon Territory lands, Alaska, and Hawaii.
Now, all that presupposes a bunch of Euroipean monarchs being the ultimate original landowners of North America – and its aboriginal inhabitants had differing opinions. Indian Reservations in the U.S. are just that – reservations, lands reserved by Native American nations when they ceded other tribal lands to the U.S. We no more gave the Navajo nation its reservation than we gave Great Britain New Brunswick – we agreed by treaty what would be X’s and what ours. The various Indian nations agreed, as a part of those treaties, to adhere to some U.S. laws in exchange for U.S. respect for their territorial integrity and autonomy, much as the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas and the Republic of Belau did.
Canada’s reserves are a different story. Her Majesty the Queen of Canada is pleased to reserve certain of her lands for the exclusive use of the First Nations, to be run in large part under tribal governments. But they remain a part of her realm of Canada.
Being from the US, I can honestly say I have never heard the terms “Her Majesty the Queen of Canada” or “realm of Canada” before. Most Americans, like me, are woefully ignorant of how Canada came to be and how different it is from the United States. I guess I have a lot of reading to do…
> 4) When were Native Americans officially given the right to vote in the US or
> Canada?
I’ll let someone else speak to these matters in Canada, but in the U.S. all Native Americans were declared to be American citizens in 1924. The 1965 Voting Rights Act made it clear that this meant that they could not be denied the right to vote.
> 5) Do Native Americans pay federal or state income taxes?
Native Americans pay federal income taxes like everybody else. If they live on a reservation, they don’t have to pay state income taxes.
If you’re really interested in learning about this, read these webpages:
Do note, however, that in recent years there has been interest among some native groups in changing this situation, converting the land of reserves to some form of fee simple ownership. The argument is that this would be a boon to economic development, since fee-simple property ownership is what’s expected in the rest of the Canadian economy. However, this makes some people uneasy that the land would end up in the hands of a small number of private owners rather than being collectively “owned.” Here’s an op-ed on the subject (the pro-fee-simple side) from earlier this year.