Aboriginal Peoples in Canada

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Aboriginal Peoples in Canada

• Pre-Columbus and Post John Wayne

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• The people lived in peace and harmony without
  judging each other and in the spirit of
  non-interference.

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Disruption of Our Peace

• False assumptions
• The first held Aboriginal peoples to be
  inherently inferior and incapable of governing
  themselves.
• The second was that treaties and other agreements
  were, by and large, not covenants of trust and
  obligation but devices of statecraft, less
  expensive and more acceptable than armed
  conflict. Treaties were seen as a form of
  bureaucratic memorandum of understanding, to be
  acknowledged formally but ignored frequently.

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Continued

• The third false assumption was that wardship was
  appropriate for Aboriginal peoples, so that
  actions deemed to be for their benefit could be
  taken without their consent or their involvement
  in design or implementation
• The fourth was that concepts of development,
  whether for the individual or the community,
  could be defined by non-Aboriginal values alone.
  This assumption held whether progress was seen as
  Aboriginal peoples being civilized or assimilated
  or, in later times, as resource development and
  environmental exploitation.

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1340s

• Norsemen from Iceland and Greenland are believed
  to have voyaged to what is now called
  Newfoundland.
• There is archeological evidence of a settlement
  at LAnse aux Meadows on the northern peninsula
  of Newfoundland.
• It is believed that the settlement was abandoned
  after conflict with the Beothuk

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1453

• Constantinople falls to the Turks and the
  Europeans no longer have land access to the
  Orient. They search for another passage West

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1497

• John Cabot set into a bay and named the area
  Terra Nova or New Found Land

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1615

• Three Recollet Friars were brought over for
  missionary work. A Friar, Gabriel Sagard writes
  The boys and young men of Canada and those
  particularly from the land of the Huron, have
  always had the capability of turning to evil as
  soon as they could, and the young to prostitution
  as soon as they were able to even mothers and
  fathers often act as pimps to their own
  daughters. One can attribute this partly due to
  their nudity, and partly due to the lack of
  spices and wine, and another part to their use of
  tobacco, the smoke of which stupifies them and
  goes straight to the brain.

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1703

• A missionary observed Among the Illinise there
  are several Hermaphrodites who go in a Womans
  habit, but frequent the company of both sexes.
  These Illinise are strongly given to sodomy.

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1781

• Smallpox epidemic in northern regions of North
  America kill countless Aboriginal peoples and
  leave them vulnerable to missionaries and
  trappers for survival. It is estimated that 90
  of the original population of the continent died
  from diseases that Europeans brought with them.

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1800

• Chronicle Sodomy is a crime not uncommonly
  committed many of the subjects of it are
  publicly known, and do not appear to be despised,
  or to excite disgust one of them was pointed out
  to us he had submitted himself to it, in
  consequence of a vow he had made to his mystic
  medicine, which obliged him to change his dress
  for that of a squaw, to do their work, and to
  permit his hair to grow.

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1829

• The Beothuk were the original inhabitants of
  Newfoundland when European settlers first
  arrived. The total Beothuk population at any one
  time is thought by present day archaeologists to
  have numbered between 500 and 1000 individuals.
  Following contact with the Europeans, disease,
  malnutrition, conflict with settlers and
  disruption of traditional Beothuk fishing sites
  by settlers resulted in the extinction of the
  Beothuk people by 1829.

15
1867

• The British Parliament passes the British North
  America Act. Aboriginal peoples become wards of
  the Crown.
• And whereas it is just and reasonable, and
  essential to Our Interest and the Security of
  Our Colonies, that the several Nations or Tribes
  of Indians, with whom We are connected, and who
  live under Our Protection, should not be molested
  or disturbed in the Possession of such parts of
  Our Dominions and Territories as, not having been
  ceded to, or purchased by Us, are reserved to
  them, or any of them, as their hunting grounds

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1876

• The Indian Act was passed, detailing the Canadian
  governments system for controlling and
  assimilating Indians.

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1884

• Bowing to pressure from churches, Ottawa passes
  an amendment to the Indian Act making attendance
  for Aboriginal children aged 7-15 years mandatory
  at the schools.

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Disruption of our peace (contd)

• In 1879, Sir John A. MacDonalds government
  created church run boarding (residential) schools
  to assimilate Aboriginal children into white
  culture.

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Non- Aboriginal values were thought of as
superior to Aboriginal values
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Male Role as prescribed by the Church
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Female Role as prescribed by the Church
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1907

• The Montreal Star reports that 42 of children
  attending residential schools die before the age
  of 16 and calls the situation a national disgrace.

26
1921

• Duncan Campbell Scott, the Deputy Superintendent
  General of the Department of Indian Affairs,
  writes to the Indian Agent in Brocket, Alberta
  urging him to dissuade Indians from dancing.

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1942

• The Canadian government invokes the War Measures
  Act and removes the Stoney Point people to nearby
  Kettle Point to create a military base.

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1943

• R. Hoey, the DIA superintendent of welfare and
  training, on receiving from the principal of St.
  Georges school (located on the Fraser River just
  north of Lyttons, BC) a set of shackles that had
  been used routinely to chain runaways to the
  bed and reports other abuses at school, wrote,
  I can understand how why there appears to be
  such a widespread prejudice on the part of the
  Indians against residential schools. Such
  memories do not fade out of the human
  consciousness very rapidly.

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1960s

• Thousands of Aboriginal children were taken out
  of their homes, families, communities and
  cultures and raised in non-Aboriginal middle
  class homes. Many wound up in the United States
  and some as far away as Europe.

30
1960

• Indians finally receive the right to vote in
  Canada. They first get to exercise this right in
  1962.

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Disruption of our peace has resulted in a painful
legacy

• High rates of disease including , but not limited
  to, HIV/AIDS, Diabetes, TB etc. (one Aboriginal
  person per day is infected by HIV)
• While Aboriginal people make up 2.8 of the
  Canadian population they represent 18 of the
  federally incarcerated population
• Aboriginal people make up a large percentage of
  street involved people and those involved in the
  sex trade
• Aboriginal women and children suffer from
  emotional, sexual and physical abuse at alarming
  rates
• The life expectancy of Aboriginal people is less
  than the Canadian public.

32
1969

• The Canadian government released its White Paper
  on Indian Policy, calling for the complete
  assimilation of Indians into Canadian society by
  eliminating our special status. The National
  Indian Brotherhood which was formed in 1968,
  successfully lobbied Parliament and the public to
  defeat the White Paper.

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1985

• Bill C-31 is passed into law in Canada

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1989

• Anishnawbe Health of Toronto started their Street
  Patrol which uses vans to do outreach on the
  streets of Toronto.

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1990

• The Oka Crisis The Kanesatake Mohawks take a
  stand after 270 years of land encroachment by
  governmental, religious and secular
  non-Aboriginal people.

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1993

• By 1993, 465 people are employed to deliver
  programs created by the National Native Alcohol
  and Drug Abuse Program (which was established in
  the mid-70s). To date, the program has funded
  some 400 community-based alcohol and drug
  treatment projects and 51 Aboriginal treatment
  centres across Canada.

38
1995

• Dudley George was shot by police on the night of
  September 6, 1995 when more than forty OPP
  officers equipped with riot gear attacked a group
  of unarmed Aboriginal people occupying Ipperwash
  Provincial Park. After police withdrew without
  providing medical assistance to George. His
  family rushed him to the hospital themselves. He
  died that night.
• The group was protesting the failure of the
  federal government to return land adjacent to the
  park that had been temporarily expropriated
  more than 50 years earlier.

39
1998

• The Aboriginal Healing Foundation was created to
  promote healing from residential school trauma
  following discussions with residential school
  survivors.
• Through the AHF it comes to light that the secret
  of sexual abuse has occurred to two generations
  of men in one Southern Ontario Aboriginal
  community. One priest was responsible for this
  assault on an entire community.

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2000

• The Assembly of First Nations reports that there
  is no recent information on suicide rates of
  First Nations people at the national level. Most
  recently published data for the period of 1979
  1993 shows that suicide rates among First Nations
  men are 2.6 times higher than for Canadian men in
  general and 4 times higher than average for First
  Nations women. First Nations youth aged 15-24
  were 4 to 8 times higher than the national
  average.

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2002

• It is estimated that one person of First Nations,
  Metis or Inuit descent is infected with HIV every
  day in Canada.
• Aboriginal women represent almost 50 of the
  Aboriginal HIV epidemic.

42
2004

• The new Liberal government in Ontario agrees to
  launch an inquiry into Dudley Georges death in
  1995. The George family drops its lawsuit on the
  strength of this promise.

43
2006

• Former Premier Mike Harris appears before the
  Inquiry into Dudley Georges death and lies about
  his involvement in the decisions leading up to
  the fatal shooting.
• Everybody knows
• John Wayne is formally acknowledged as a fraud