Justin Trudeau once said that Canada is “without some of the baggage that so many other Western countries have — either colonial pasts or perceptions of American imperialism.” July 1 is Canada Day, which in popular mythology celebrates a democratic nation that emerged through friendly Mounties, mutual trade and peaceful negotiation with Indigenous peoples, and the nation-building triumph of the Canadian Pacific Railway. But as Métis scholar and activist Howard Adams wrote, “Canada probably had better public relations affairs than the other colonies. This is why Canada’s history suffers from the greatest distortions and falsehoods of imperial nations.” In 1975, in the wake of the Red Power movement, he published Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View, exposing the colonial and capitalist history of the Canadian state. Below is an excerpt from the chapter “The Subjugation of the Indians and the Métis”.
In order to build the railroad across the prairies, Ottawa had to control land that belonged to natives. As long as the plains Indians remained strong, and capable of defending their rights and their lands, they presented, together with the Métis, a formidable opposition to the imperialist dreams of Ottawa and London. But the strength of the Métis and the Indians depended on an abundant supply of food on the prairies, and it was the buffalo that provided most of the people’s needs. The skins were used for clothing, teepees, and bedding; cooking utensils and sleds were made from the bones. Very little of the animal was wasted. Of greatest importance, however, was the meat, which was the main source of native food. Since native people had based their economy on the buffalo hunt, as long as the buffalo was plentiful there was little reason for concern. But by the 1870s over hunting had so reduced the buffalo herds around Red River that the hunters were going as far as the Cypress Hills region of Southern Saskatchewan for the pemmican on which the fur traders, as well as the hunters, depended.
It is well known that the United States, its army and its government deliberately exterminated the buffalo in order to exterminate the Indians who lived on it. This may have been one of the reasons why many Canadian herds migrated to the grazing lands south of the border. However, the Canadian government was following a policy similar to that of the American government, but with less violence and devastation. It is possible that the mounted Police were herding the buffalo across the international boundary where they knew the buffalo would be slaughtered. Certainly the increasing export of buffalo hides to the northern United States accelerated the destruction of the Canadian herds. By 1885, when the railroad was completed across Canada, the buffalo was virtually extinct and the Indians and Métis who had depended on it were starving. The sudden and systematic slaughter of the buffalo certainly helped to serve Ottawa’s plan. Also, the confinement of the Indians and Métis to reserves and rural ghettos immediately after the slaughter makes it hard to believe the two events were coincidental. Too many pieces of the imperial plan fitted together too neatly. The truth about the historical situation in the United States very probably applied to Canada as well…
After the slaughter of the buffalo, the Indians and halfbreeds were virtually prisoners and beggars, dependent upon the charity and patronage of their white colonizer. Not only were the native people denied their land and economy, but they were also denied the right to participate in the mainstream agricultural and industrial activity of Canada; even construction work on the railroad was denied them. Instead, cheap “coolie” labor was imported, while native people by the thousands were confined to rural “prisons”. The death of the buffalo meant the death of the native people’s freedom and independence on the prairies.
With the end of the buffalo came the end of the unofficial command the Métis held over the hunting territory. Their administration and policy-making was now restricted to their local communities. The political sovereignty over the plains that they took for granted because of the buffalo economy had now been eliminated by Ottawa authorities.
To complete the expansion plan, Ottawa needed the vast Northwest lands, not only for the C.P.R but also as an agricultural area for immigrants. Since a market was needed for manufactured goods, European settlers were needed to perform the function of consumers. Once the buffalo were gone, the native people were reduced to complete dependency on whites, and the treaties served to justify to seizure of Indian lands. It was government policy to locate reserves on rocky, sandy, and hilly lands. Because halfbreeds were not considered aboriginal people, they were not placed on reserves but were confined on farm colonies and rural ghettos. Some halfbreeds were left with no alternative but to become squatters on road allowances…
The government had separate policies for the treaty/status Indians and for the Métis. Indians were treated as “primitives” who could not be assimilated into white Euro-American society. They were segregated and isolated from the mainstream, under a policy much like apartheid. The Métis, although treated on a racial basis as indigenous people, were considered half white, and thus potentially assimilable.
Treaties and reserves are common to all native people in colonies around the Third World because they serve the purposes of colonization more efficiently than other forms of imperial conquest. In Canada, treaties legitimized the imprisonment of status Indians under white agents backed by police and soldiers. In return, the Indians received almost nothing for their land and resources except promises as empty as the treaties themselves. Negotiations satisfactory to two parties are not possible when power is unequally distributed between them. Ottawa officials were bargaining from a position of state power, backed by the Mounted Police and the combined military force of Canada and England. They were familiar with the English language and legal contracts based on English law. The Indians, on the other hand, were powerless: they did not speak English, they were seriously divided, and they were economically dependent; they were on bended knee in supplication to the white negotiators. All this was called treaty negotiation. To most Indians who were forced to attend these spectacles it was an agonizing experience of final surrendered to the colonizer. Politically, they were unable to disagree with the terms that the white officials dictated to them, but they were not fooled by the beautiful speeches about the greatness of reserves or by promises of government charity and protection.
Chief Big Bear states that, before he signed the treaty, he had been promised by government officials as much land as he wanted, and wherever he wished to chose it. Without these conditions Big Bear claimed that he would never have signed the treaty. And in the treaty negotiations he took it for granted that these promises were being included as part of the treaty terms…
There were many isolated Indian resistance battles during the period of relocation to reserves. However, Indians were unable to mobilize a major united resistance because of their weakened economic and political position. In 1873, Ottawa established a permanent occupation force of Mounted Police in the Northwest that could immediately crush any people’s movement that might arise or threaten the Ottawa regime and served as a constant reminder of Ottawa’s absolute power. As a further injustice, the government also took back reserve land from the Indians and then sold it to land speculators…
More than four centuries after white men brought “democratic civilization” to North America, the Canadian Indian was still being denied his democratic voting right, and he was being treated as an “aboriginal ward” as recently as 1961. There are few white-supremacy countries that surpass Canada’s shameful record in political discrimination.
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