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Labour, Modernity and the Canadian State: ,{ Flistory of -{Boriginal Women and Work in the Mid-Twentieth Century

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Labour, Modernity and the Canadian State: ,{ Flistory of -{Boriginal Women and Work in the Mid-Twentieth Century Labour, Modernity and the Canadian State: ,{ flistory of -{boriginal Women and Work in the Mid-Twentieth Century Mary Jane Logan McCallum A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in parlial fulfi1ment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor ofPhilosophy Department of History University of Manitoba Winnipeg Submined to Graduate Studies July 2008 Copyright O 2008 by Mary Jane Logan McCallum IHE UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA FACULTY OF GRADUATE STIJDIES COPYRIGHT PERMISSION Labour, Modernity and the Canadian State: A tlistory of Aboriginal Women and Work in the Mid-Twentieth Century BY Mary Jane Logan McCallum A ThesislPracticum submitted to the Faculty ofGraduate Studies ofThe University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the r.equirement of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Mary Jane Logan McCallum @ 2008 Permission has been granted to the University of Manitoba Libraries to lend a copy ofthis thesis/practicum, to Library and Archives Canada (LAC) to lend a copy ofthis thesis/practicum, and to LAC's agent (UMlÆroQuest) to microfilm, sell copies and to publish an abstract of this thesis/practicum. This reproduction or copy of this thesis has been made available by authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research, and may only be reproduced and copied as permitted by copyright larvs or rvith express \yriften authorization from the copyright owner. Abstracl This thesis explores how labour, modemity and the state shaped the history of Aboriginal women in mid-twentieth century Canada. It does so through four case studies d¡awn f¡om the 1940s to the 1 970s. The tirst examines Native women and domestic service. The second case study analyzes the federal Indian Placement and Relocation Program and the experience ofwomen in it, focusing on those trained as hairdressers. The third case study explores the gendered history of the early Community Health Representatives program. The final case study utilizes the history of the Registered Nurses of Canadian Indian Ancestry association as a window into the history ofAboriginal nurses in the twentieth century. This disserlation draws on a variety of archival sources including the federal records of the Department of Indian Affairs and National Health and Welfàre, oral interviews, the records of Aboriginal organizations, prìnt and othe¡ media. This study illustrates the critical investment the Canadian state had in regulating Aboriginal women's labour. By exploring the history of Aboriginal women and wage work in the twentieth century, this thesis resists common narratives of Aboriginal displacement and invisibility especially in the fields of lndian health, education and employment. It adds to a growing literature investigating Aboriginal people in the modem era and challenging narratives of Aboriginal absence, displacement and apparent insignihcance, inauthenticy and loss which cunent narratives about Aboriginal modemity entail. Acknowledgernents Thank you to my committee Adele Perry, Robin Jarvis Brownlie, Joyce Chadya and examiners Kiera Ladner and Karen Dubinsky. It was a privilege to have you read and engage with my dissertation. Many thanks to the individuals who gave their time in the research of this project including Ruth Christie, Ann Callahan, Eleanor Olsen and Myrna Cruickshank. Thanks also to the Aboriginal Nurses Association ofCanada, Carol Prince, Faye Isbister-North Peigan, Marilyn Sark, Marilyn Tamer-Spence and Rosella McKay for their time in the ANAC history ofnurses project. Thank youto those who made this research possible, Ryan Eyford, Mary Young, Leslie Spillett and Judy Bartlett and to Margaret Hom, then at the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada and Debbie Dedam-Montour at the National Indian and Inuit Community Health Representatives Organization for their help and interest. At the University of Manitoba, a big thank you to staff, faculty and friends in the History department including Ravi Vaitheespara, Carol Adams, Barry Ferguson and Greg Smith; in Nursing, thanks to David Gregory and Marion McKay; and thanks also to the UM libraries staffespecially Janice Linton and the staff at docurnent delivery. Thank you to family and friends for interest and empathy through the fun and foul phases of a Ph D program in History. My mom, Judy McCallum, my dad, Graham McCallum, my brother, Ian McCallum, my uncle Ray Hughes and my aunt Evelyn Wexler were my first teachers. To Jill McKonkey, friend and first-rate editor, a huge thank you not only for copyediting this thesis and countless other papers, but also for the digressions. Friends Susan Hill, Kiera Ladner, Jenara Franklin, Stacey Alexopolous, Danielle Soucy, Aroha Harris, Krista Pilz, Jennifer Koole, Denise Fuchs, Krista Walters, Mike and Carrie Rose and others, thanks for the support, conversation, food, road trips and humour. I'd also like to acknowledge the encouragement and advice ofeducators at different junctures: Mr. (Calvin) Darby at Shanty Bay Public School, Dr. William Hanley at McMaster University, Dr. Ollivier Dyens at I'Université Sainte-Anne, Dr. John Milloy at Trent University and my thoughtful and inspiring supervisor, Adele Perry. For generously supporting me fìnancially as a graduate student, thank you to the Munsee Delaware Nation. the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Manitoba First Nations-Centre for Aboriginal Health Research at the University of Manitoba. Contents Abstract I Acknowledgments ii Table of Contents iii List of Tables iv Chapter One Introduction Chapter Two Sweeping the Nation: Aboriginal Women and Domestic Labour in Mid-Twentieth Century Canada 45 Chapter Three The Permanent Solution: The Placement and Relocation Program and Aboriginal Women Hairdressers 106 Chapter Four An Earl¡ Labour History of Community Health Representatives, 1960-1970 156 Chapter Five Aboriginal Nursing History 279 Chapter Six Conclusion Aboriginal Labour and Aboriginal llistory 280 Appendix I Objectives ofthe Aboriginal Nurses Association ofCanada 308 Appendix 2 Statement of Infonned Consent 310 Appendix 3 Sample Interview Questions 312 Bibliography 313 List of Tables Table I CI{R Training Programs 196l-1971 182 Table 2 1965 CHR salaries by Gender 192 Table 3 Program Suggestions to Community Health Workers 200 Chapter One Introduction The January 18, 1958, edition ofthe "Real Manitobans" section of the Ilinnipeg Free Pr¿ss was dedicated to Aboriginal women workers. There was plenty to catch your eye in the full-page spread. The article opened with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Hiawatha'. Ye who love a nation's legends Love the ballads of a people, That like voices frorn afar off Callto us to pause and listen Listen to this Indian legend To thìs song of Hiawatha. To the left, a drawing of a confident "Real Manitoban," hands on skirted hips, dwarfed the Golden Boy on top of the legislative building in downtown Winnipeg and the prairie a¡d woods beyond. Around the text. there are four black-and-white photos ol smartly- dressed women leaming stenography at the Manitoba Technical Institute, smiling from an ofhce at the Tuberculosis Registry ofthe Manitoba Sanatorium Board, studying night school course notes on comptometery and setting a wave for a customer in a beauty salon. "Indian Girls Pave the Way fbr Others," the article announced. "It's a song more than tinged with sadness - but a song not without hope - sung by Canada's native sons and daughters as they try to find their way in the strange and awesome reaches of the city. Each day brings more Indian girls from reselations and other rural points to establish themselves in Winnipeg and quite a number succeed - paving the way for others as they go." Indian girls were, according to the authÕr, displaced persons in their own land . endeavourìng to bridge the gap between generations ago when their proud race was left far behind, and present day conditions olour so called civilization. Just as our pioneer forbears fished and hunted and farmed, so runs the saga of their people up to the present day. They come to the city to catch up with education in modem institutions of leaming ... and to find employment that they may share in the fruits of Canada's growing prosperity.l These post-war depictions were in many ways typical of the contemporary popular obsession with "the Indian today."2 At once racialized and inauthentic, ancient and displaced, backwards and forwards, marginalized and urban, such ambivalent images are typical when it comes to Native people even in cur¡ent historical scholarship. Ideas about modemity and the state frame Native people's labour and bring these images into focus. As workers, Native women "share" in the nation's prosperity alongside its other citizens. Working at typewriters, permanent waves and business ledgers, the women portrayed modem skills and education in well-known locales in Winnipeg. By looking at the history of Native domestics, hairdressers, Community Health Representatives and nurses, I hope to illuminate how Aboriginal women's wage labour was shaped by the politics of modemity and the state. In so doing, I hope to also challenge common narratives of Aboriginal displacement in the twentieth century. This chapter will set the historiographical contexts for the thesis. It will assess the key literatures to which this thesis speaks, namely. labour, modernity and the state, and it will argue tbr the impodance ofthese interconnected themes to twentieth-centurv 1 Mary Bletcher, "lndian Girls Pave the Way for Others,"
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