PERSPECTIVES ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND SETTLER FOLK IN NORTHERN ONTARIO
Le Canada ou Nouvelle France The Indigenous People of the “New World,” as our European forebears called it, have been living in the Western Hemisphere for at least 15,000 years. They arrived before the last glacial period ended some 10,000 years ago, and they have lived here through the Holocene Period. During these millennia, they became so grounded here that they came to see Turtle Island as the place of their origin. These facts mean that the five hundred years of their experience with European immigrants represents only a small part of their history. Some recognition of this reality and some very useful maps are to be found in Michel S. Beaulieu and Chris Southcott, North of Superior: An Illustrated History of Northwestern Ontario (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company Ltd., 2010), 12-21. The rest of this book touches on the periods mentioned below. A detailed study of the latter part of the first period, the entire second period, and some of the third period is provided by W. Robert Wightman and Nancy M. Wightman, The Land Between: Northwestern Ontario Resource Development, 1800 to the 1990s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
We do well to recognize at least three periods of history since Europeans arrived on our continent. The first period encompassed many challenges for Indigenous People, including the infectious diseases that killed so many and
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decimated whole communities. To say that no one knew the cause of these epidemics does not lessen the horror that it represented. It may even have increased the horror, due to the failure of tried and true medicines developed by their healers over the millennia of their experience in the Americas. Despite these losses, the first period was one of commercial exchanges in what is now Northern Ontario and of benefit to both sides in these fur trade exchanges. First Nations were not only trade partners during more than three centuries 1497-1850; they also became allies in war after the initial period, when their warfare involved struggles among themselves and against the European invaders. These early wars complicate our efforts to understand the culture of Indigenous People, a fact that needs to be recognized in the next section of this survey.
The second period, in which Canadian imperialism was focused on Indigenous Peoples for more than a century, was very different from the preceding period. It is this period that has been focused by KAIROS in its development of a Blanket Exercise, designed to sensitize Euro-Canadians to the experiences of their Indigenous neighbours. Early in this period, First Nations who had been partners and allies managing their affairs with great skill were reduced to wards of the state, as Euro-Canadians pursued genocidal aims. There can be no question about the Canadian intention to change the cultures of the Indigenous People; some may question whether the aim was to let the Indigenous People die out by means of starvation policies and lack of health care.
The third period, still little appreciated by most Canadians, is the current era in which the Indigenous People struggle to assert themselves and re-establish their communities. The Canadian state may have abandoned genocide, but it has experienced great difficulty in becoming a partner with First Nations and other Indigenous People. The redeeming factor has been the Supreme Court of Canada, which has asserted the honour of the Crown in a number of vital decisions. In our era, Euro-Canadians are challenged to develop respect for Indigenous People and to find ways of creating trust between themselves and Indigenous People. If citizens think they can do little to advance these goals, they forget that democratic governments reflect the will of the people. These governments will behave differently than they did in earlier years if their supporters demand such action! And when they do not meet this challenge of the third period, it may be due to incipient racism among their supporters!
The following pages draw upon the historical record to help us to understand each of these three periods of the history of Indigenous People and their interaction with Euro-Canadians. Of necessity, these excerpts from documents, articles, and books are mere glimpses into the past. Those items that are of interest should be further pursued. The intention is to foster understanding and respect. As we understand each other better, we will find new reasons to respect each other. And as we achieve this respect, we may find new ways of developing trust between and among us all within the large boundaries of Canada.
As one of the items in the third part tells us, various words have been used to describe the people who have lived in North America from time immemorial. The words used in the various documents and secondary authorities below have almost always been respected. One instance is revealing. The French in the seventeenth century expressed their sense of cultural superiority by calling the people they met les sauvages. When Reuben G. Thwaites and his colleagues at the Wisconsin Historical Commission were translating the Jesuit Relations more than a century ago, they simply transliterated the word into English. In the third excerpt, there remain hints of this choice in the Jesuit Father’s discussion of a dance “characterized by nothing of savagery.” This language indicates the social challenges the Indigenous People have faced in the country they have allowed us to share!
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THE FIRST PERIOD DISCOVERIES
From the time Christopher Columbus sailed to Hispaniola in 1492 and John Cabot came upon the New-Found-Land in 1497, Europeans knew that they had discovered a New World. In the Great Lakes basin, however, it was the Indigenous People who discovered newcomers to Turtle Island. At the middle of the nineteenth century, there were at least three such traditions of discovery. The first published was written by W. W. Warren, the son of a New England trader and—through his mother, daughter of the notable fur trader, Michel Cadotte— the great-grandson of White Crane, the hereditary chief of La Pointe village on the south side of Lake Superior. Warren presented a tradition relating the journey of “a principal and leading Me-da-we priest” named Ma-se-wa-pe-ga and his wife—following on a dream about “white spirits” the priest had—to the St. Lawrence River where they discovered the gifts that European traders offered:
“When about to depart to return home, presents of a steel axe, knife, beads, and a small strip of scarlet cloth were given him, which, carefully depositing in his medicine bag, as sacred articles, he brought safely home to his people at La Pointe. Ma-se-wa-pe-ga again collected the principal men of his tribe in council, and displaying his curious presents, he gave a full narrative of his successful journey and the fulfilment of his dream. The following spring a large number of his people followed him on his second visit to the supposed ‘white spirits.’ They carried with them many skins of the beaver, and they returned home late in the fall with the dread fire-arm, which was to give them power over their much feared enemies. It is on this occasion also, that they first procured the fire-water which was to prove the most dreadful scourge and curse of their race.” William W. Warren, History of the Ojibway Nation (Minneapolis, MN: Ross & Haines, Inc., 1957), 11
COMPLEX COMMERCIAL RELATIONS
When Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River in 1535, he found substantial communities where Québec (Stadacona) and Montréal (Hochelaga) are now located. When Samuel de Champlain came up the river sixty years later, these communities were gone. In fact, his first report included a celebration at the mouth of the Saguenay River by the Kichesipirini Algonquin (whom he later found living on the Ottawa River) of a victory they had achieved that summer of 1603. Had they dispersed these
Courtesy of BAnQ - Bibliothèque et Iroquoian communities in order to deal directly with the French traders? Archives nationales du Québec. Anthropologist Bruce Trigger has argued that Mohawk attacks on the Mahican during 1624-28 (in what is now the state of New York) exemplified the complicated relations that developed when Indigenous People and Europeans competed for furs:
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“By this time European-Indian relations had become a game that had well-defined and generally-accepted rules. Until the eclipse of Iroquois power in 1701, none of the strategies that Indians or Europeans were to pursue would be anything more than attempts to determine how far self-interest might be indulged without endangering the system. It was to the advantage of the European traders to have friendly relations with as many separate tribes as possible, in order to be able to trade competitively with them; conversely, however, if prices were to be kept low, it was desirable that no single tribe should be allied with two or more rival groups of European traders. While it was in the Indians’ interest to trade with more than one European power, no tribe in the area was sufficiently self- confident that it was prepared to acquiesce that its enemies, or even potential enemies, should trade with the same European power with which it had an alliance. Because of this, the pattern that emerged was for Indian tribes to be allied and to trade with only one European power at a time. Attempts to circumvent this limitation, by Indians or Europeans, inevitably proved unstable. Finally, as French writers make very explicit, the necessity of holding onto allies made the continuation of Indian rivalries not only desirable, but essential. If the hostile Iroquois had not existed, the French would have had to invent them. Confronted by a deadlock of this sort, the best chance that the Dutch traders had of obtaining furs from the north was to arm their Mohawk allies so that they could better pirate these furs from the tribes allied to the French. From this decision, arrived at by the traders at Fort Orange, the wars of the Iroquois had their origin.” Bruce G. Trigger, “The Mohawk-Mahican War (1724-28): The Establishment of a Pattern,” Canadian Historical Review LII, no. 3 (September 1971):276-86
ENCOUNTERING CULTURES
The most important allies of the French, throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, were the Wendat Confederacy (known in Canadian history as the Hurons), who lived near Georgian Bay. The alliance was commercial and religious, with the Jesuit Fathers as vital to both. When the Jesuit Superior Lallemant attended a Feast of the Dead in 1641, at which the bones of those who had died across the Confederacy were ceremonially interred in a great ossuary, he was awed by the dance of a party of people from Bow-e-ting (in what is now Sault Ste. Marie):
“After that, it was a pleasure characterized by nothing of savagery, to witness in the midst of this Barbarism a Ballet performed by forty persons, to the sound of voices and of a sort of drum, in such harmonious accord that they rendered all the tones that are most agreeable in Music.
“The dance consisted of three parts. The first represented various encounters of enemies in single combat,--one pursuing his foe, hatchet in hand, to give him the deathblow, while at the same time he seems to receive it himself, by losing his advantage; he regains it, and after a great many feints, all performed in time with the music, he finally overcomes his antagonist, and returns victorious. Another, with different movements, fences, javelin in hand; this one is armed with arrows; his enemy provides himself with a buckler that covers him, and strikes a blow at him with a club. They are three different personages, not one of whom is armed like the others; their gestures, their movements, their steps, their glances,--in a word, everything that can be seen, is different in each one; and yet in as complete accord with one another that it seems as if but one mind governed these irregular movements.
“Hardly was this combat ended than the musicians arose; and we witnessed, as the Second Part, a dance on a large scale,--first by eight persons, then by twelve, then by sixteen, ever increasing in proportion, who quickened or checked their steps according to the voices that gave the measure.
“The Women then suddenly appeared, and danced the Third Part of this Ball, which was as agreeable as the others, and in no wise offensive to modesty. The inhabitants of the Saut, who came to this Feast from a distance of
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a hundred or a hundred and twenty leagues, were Actors in this Ballet.” The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791, ed. Reuben G. Thwaites (Cleveland: The Burroughs Brothers, 1898-1901), vol. 22, pp. 213 and 215
TRADE LEADS TO WAR
Bruce Trigger’s interpretation of the Mohawk-Mahican war was surely based in his understanding of the warfare that dispersed the Wendat Confederacy in 1649. The Wendats had endured years of epidemic in the late 1630s without ever attacking a Jesuit, even though the priests seemed linked to the deaths. When one of the Jesuit brothers WAS killed in 1648, the attack was an attempt to break the alliance with the French. It led to a national debate, which ended in a great ceremony of apology and renewal of the alliance. With the relationship renewed, the Wendats came under a focused Iroquois attack in the spring of 1649, which drove some to take refuge near the town of Québec and others to join their Five Nations enemies. The next decades saw intensified warfare in which the Iroquois sought to drive the French out of Canada and to achieve control of the beaver frontier in the Great Lakes region. The young King Louis XIV responded by making Canada a province of his kingdom and sending soldiers. The Anishinabek of the Upper Lakes found an occasion in 1665 to kill practically all of an Iroquois war party. This victory was noted in the Jesuit report for that year, described by the French agent Nicolas Perrot in his memoir some years later, and recounted by Warren almost two centuries later (although he thought it occurred a century earlier):
“The warlike, confederated tribes whom the French early designated with the name of Iroquois, gave not up their long contest with the allied Algics, without a severe and protracted struggle. They often collected their forces, and searching westward, their hardy warriors became familiar with the shores of Lake Huron, the banks of the Ste. Marie [River], and often even procured scalps on the shores of Lake Superior. . . . The last important Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada battle between the Ojibways and the Iroquois, took place about one hundred years ago at a point on Lake Superior, a short distance above the outlet, which has to this day retained the name of Point Iroquois. . . .
“Ke-che-wash-keenh or Great Buffalo, chief of La Pointe, briefly gives the following version of the affair:--
“’ The Ojibways, one time collected a war party on the shores of the Great Lake, which proceeded eastward against their old enemies the Naud-o-ways. On their road to the country of these people, they one evening encamped on a point of the lake shore a short distance above Bow-e-ting (Ste. Marie). They had lighted their fires for the night and commenced cooking their suppers, when the sound of distant yelling and laughter came
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indistinctly to their ever-listening ears. The noise appeared to come from the other side of the point . . . Scouts were sent . . .
“’These scouts soon returned on a run, and informed their party that they had seen a large war party of Naud-o- ways, who were encamped, drinking fire-water, and carousing with perfect carelessness . . . The Ojibways quickly extinguished their blazing fires, and making their usual preparations for a desperate fight, they noiselessly approached and surrounded the encampment of their boisterous and drunken enemies. They silently awaited the moment when nearly all had drunk themselves insensible, and the remainder had fallen asleep, for the war whistle to sound the onset. They attacked them with great fury, and it is said that but few of the Naud-o-ways escaped the Ojibways’ tomahawk and scalping knife on this bloody occasion.’
“The ‘Six Nations’ never after this made incursions into the country of the Lake Superior Ojibways, and from this occurrence may be dated the ending of the long and fierce warfare which these two people had been waging against one another.” Warren, History of the Ojibway Nation, 147-48
AN EXAMPLE OF COOPERATION
Minnesota historian Grace Lee Nute has celebrated the French traders who came into the Lake Superior region during the seventeenth century in her Caesars of the Wilderness. That title contrasts sharply with W. W. Warren’s tradition of two Frenchmen (probably the Sieur de Groseilliers and Pierre Radisson), who only survived a winter on Lake Superior with the help of the Ojibwa:
“One clear morning in the early part of winter, soon after the islands which are clustered in this portion of Lake Superior and known as the Apostles, had been locked in ice, a party of young men of the Ojibways started out from their village in the Bay of Shag-a-waum-ik-ong, to go, as was customary, and spear fish through holes in the ice, between the island of La Pointe and the main shore, this being considered as the best ground for this mode of fishing. While engaged in their sport, they discovered a smoke arising from a point of the adjacent island, toward its eastern extremity.
“The island of La Pointe was then totally unfrequented . . . The young men returned home at evening and reported the smoke which they had seen arising from the island, and various were the conjectures of the old people respecting the persons who would dare to build a fire on the spirit-haunted isle. They must be strangers, and the young men were directed, should they again see the smoke, to go and find out who made it.
“Early the next morning, again proceeding to their fishing ground, the young men once more noticed the smoke arising from the eastern end of the unfrequented island, and led on by curiosity, they ran thither and found a small log cabin in which they discovered two white men in the final stages of starvation. The young Ojibways, filled with compassion, carefully conveyed them to their village, where, being nourished with great kindness, their lives were preserved.” Warren, History of the Ojibway Nation, 121-22
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THE FRENCH CLAIM THE UPPER COUNTRY
The balance of power in Canada began to shift after King Louis XIV made Canada a royal province in 1663 and sent troops to defend the colony against the Iroquois. He also appointed a governor and an intendant to lead the colony and expand French power in North America. A highlight of these efforts was a ceremony of “taking possession” at Sault Ste. Marie on 4 June 1671. This ceremony is described well in the Jesuit Relation for 1670-71 (cf. Volume 55, pp. 104-15), including the speech of Jesuit Father Claude Allouez eulogizing both the French king and the Christian faith. Nicolas Perrot’s report on his efforts to invite Indigenous People to the event indicates that only a few actually attended. However, the Jesuit Relation celebrated the local acceptance of the French
Louis XIV, King of France, claim: 1638-1715. Courtesy of LAC
“Father Gabriel Druilletes, one of the oldest missionaries in Canada, where he has been engaged in converting the [indigenous People] for more than twenty years, fortunately came to our succor. No sooner had he landed there than a grievous disease broke out among the greater part of our [People]; yet, instead of checking the course of the Gospel, it . . . brought it into great repute by many wonderful cures. This made such an impression on these peoples’ minds that, by the grace of our Lord, they declared themselves openly for the faith; and all the elders have publicly promised to embrace it when they are sufficiently instructed.
“It will be well to relate here some of these cures, in order to thank God for them . . .
“One of the chief men—Apican by name—of the Nation known as the people of the Sault, being troubled with a severe inflammation of the throat, accompanied by much vomiting of blood . . . was exhorted by Father Gabriel to have recourse to God. No sooner had he done so than he found himself instantaneously freed from his sufferings, and able to come to Church and thank our Lord. ‘Prayer alone,’ said he, ‘without any medicine, has cured me. The thing is done; I pray now, and I am determined to be a Christian.’ His wife, two of his children, and some of his grandsons also, on being seized with the prevailing disease, visited the Chapel only twice before they were cured.
“. . .
“The most common malady was the bloody flux, which spread through the whole Village, so infecting the atmosphere that even all the dogs were going mad with it, and dying. Meanwhile God preserved all those poor [Indigenous People] who had recourse to him in prayer; but to enumerate them would be wearisome.
“We must not, however, omit to say that these signs of favor were not confined to the people of the country, but were also shown to strangers passing this way.“
“God made use of these very uncommon cures, and of many more like them, to touch our [Peoples’] hearts; in consequence of which, on the eleventh of October, 1670, all the principal elders of the country repaired to the Chapel in a body, and made a public declaration before all the people that at length the Sault was Christian, and that the God of Prayer was the Master of life. For, said they, when the atmosphere was so tainted that even the dogs did not escape unaffected by it, nevertheless not a person died, not even a child; but on the contrary, all the sick, young and old, great and small, were most miraculously cured as soon as they began to pray—and many even without the Father’s presence.” The Jesuit Relations, ed. Thwaites, vol. 55, pp. 117-27
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TRADE COMPETITION NORTH OF THE GREAT LAKES
The dispersion of the Wendats, followed by the defeat of the Iroquois, enabled French traders to travel into the Upper Country to trade and allowed some of the Indigenous People to travel to Montréal to deal with French traders there. Controlling the coureurs-de-bois was a great challenge for the French governors in the St. Lawrence valley. Ensuring that the Indigenous People would come to Montréal became more difficult when the English began to trade on James and Hudson Bays to the north. This new trade was supported by an aggrieved Pierre Radisson, and it led to the chartering of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 1670. When war broke out between France and England in 1689, the French were able to seize some of the HBC posts and hold them until a European peace was achieved in 1715. Only after this peace was achieved could HBC traders travel easily up the rivers from the northern bays to challenge the French and establish a direct trade with First Nations. Victor Lytwyn has studied the HBC records carefully to understand how the Albany and other routes were used by the HBC traders:
“No modern term precisely describes that region of the Canadian Shield which lies north of Lake Superior and east of Lake Winnipeg. The early Canadian fur traders, however, described it as Le Petit Nord, or the Little North, distinguishing it from the vast area west and north of Lake Winnipeg denominated Le Grand Nord, or the Great North. More specifically, the Little North encompassed the area bordered on the south by Lake Superior and on the west by Lake Winnipeg. To the north it stretched to the edge of the Hudson Bay Lowlands; and east to the divide between the Albany and Moose rivers . . .
“The [movement] of European fur traders into the Little North proceeded generally in an east to west direction along the rivers and lakes that were the highways of the trade. Often the complex topography afforded no simple or clearcut routes, but the value of the furs they sought encouraged the traders to follow Indian guides and travel routes through the rugged and uncharted shield country. Their passage was impeded by dangerous rapids and waterfalls, and by long stretches of shallow water where laborious portages were necessary. In the larger lakes storms could leave them windbound for days, and in small lakes they were often mired in thick swamp. . . .
There were two major routeways into the Little North. One entered the region from James Bay and ascended the Albany River. The other began along the north shore of Lake Superior and reached it by way of the Nipigon River. The route along the Albany River was pioneered by men from the Hudson’s Bay Company, while Canadian traders from the St. Lawrence Valley and the Great Lakes developed the Nipigon routeway. The distinctive patterns of these two movements into the Little North reflected in many ways the disparate cultural backgrounds of the men who conducted the fur trade. The HBC traders were mainly Orkneymen who were initially unfamiliar with travelling and living in the boreal forest. Many Canadians, on the other hand, were hardened to wilderness living from an early age. They were especially adept at handling birchbark canoes, which were the vehicles sine qua non of the fur trade. . . .” Victor P. Lytwyn, The Fur Trade of the Little North: Indians, Pedlars, and Englishmen East of Lake Winnipeg, 1760-1821 (Winnipeg: Rupert’s Land Research Centre, University of Winnipeg, 1986), i and iii
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INDIANS IN THE FUR TRADE
One of the greatest books in Canadian fur trade history was published in 1975 under the title of this section. Historian A. J. Ray conducted intensive research in the archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which had been moved to Winnipeg in 1970 (together with the head office of the Governor and Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson’s Bay, as the HBC had been named), in order to write this book. He was able to describe the role of the Cree of the Canadian Shield not only as hunters and trappers but also as traders and transporters of trade goods and furs. As long as the HBC traders “sat on the bay,” which they did for almost a century at Fort Albany and even longer at York Factory, the Cree were vital to the fur trade:
“The fur trade was the most pervasive force influencing the economic and political development of Western Canada between 1660 and 1870. During that period it operated as an integrating force between Indians and Europeans. To be successfully prosecuted, the fur trade required the cooperation of both parties. In the broadest sense, it was a partnership for the exploitation of resources. Although it was not an equal partnership, nor one in which the same group always held the upper hand, at no time before 1870 would it have served the interests of one party to destroy the other since by doing so the aggressors would have been deprived of their supplies of goods, or furs and provisions. It is not surprising therefore that peace prevailed between Indians and Europeans in the western interior of Canada prior to 1870.
“Yet, although it was a time of peaceful relations between settlers, traders, and Indians, it was a time of cultural change for the Indians. The various Indian groups were continually adjusting to the transformations of their environmental and cultural surroundings which were underway. This book deals with some of the adaptive responses that were made by the Indians living in the central and southern portions of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Attention is focused on the ways in which different Indian groups perceived and responded to the varying opportunities which the fur trade offered to them. In particular, detailed consideration is given to the different roles that key Indian groups played in the fur trade and to the implications that this role had for tribal migration, inter-tribal relations, material culture changes, and ecological adaptations. . . .” Arthur J. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade: their role as trappers, hunters, and middlemen in the lands southwest of Hudson Bay 1660-1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), xi-xii
THE MIGRATIONS OF THE OJIBWA
The French era was a period of dramatic growth in the territory of Ojibwa people. Peter Schmalz’s The Ojibwa of Southern Ontario describes the way in which they fought their way across what is now southern Ontario, to a frontier with Iroquoian people near Lake Ontario. William Warren’s History of the Ojibway Nation presents the battles by which they drove back the Outagamis (Foxes) in present-day Wisconsin and the Sioux in present-day Minnesota. Arthur Ray’s Indians in the Fur Trade finds the Assiniboine tribe located in Northwestern Ontario between the Kaministiquia and Pigeon Rivers in the seventeenth century, only to be displaced by the Ojibwa during the eighteenth century. The Ojibwa frontier in Northern Ontario appears as the Oji-Cree territory between Big Trout Lake and the Island Lake group of First Nations in Manitoba. The territorial expansion of the Ojibwa or Saulteaux (so labelled by reason of their being first encountered by the French at Sault Ste. Marie) was
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experienced around the South Saskatchewan River in 1876 by the negotiators of Treaty Six. According to the report published by Alexander Morris four years later:
“[The main body of the Crees] were embarrassed . . . by the action of the Willow Crees, who, under the guidance of one of their Chiefs, Beardy, interposed every obstacle to the progress of the treaty, and refused to attend the Council, unless it was held at the top of a hill some miles off, where the Chief pretended it had been revealed to him in a vision that the treaty was to be made. The Willow Crees were, moreover, under the influence of a wandering band of Saulteaux, the chief portion of whom resided within the limits of the other treaties, and who were disposed to be troublesome. Before the arrival of the Commissioners, the Saulteaux conceived the idea of forming a combination of the French Half-Breeds, the Crees, and themselves, to prevent the crossing of the Saskatchewan by the Lieutenant-Governor, and his entrance into the Indian territories. They made the proposal first to the French Half-breeds, who declined to undertake it, and then to the Crees, who listened to it in silence. One of them at length arose, and pointing to the River Saskatchewan, said, ‘Can you stop the flow of that river?’ The answer was, ‘No,’ and the rejoinder was ‘No more can you stop the progress of the Queen’s Chief.’ When the Commissioners arrived at the Saskatchewan, a messenger from the Crees met them, proferring a safe convoy, but it was not needed. . . .” Alexander Morris, The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories (Toronto: Belfords, Clarke & Co., 1980), 176-77
THE CREE AS DEMANDING CUSTOMERS
Arthur Ray has also provided glimpses into the HBC records to show how demanding the Cree were as traders and consumers. They were always comparing the English goods with those the French were offering further south, and they found English metal goods particularly poor in the cold climate they endured on the Canadian Shield. Ray’s presentation to the Cree chief, Big Bear, at Hudson Bay Company Third North American Fur Trade Conference in 1978 also showed how the trading post. Courtesy Library and Archives Hudson’s Bay Company struggled to satisfy these customers. The tobacco Canada / C-008183 trade that resulted was a particularly revealing example of the commercial impact of Cree demands (as stated in the English of the period):
“Initially the company shipped English tobacco (probably Virginia) to its posts. Its first order for Brazil tobacco, a twisted tobacco treated with molasses, was placed on 7 January 1684. The shipment was received in February and placed on board the company’s ships in May 1685. In their 22 May 1685 letter to Governor Sergeant, the governor and committee wrote: ‘We are sorry the Tobacco last sent you proves so bad, we have made many yeares tryall of Engleish Tobacco, by several persons & whiles we have Traded, we have had yearly complaints thereof. We have made search, [of] what Tobacco the French vends to the Indians, which you do so much extoll, and have this yeare bought the like (vizt) Brazeele Tobacco . . . that if approved of we are resolved in the future to supply [you] with the like, as you have occasion.’ The Indians heartily approved of this innovation and the company was soon engaged in a continuing search for the best Brazil tobacco that could be purchased in European markets. Initially the company ordered its tobacco from London merchants. . . .
“After receiving an unsatisfactory shipment of Brazil tobacco from their London supplier in 1722, the governor and committee decided to deal directly with Lisbon tobacco merchants. Since Lisbon was one of the leading Brazil
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tobacco importing cities, they believed they would have a better chance of getting the best tobacco available. The record suggests this was a wise decision. . . .” Arthur J. Ray, “Indians as Consumers in the Eighteenth Century,” Old Trails and New Directions: Papers of the Third North American Fur Trade Conference, ed. Carol M. Judd and Arthur J. Ray (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 263
MAINTAINING GOOD RELATIONS
Although the representatives of a European king might assert the King’s power in the Upper Country, the reality was that the First Nations controlled the land. That was certainly true through most of the eighteenth century, if less so in the nineteenth. Métis historian Olive Dickason focuses one deadly instance of such control at the Albany River post that constituted the first movement inland by the Hudson’s Bay Company:
“Even though socially Amerindians and traders mixed ‘unexpectedly well,’ they continued in their separate ways despite the close co-operation needed for the trade and the prosperity it brought to both sides. Trader Daniel Harmon (1778-1843) sadly observed that the only basis for friendship in the Northwest was the desire of Indians for European goods and the whites’ eagerness for the Natives’ furs. A particular area of difficulty was reciprocity and the obligations it entailed. Ignoring accepted standards of behaviour could cause resentment and lead to trouble. When the postmaster did not honour the expected obligation for subsistence to relatives of women who were being kept in the post, the Cree turned on the English, killed them, and looted the establishment.” Olive Patricia Dickason, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992), 145-46
A NEW IMPERIAL REALITY
The last years of the French regime, as it turned out, were years of French exploration and trade as far west as the Rocky Mountains. At the same time, competition grew between the British and French empires and led to the first world war, known in Canada as the Seven Years War. Among the Indigenous allies of the French on the Plains of Abraham in 1759 were warriors from the Lake of the Woods. After the British took Montréal in 1760 and succeeded in making Canada part of the British empire, the fur trade was taken over by British subjects. An uprising in the Great Lakes region (called Pontiac’s war)
A View of the Taking of Quebec, Sept 13, 1759. included the seizure of Michilimackinac by Courtesy of LAC, Acc. No. R9266-2102 Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana. 1759 Indigenous People and led the British
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government to recognize Aboriginal Title to land in a Royal Proclamation:
“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,--We do therefore, with the Advice of our Privy Council, declare it to be our Royal Will and Pleasure, that no Governor or Commander in Chief in any of our Colonies of Quebec, East Florida, or West Florida, do presume, upon any Pretence whatever, to grants Warrants of Survey, or pass any Patents for Lands beyond the Bounds of their respective Governments, as described in their Commissions: as also that no Governor or Commander in Chief in any of our other Colonies or Plantations in America do presume for the present, and until our further Pleasure be known, to grant Warrants of Survey, or pass Patents for any Lands beyond the Heads or Sources of any of the Rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the West and North West, or upon any Lands whatsoever, which, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us as aforesaid, are reserved to the said Indians, or any of them.“
“And We do hereby strictly forbid, on Pain of our Displeasure, all our loving Subjects from making any Purchases or Settlements whatever, or taking Possession of any of the Lands above reserved, without our especial leave and Licence for that Purpose first obtained.“
“And whereas great Frauds and Abuses have been committed in purchasing Lands of the Indians, to the great Prejudice of our Interests, and to the great Dissatisfaction of the said Indians: In order, therefore, to prevent such Irregularities in the future, and to the end that the Indians may be convinced of our Justice and determined Resolution to remove all reasonable Cause of Discontent, We do, with the Advice of our Privy Council strictly enjoin and require, that no private Person do presume to make any purchase from the said Indians of any Lands reserved to the said Indians, within those parts of our Colonies where, We have thought proper to allow Settlement: but that, if at any Time any of the Said Indians should be inclined to dispose of the said Lands, the same shall be Purchased only for Us, in our Name, at some public Meeting or assembly of the said Indians, to be held for that Purpose by the Governor or Commander in Chief of our Colony respectively within which they shall lie . . .” Google provides copies of this “Indian Magna Carta”!
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION CHANGED PARAMETERS
Although the American War for Independence was fought near the Atlantic coast, the British legislation that provoked it impacted Northern Ontario in a number of ways. The Québec Act of 1774 extended the boundaries of the colony of Québec as far as the Ohio River and Mississippi River and restricted trade to the King’s subjects in Québec. This limitation forced the fur traders of Albany and Schenectady to move up to Montréal and enter the Canadian trade. Soon afterwards, they began to enter into the trade partnership we know as the North West Company. Even before this company was well-established, another Treaty of Paris had drawn a new International Boundary up the Great Lakes. A US customs officer reached Detroit in 1800, and three years later the North West Company moved its Lake Superior Rendezvous from Grand Portage to Fort William. The agreement the company made in 1798 with the First Nation at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River provided another recognition of Aboriginal Title:
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“Know all men by these presents that we the Chiefs and Old Men of the Chipeway and Kichicamingue Indians at the Grand Portage for ourselves and by and with the consent of all the men of our Tribe, in consideration of the good will, love and affection, which we and the whole of our tribe bear unto Simon Mactavish, Joseph Frobisher, John Gregory, William McGillivray and Alexander McKenzie, Merchants of Montréal in the Province of Lower Canada for themselves and as Agents and Directors for the North West Company and for the sum of three pounds current money of the said province to us in hand paid and also for divers other good causes and valuable considerations as the Chiefs and rest of our Nation hereunto moving have given, granted, alienated, en-feafed, and confirmed, and by these presents do give, grant, alienate, enfeaff, and confirm unto Simon Mactavish, Joseph Frobisher, John Gregory, William McGillivray and Alexander McKenzie in the aforesaid capacity, their Heirs, Executors, administrators and assigns a certain portion of land or tract of country situate lying and being on the North Side of the Lake Superior, bounded in front by the Baye Ae Ae Sonnerre . . . at the entrance of the River Kaministiquioeh comprehending a distance of ten miles in front of said Bay and of twelve miles or more in depth running a line about west—beyond the first carrying place . . .
“. .
.“And by these presents do make this one Act and Deed irrevocable under any Pretence whatever and have put the said Simon Mactavish, Joseph Frobisher, John Gregory, William McGillivray and Alexander McKenzie in their capacity aforesaid in full possession . . . by delivering them a piece of said tract on the Premises with a belt of Wampum. In witness whereof we the Chiefs and Old Men for ourselves and on behalf of our whole Tribe Chipeways or Kiticamongons have unto these Presents set the Marks or Insignias of our different families at the Grand Portage this thirtieth day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand and seven hundred and ninety eight.” Reproduced in Thunder Bay: From Rivalry to Unity, ed. Thorold J. Tronrud and A. Ernest Epp (Thunder Bay: Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society, 1995), 36
THE IMPACT OF COMPETITION
The era known in Europe for the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars witnessed the most strenuous competition between the Bay men and the Nor’Westers across the Canadian Shield. The Nor-Westers were known to follow Indigenous hunters to their camps, and the Hudson’s Bay Company built posts beyond their charter territory of the lands draining into Hudson and James bays (Rupert’s Land). For example, the HBC established a post on the north end of Lake Nipigon to entice the trappers of the area to deal with them. As HBC trader Joseph Colen observed in 1793 of the intensified competition:
“These Canadian traders are so artful, it is impossible to keep the few skins the Indians procure from them, as they attend their tents with liquor, and collect the produce of their hunt almost immediately on animals being killed. . . . The number of Natives who have fallen victims to intoxication within these two years past are many, and should the Canadians continue their practice of carrying their strong spirits to the tents of Natives I much fear the whole country will soon be depopulated. Quoted in Victor P. Lytwyn, “The Anishinabeg and the Fur Trade,” Thunder Bay: From Rivalry to Unity, ed. Tronrud and Epp, 23
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THE APPEARANCE OF PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES
The Society of Jesus, which had been so important in missionary work during the French Regime, established a mission at Grand Portage in 1838. They moved to the vicinity of Fort William in 1849 and continued their large work in the Lake Superior region. George Copway, an Ojibwa from the Rice Lake region of Upper Canada, had joined Methodist missionaries on the south shore of Lake Superior in 1834 and helped in the translation of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles into the language of the Ojibwa two years later. At the same time, the English-born Rev. James Evans was developing a syllabic system of writing Ojibwa in Upper Canada. After HBC Governor Simpson invited him to establish a Methodist mission at Norway House in 1840, Evans George Copway, 1850. adapted the syllabic system to Cree. As Olive Dickason has observed: Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1975-2-1 Source: donation from D.H. Hamly, 532 Allen St. Hawkesbury, Ontario
“. . . a major cultural change was occurring among the northern Cree as they adopted a form of writing in the syllabary devised by Methodist missionary James Evans . . . at Norway House, on Lake Winnipeg. The syllabic system developed by Evans drew on shorthand as well as on symbols already in use among the Cree; his genius was to adapt these to the language. . . . Evans printed his first book a hymnal, in syllabics at Norway House in 1841, using type made from the lead lining of tea chests after first being moulded in clay, paper of inner birchbark, and ink concocted from sturgeon oil and soot. A fur press served for the printing and elk hide for the volume’s covers. The use of the syllabary spread with amazing rapidity throughout the Cree-speaking North, so that by the end of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth the Cree had one of the highest literacy rates in the world. . . .’ Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 241
AN INDIGENOUS STATESMAN ENVISIONED A FUTURE
The chief of the Ojibwa settled at Garden River on the north shore of the St. Mary’s River exemplified Indigenous leadership through the middle of the nineteenth century. He was born in what is now the United States in 1773 and demonstrated fighting ability during the War of 1812-14. His oratorical skills brought him to leadership by the mid- 1830s. It was about this time that he and his people settled at Kitigaun Seebee or Garden River, in British territory. As Janet Chute observed in her biography, researched and written at the request of the Garden River First Nation: Ojibwe chief Shingwaukonse 1850 “The speeches of Shingwaukonse, or Little Pine, furnish some of the most explicit testimonials to the principle of Native rights to be expressed in the United Canadas during the nineteenth century. Little Pine’s ideas and actions exerted a profound influence on the future course of Indian policy in Canada. This chief defined three major goals for Ojibwa peoples: first, to establish linkages with the government agencies that were just beginning to exercise jurisdiction in the Upper Great Lakes region;
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second, to preserve an environment in which Native cultural values and organizational structures could survive; and, finally, to devise new strategies that would promote the formation of band governments capable of assuming a degree of proprietorship over resources on First Nations lands.
“Little Pine rooted his proposals in historical precedents familiar to him. As early as 1760, British colonial administrators had formally recognized the existence of Native territorial prerogatives in the vicinity of Sault Ste. Marie. By this tie, head chiefs had assumed complex roles as policy makers and political negotiators. Many were wealthy, in terms of their potential to accumulate material assets, and during the War of 1812 gained additional prestige by acting as allies of the British Crown.
“. . .
“Little Pine . . . listened attentively to views on Native rights and the potential role of Aboriginal peoples with the developing nation state, as expressed by the independent traders, officials, and missionaries whom he encountered on his widespread travels throughout Michigan and the Canadas. After much careful thought and preparation, in 1846 he devised a plan which he believed might grant the Ojibwas a measure of control over their future in a rapidly changing world. His efforts were frustrated, however, when, during negotiations over Native rights to minerals north of Lake Superior in 1849, Alexander Vidal, a young and inexperienced Indian commissioner, drew on vague American precedents to relegate Aboriginal peoples to the status of mere occupiers of lands. Resource developers quickly exploited this concept to suit their own purposes: on the basis of the young commissioner’s proposals, the government henceforth denied the Native population rights to resources other than fur.” Janet E. Chute, The Legacy of Shingwaukonse: A Century of Native Leadership (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 1 and 3
THE STRUGGLE OVER RESOURCES
Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, explorers appeared looking for minerals in the Canadian Shield. Some of them were sent by the government of the Province of Canada (the combination of the two Canadas, later Ontario and Québec) after it had created the Geological Survey of Canada. Perceptive leaders of First Nations realized that there were benefits to be gained by participating in this new resource economy. When the Montreal Mining Company began to develop a mine near the east shore of Lake Superior without consulting Indigenous People, the chiefs of the Sault Ste. Marie area decided to intervene. The Mica Bay incident in 1849 found Chief Shingwaukonse, supported by Toronto lawyer Allan McDonnell, opposing not just the Montreal Mining Company but also the Canadian government:
“On November 1 Allan and Angus Macdonell, Wharton Metcalfe, and Chiefs Shingwauk and Nebenaigooching with their men boarded Allan’s new schooner Falcon at the Sault. They took with them a small cannon stolen (presumably in bravado) from the lawn of [customs officer] Joseph Wilson, as well as provisions, small arms, and two six-pounders provided through a Sault Michigan trader, Peter Barbeau. Their destination, which they made no real attempt to hide, was the mine at Mica Bay, but their exact intent there was not revealed.
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“Here the tale becomes rather fuzzy. . . .
“The following, however, is clear. When the Falcon arrived at its destination, Angus Macdonell, with the help of some of the Indians, secured the property, the miners, and their families and then set the cannons at strategic positions for defence. Allan Macdonell with Metcalfe, the chiefs, and their now painted and crudely armed companions entered [mine manager John] Bonner’s quarters. They informed this gentleman that the Indians were resuming their lands here because the government had failed to pay for them before they were converted to mining locations. Bonner suggested that he would go to see the Governor General and work out a solution to the matter if the mine was allowed to continue working. Macdonell countered with an offer on behalf of the Indians to lease Bonner the property on the spot, but the latter refused this suggestion outright, thus committing himself to ceasing operations and evacuating his employees.
The result was some tense days while Mr. Bonner searched for suitable transport among American ship owners on the lake. Finally on November 10 the schooner Chippewa of forty tons took away the women and children, but the much larger Algonquin could not be procured to take off the men and equipment until a week later. Bonner went to Sault Ste. Marie by whaleboat on the 18th to swear out his statement and to help with the [dispersal] of his labour force to jobs at Bruce Mines or by steamer to southern ports. Subsequently Metcalfe with a companion was left with the final details of locking up the property, while the Macdonells with the Falcon took the Indians home.” Nancy M. and W. Robert Wightman, “The Mica Bay Affair: Conflict on the Upper Lakes Mining Frontier, 1840- 1850,” Ontario History LXXXIII, no. 3 (September 1991): 200-01
DENYING ECONOMIC PARTICIPATION TO FIRST NATIONS
The Canadian government’s treatment of Chief Shingwaukonse made quite clear that the First Nations would have few opportunities to participate in the development of resources in Northern Ontario. However, the First Nations continued to seek control:
“Basing his contention on ambiguous American precedents, Alexander Vidal in 1849 relegated bands to the status of mere ‘occupants’ rather than proprietors of reserves until such time as all persons of Native extraction could be assimilated into mainstream society. From this source sprang anomalies and contradictions in regard to Native title to territory and resources. Native leaders repeatedly tried to create new precedents in order to surmount legal barriers. The Mamaise mine takeover [in 1849], Ogista’s sale of iron deposits in 1873, and the gravel pit dispute at Garden River in 1914 were all directed towards this end. Although they failed in their primary aim, they led to minor triumphs in the negotiating forum. Conditions inserted into agreements with outside agencies came increasingly nearer to recognizing Native proprietor-ship over major merchantable resources on reserves, regardless of the prevailing law.” Janet E. Chute, “Pursuing the Great Spirit’s Plan: Nineteenth-Century Ojibwa Attitudes Towards the Future of Logging and Mining on Unsurrendered Lands north of Lakes Huron and Superior,” Social Relations in Resource Hinterlands, ed. Thomas Dunk (Lakehead University Centre for Northern Studies, Northern and Regional Studies Series, Vol. 1, 1991), 197
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THE SECOND PERIOD
NEGOTIATING TREATIES
The Canadian government, which had recently passed into colonial control (known as Responsible Government), was aware that lands belonged to Indigenous People until they had been treated for, as the Royal Proclamation of 1763 had stated. Representatives of the Crown must meet with the chiefs of First Nations and arrive at a treaty with them. The intent of the Canadian government, from that time to the present, was to extinguish Aboriginal Title, after conceding a small territory to each First Nation as a reserve and allowing subsistence rights to fish, gather, and hunt. After having a reconnaissance made of the Lake Superior region and its people, the government commissioned W. B. Robinson to meet representatives of the First Nations at Sault Ste. Marie to negotiate treaties (one for the Lake Huron First Nations and a second for the Lake Superior First Nations), as he reported afterwards: Royal Proclamation, 1763 Courtesy LAC
“I trust his Excellency will approve of my having concluded the treaty on the basis of a small annuity and the immediate and final settlement of the matter, rather than paying the Indians the full amount of all moneys on hand, and a promise of accounting to them for future sales. . . .
“Believing that His Excellency and the Government were desirous of leaving the Indians no just cause of complaint on their surrendering the extensive territory embraced in the treaty; and knowing there were individuals who most assiduously endeavored to create dissatisfaction among them, I inserted a clause securing to them certain prospective advantages should the lands in question prove sufficiently productive at any future period to enable the Government without loss to increase the annuity. This was so reasonable and just that I had no difficulty in making them comprehend it, and it in a great measure silenced the clamor raised by their evil advisers.
“In allowing the Indians to retain reservations of land for their own use I was governed by the fact that they in most cases asked for such tracts as they had heretofore been in the habit of using for purposes of residence and cultivation, and by securing these to them and the right of hunting and fishing over the ceded territory, they cannot say that the Government takes from their usual means of subsistence and therefore have no claims for support, which they no doubt would have preferred, had this not been done. The reservation at Garden River is the largest and perhaps of most value, but as it is occupied by the most numerous band of Indians, and from its locality (nine miles from the Sault) is likely to attract others to it, I think it was right to grant what they expressed a desire to retain. There are two mining locations at this place, which should not be finally disposed of unless by the full consent of Shinguaconse and his band . . .” Morris, The Treaties of Canada with the Indians, 18-19
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THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RESERVES
The Superior Treaty that Robinson achieved in 1850 had promised reserves to both the Fort William and Michipicoten First Nations, which were shortly surveyed. Other reserves, including the ones on Lake Nipigon, were declared much later. The history of the Fort William reserve was a particularly mixed one. It was defined thus in the treaty: “the reserve to commence about two miles from Fort William (inland), on the right bank of the River Kaministiquia; thence westerly six miles, parallel to the shores of the lake; then northerly five miles, thence easterly to the right bank of the said river, so as not to interfere with any acquired rights of the Honorable Hudson’s Bay Company.” As settlers came to the area and mining patents were granted, the Fort William First Nation settled instead on the south shore of the Kaministiquia River across from the HBC fort. Then the development priorities of the Dominion of Canada took over, as Roy Piovesana’s history of Catholic churches and missions relates:
“What changed the fortunes of the Mission Boarding School/orphanage (and the entire Immaculate Conception Mission for that matter) was the grandiose expansion programme of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway which had selected Fort William as [a] terminus. Negotiations for the transfer of 1600 acres (which included all structures on the Fort William Mission) from the Fort William Indian Reserve to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway began in early 1905. The price to be paid for this land by the Grand Trunk to the Fort William First Nation, the Jesuit Community, and the Sisters of St. Joseph was negotiable; its acquisition was not. By an act of the Canadian Parliament a national railway company had the power to expropriate lands for its growth and Grand Trunk Pacific. First Unit G.P.T. bushel elevator, Fort William, On development. The principal players in these negotiations were Mr. S. Bray, Surveyor General of the Department of Indian Affairs, Chief J. B. Penassie of the Fort William First Nation, the Jesuit Community (Fathers Roger Arpin, pastor, St. Patrick parish and Prosper Lamarche, Superior, Fort William Mission) and the City of Fort William. Bray’s recommendation was that the Government of Canada pay up to $250,000 for the property. Understandably, the Jesuits sought an independent assessment of the property’s value. The private assessment firm of Mitchell & Ruttan located in Port Arthur placed the property’s value at $609,000 with the stipulation that if, in the space of twenty-five years, there was the likelihood that the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway would develop the entire 1600 acres then the value ‘should be greatly augmented.’ By March 1905 the [town] of Fort William and the Grand Trunk Pacific had concluded a final agreement whereby the railway’s terminals would be located on the 1600 acres . . . which would now be incorporated into the town of Fort William. A year later, financial arrangements were concluded between the Indian Affairs Department and the Fort William First Nation, the Jesuit Community, and the Sisters of St. Joseph. Throughout the negotiations for the sale of the land to the Grand Trunk Pacific they contemplated a new location. To replicate what some have termed a
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‘novel religious and educational development’ . . . fifty-eight years earlier, would require a unity of mood and purpose that was found wanting in 1906.
“Father Prosper Lamarche implored the Fort William First Nation . . . to stick together in the move to another location. If their church and school meant anything to them then ideally all families would settle in one place. He left the decision in their hands. Wherever they decided to go as a group the Jesuit Community would follow. Lamarche realized, however, that consensus on this issue would be difficult. He was enough of a realist to recognize that when material and spiritual interests came into conflict the former invariably superseded the latter. He also realized that an increasing number of the Fort William Indian Band were no longer hunters and fishers. Their livelihood increasingly became dependent on Fort William’s burgeoning economy. Since the early 1890s, members of the Fort William Indian Band cut and sold cordwood on their reserve to Fort William families for domestic use. Moreover, extensive cutting operations were carried out on the reserve by timber and pulp and paper companies. . . . the band chief often served as the contractor for the companies seeking wood in close proximity to their operations. Because Band members lived so close to Fort William they [found] employment with the elevators and CPR sheds along the Kam River to supplement a more traditional livelihood based on subsistence agriculture, trapping, and fishing.
“Faced with these economic realities, the Fort William Indian Band had two choices before them . . . to move to Squaw Bay (Mission Bay) on Lake Superior 10 miles south of the original mission site or to remain close to the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway operations on Mountain Road, approximately 2 miles west of the former mission site. [Chief Penassie], speaking for a significant group on the reserve, was unequivocally opposed to moving to Mission Bay. The land was rocky and unsuitable for farming. Above all, Mission Bay was remote from the town of Fort William where many women on the reserve [found] employment as domestic servants. Band members also valued the many acts of charity . . . from the people of Fort William. Would this be jeopardized if they moved to Mission Bay? A strong argument for relocating to Mission Bay, however, was put forth by the fishers of the Band. Commercial fishermen of Fort William and Port Arthur passed by on a regular basis and the money made would more than compensate for that lost by the women giving up their work in town. By the spring of 1906, the Fort William Indian Band was hopelessly divided. Twenty-three families opted for Mountain Road while thirty-seven favoured Mission Bay. Although the Jesuits were inclined to follow the majority, they needed direction from the Most Rev. D. J. Scollard, Bishop of Sault Ste. Marie. The Department of Indian Affairs and the Grand Trunk Pacific expected the Fort William Indian Band to be off the Mission site and settled at their new location by early 1906. Bishop Scollard was impressed . . . by the Jesuit Community’s . . . offering to follow the majority of the . . . Band members wherever they might go. He therefore believed that the Chief . . . and the minority who wished to locate at the base of Mount McKay should acquiesce to the will of the majority and re-establish their community at Mission Bay.
“Parenthetically, the move to Mission Bay also entailed the relocation of the historic Mission cemetery . . . 381 Indian and 364 non-Indian. . . .
“The move to Mission Bay during 1906 and 1907 spelt the death knell of the Fort William Mission as a unified Roman Catholic community. In the spring of 1907, Chief Penassie lamented the existence of two missions—one at Mission Bay and the other at Mountain Road. . . .” Roy Piovesana, Hope and Charity: Diocese of Thunder Bay An Illustrated History (Thunder Bay: The Roman Catholic Bishop of Thunder Bay, 2002), 20-22 (The description of the reserve is given by Morris, The Treaties of Canada with the Indians, 304.)
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ESTABLISHING THE GENOCIDAL SYSTEM
The Aborigines Protection Society in England was concerned about the Imperial Government’s conceding control over Indigenous People to colonial governments controlled by settler folk. The British Government maintained its responsibility for the First Nations in the Province of Canada until 1860 (a dozen years after the concession of Responsible Government). During this period, the Military Secretary to the Governor remained the official in charge of Indian affairs and responsible for the annual grant of gifts to the Indian allies of the British Crown. However, the Canadian Government expected to be given responsibility and the Legislature in 1857 passed an Act to encourage the gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes in this Province. The intention to break up the communities we now call First Nations was clear from the outset:
“Whereas it is desirable to encourage the progress of Civilization among the Indian Tribes in this Province, and the gradual removal of all legal distinctions between them and Her Majesty’s other Canadian Subjects, and to facilitate the acquisition of property and the rights accompanying it, by such Individual Members of the said Tribes as shall be found to desire such encouragement and to have deserved it: Therefore, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council and Assembly of Canada enacts as follows:
“. . .
“III. The Visiting Superintendent of each Tribe of Indians, for the time being, the Missionary to such Tribe for the time being, and such other person as the Governor shall appoint from time to time for that purpose, shall be Commissioners for examining Indians, being members of such Tribe, who may desire to avail themselves of this Act, and for making due inquiries concerning them: and such Commissioners shall meet for the said purposes at such places and times as the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs shall from time to time direct, and shall have full power to make such examination and inquiry: and if such Commissioners shall report in writing to the Governor that any such Indian of the male sex, and not under twenty-one years of age, is able to speak, read and write either the English [sic] or the french [sic] language readily and well, and is sufficiently advanced in the elementary branches of education and is of good moral character and free from debt, then it shall be competent to the Governor to cause notice to be given in the Official Gazette of this Province, that such Indian is enfranchised under this Act; and the provisions of the third section of the Act aforesaid, and all other enactments making any distinction between the legal rights and liabilities of Indians and those of Her Majesty’s other subjects, shall cease to apply to any Indian so declared to be enfranchised, who shall no longer be deemed an Indian within the meaning thereof.” (Google provides the text of this Act.)
THE POSSIBILITY OF CULTURAL SYNTHESIS
Sociologist David Nock has explored the career of one Anglican missionary, Edward Francis Wilson, who was sent to Canada in 1868 by the Church Missionary Society of the Church of England, left its service in 1873, and founded the Shingwauk and Wawanosh Residential Schools at Sault Ste. Marie (where he served as principal from 1873 to 1893). In considering the alternatives of cultural replacement and cultural synthesis to understand Wilson’s career, Nock cited the American sociologist Ralph Linton’s specification of directed cultural change, “in which one of the groups in contact interferes actively and purposefully with the culture of the other,” and then presented the contrasting vision of Henry Venn: Rev. Edward Francis Wilson 20
“Wilson was sent to Canada by the English Church Missionary Society (C. M.S.) in 1868 to implement the plan of its Honorary Clerical Secretary, Henry Venn, to establish a native church among the Ojibwa of Ontario. This plan, as envisaged by Venn and put into operation in parts of the world as diverse as Canada, Nigeria, New Zealand, and India, would lead to the Christianization of non-European peoples, but would do so largely by relying on the enthusiasm, financial support, and ‘native agency’ of the non-European peoples themselves. Venn also enjoined his missionaries to respect the national habits and identity of these charges.
“It is obvious that this policy must be considered as one of cultural synthesis. No enforced programs would induce non-European people to act as missionary volunteers to their neighbours, nor could enforced change result in non- Europeans voluntarily paying out whatever surplus they might have (what Venn called the Native Church Fund, which was to be administered by natives). Venn was very much against the European missionary’s assuming a dictatorial and permanent presence. He urged white missionaries to seek their own ‘euthanasia’ so as to permit native clergy to take charge. Wilson was to implement this visionary plan of ecclesiastical expansion from 1868 to 1973, at first near Sarnia, then later at Garden River, near Sault Ste. Marie. Wilson’s failure tells us a good deal about why Venn’s plan generally failed at this time, and why Venn’s own successors discarded plans for the Native Church in the Victorian heyday of the C. M. S.” David A. Nock, A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy: Cultural Synthesis vs Cultural Replacement (Editions SR 9; Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1988), 2 and 3
THE DOMINION ASSERTED CONTROL OVER INDIANS
According to the British North America Act passed by the British Parliament in 1867, the Dominion Government was given responsibility for “Indians and lands reserved for Indians” at the same time that the provinces were given authority over natural resources. Canada’s imperial system was asserted in the Indian Act passed in 1876 by the Liberal government elected following the Pacific Scandal. By one provision, Indians were largely separated from the surrounding communities and the national economy. The following comments were made during debate on clause 69 of the proposed Indian Act, which prohibited the sale of presents given by the government and other property without the consent of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs:
Sir John A. Macdonald, Attorney General of Canada, West (Ontario), 1857. Prime Minister “Sir John A. Macdonald supposed a case in connection with which a difficulty might of the Dominion of Canada from arise: a squaw might buy a hen which might lay half a dozen of eggs. She might take 1867-1873 and 1878, to his death on June 6, 1891. these to market, and if any one bought them without a certificate in writing from the Superintendent he ran the risk of being sent to gaol for six months. This was rather a hard law.
“Mr. White (Hastings) related an instance in which a difficulty had improperly arisen owing to the exertion of this provision. Unless they encouraged Indians in being honest, he added, they would not be honest; and unless they encouraged them to work for their own support, they would not do so. The Clause ought to be changed, as it was detrimental to the interests of the Indians.
“Sir John A. Macdonald—I think that the last part of the clause [relating to the penalty] ought to be struck out.” Debates of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada. Third Session—Third Parliament 1876, 932
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NEGOTIATING MORE TREATIES
When the Hudson’s Bay Company yielded its domain to Canada in 1870—an event that was delayed by the Red River Resistance of the Métis—the Indigenous People living in Rupert’s Land faced the challenge of establishing relations with Canada. The third of the numbered series of treaties was achieved in 1873 at the Northwest Angle with the Ojibwa living in the Rainy River valley and the Lake of the Woods region. Treaty Number 9 was not achieved until 1905, when meetings led to acceptance of the treaty Canada had worked out with Ontario and reserves were Hudson's Bay Company officials in an express canoe crossing a lake. 1925 Courtesy LAC authorized for the Indigenous People at Osnaburgh, Fort Hope, Marten Falls, English River, Fort Albany, Moose Factory, and New Post. In 1906, reserves were declared for the Indigenous People at Abitibi, Matechewan, Mattagami, Flying Post, Chapleau (both Ojibwa and Cree), New Brunswick House, and Long Lake. Adhesions to Treaty Nine occurred in 1929 at Trout Lake and in 1930 at Fort Severn and Winisk. The desire for their children to be educated was clear in all of these negotiations, as a speech by the Lac Seul Chief—who was central to the success of the negotiations in 1873—indicated:
“I understand the matter that he asks; if he puts a question to me as well as to others, I say so as well as the rest. We are the first that were planted here; we would ask you to assist us with every kind of implement to use for our benefit, to enable us to perform our work; a little of everything and money. We would borrow your cattle; we ask you this for our support; I will find whereon to feed them. The waters out of which you sometimes take food for yourselves, we will lend you in return. . . . If you give what I ask, the time may come when I will ask you to lend me one of your daughters and one of your sons to live with us; and in return I will lend you one of my daughters and one of my sons for you to teach what is good, and after they have learned, to teach us. If you grant us what I ask, although I do not know you, I will shake hands with you. This is all I have to say.
“Governor [Alexander Morris]—‘I have heard and I have learned something. I have learned that you are not all of one mind. I know that your interests are not the same—that some of you live in the north far away from the river; and some live on the river, and that you have got large sums of money for wood that you have cut and sold to the steamboats; but the men in the north have not this advantage. What the Chief said is reasonable; and should you want goods I mean to ask you what amount you would have in goods , so that you would not have to pay the traders’ prices for them. I wish you were all of the same mind as the Chief who has just spoken. He wants his children to be taught. He is right. He wants to get cattle to help him to raise grain for his children. It would be a good thing for you all to be of his mind, and then you would not go away without making this treaty with me.’” Morris, The Treaties of Canada with the Indians, 63-64
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A FATEFUL PRECEDENT ON ABORIGINAL RIGHTS
The first years of the Confederation saw the Dominion extending its authority into Rupert’s Land, while Ontario worked to extend its authority into this territory long claimed by the Hudson’s Bay Company. The struggle included claims that Rat Portage (now part of Kenora) was in both Manitoba and Ontario. The struggle led to an important law suit, as Olive Dickason pointed out:
“Canada’s first aboriginal rights case, St. Catharine’s Milling v. The Queen on the information of the Attorney General of Ontario (1885-89, also known as The Indian Title Case and the Ontario Lands Case), gave rise to two statements that set legal precedents in Canada, one concerning aboriginal rights, the other, provincial rights. At the time, provincial rights aroused the greater passion; indeed, aboriginal rights were considered almost incidental, although they were at the very heart of the dispute.
“The case arose from the long-standing dispute between Ontario and the federal government over the location of the province’s northwestern boundary. When Canada had purchased Rupert’s Land its boundaries had been undefined. When Ottawa extinguished Amerindian title [in part of] the region with Treaty Three it assigned the newly opened territories to Manitoba, as Crown lands in that province were under federal jurisdiction. Ontario, where Crown lands were provincially controlled, charged Ottawa with trying to pare down the size of the older province and thus the area of the jurisdiction in which Ontario was sovereign. Ottawa viewed the situation from a reverse perspective and saw Ontario attempting to encroach on federal prerogatives. In the words of Sir John A. Macdonald, ‘there is not one stick of timber, one acre of land, or one lump of lead, iron or gold that does not belong to the Dominion, or to the people who purchased from the Dominion Government.’ The case went to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, at that time Canada’s supreme court of appeal, which in 1884 decided in favour of Ontario.
“The Prime Minister was not so easily defeated, and delayed enacting the enabling legislation to put the decision into effect; Ontario responded by filing in the Chancery Division of the High Court of Ontario against the federally licensed St. Catharine’s Milling and Lumber Company for illegal logging on provincial lands. The company was caught between two warring levels of government. The case was first heard in 1885 . . . by the Chancellor of Ontario, John Alexander Boyd . . .
“The argument . . . boiled down to exactly what the Dominion had obtained from the Amerindians in Treaty Three. D’Alton McCarthy . . ., acting for the lumber company and hence for Ottawa, based his case on Section 91(24) of the BNA Act, which specified that the Dominion was to bear responsibility for “Indians and lands reserved for Indians.’ By virtue of that section the Dominion had undertaken to extinguish Amerindian title by means of treaties. Before the purchase, the federal argument went, Amerindians had been owners of the land, in fee simple, but subject to the restriction that they could only sell to the Canadian government. Neither provinces nor individuals had the right to buy lands from Amerindians. The Proclamation of 1763 had specifically referred to ‘lands reserved for Indians’; certainly, the Treaty Three territory in question had been in that category at the time of Confederation. Because of the wording of the Proclamation, treaties were an essential prerequisite for the expansion of colonial settlement in British North America, and only the federal authority could engage in that activity.
“McCarthy sought to demonstrate that the Crown had historically acquired land title from Amerindians through purchase rather than conquest. In support of that assertion, he described a long string of treaties with Amerindians
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. . . McCarthy’s argument was that these treaties proved a recognition that aboriginal communities possessed a real estate in their ancestral lands, which included ‘rights to occupy the land, to cut timber, and to claim the mines and minerals from the land.’ What was more, these rights were hereditary. The Dominion had purchased these rights in Treaty Three; thus it had acted within its proper jurisdiction when it had granted a timber-cutting licence to St. Catharine’s Milling and Lumber Company.
“Oliver Mowat, . . . Premier of Ontario, appeared for the plaintiffs. He was blunt: ‘We say there is no Indian title in law or in equity. The claim of the Indian is simply moral and no more.’ Property . . . could only be regarded as a ‘creature of law,’ capable of being sustained only as long as the law that created it exists. Since Amerindians had no rules or regulations that could be considered laws, they had no title to their ancestral territories that could be recog-nized by the Crown. There could be no such thing as Indian title independent of the Crown’s law. During the course of the province’s arguments, Indians were described as an ‘inferior race . . . in an inferior state of civilization’ who had ‘no government and no organization, and cannot be regarded as a nation capable of holding lands.’
“Mowat’s case referred back to Calvin’s Case (1608) in England, a famous controversy during the course of which the prerogatives of the King were defined. Whenever the Crown conquered a non-Christian people, the Crown’s law immediately replaced any laws the pagans might have recognized among themselves. Mowat widened the argument to include the ‘discovery’ by Christian kings of territories where pagans dwelt: “At the time of the discovery of America, and long after, it was an accepted rule that heathen and infidel nations were perpetual enemies, and that the Christian prince or people first discovering and taking possession of the country became its absolute proprietor, and could deal with the land as such.’ As for the Proclamation of 1763, Mowat called it ‘a provisional arrangement’ that had been expressly repealed by the Québec Act of 1774. In any event, it was not a recognition of any pre-existing title but the source of whatever title Amerindians might possess, which was entirely at the pleasure of the Crown. The Proclamation had reserved lands for Amerindians only ‘for the present,’ a temporary provision that had been pre-empted by the Québec Act. As for Treaty Three, since Indians had never owned the land in fee simple, they had nothing to convey to the federal government. Mowat concluded by saying that since Ontario had been granted jurisdiction of its Crown lands under the terms of Confederation and since the disputed territory was geographically within Ontario, then the clearing of its Indian title was in favour of the Crown by right of Ontario. According to Mowat’s reasoning, federal jurisdiction over ‘lands reserved for Indians,’ as provided for at Confederation, applied only to lands that had been specifically reserved for Natives at the signing of the land-cession treaties.
“Three weeks after the first hearing, on June 10, Chancellor Bpyd presented his decision, in the most thorough statement on Amerindian rights that has yet been brought down by a Canadian court. . . . Boyd described Amerindians as characteristically being without fixed abode, moving about as the exigencies of life demanded. ‘As heathens and barbarians it was not thought that they had any proprietary title to the soil, nor any claim thereto as to interfere with the plantations, the general prosecution of colonization.’ As legal ownership of the land had never been attributed to them, he held that Treaty Three Indians had not conveyed any such rights to the federal government. The Dominion government had exceeded its rights in granting a licence to St. Catharine’s Milling Company, which was therefore invalid. According to Boyd, in legal terms Treaty Three was also meaningless; if they so chose, Amerindians could treat with the Crown for the extinction of their primitive right of occupancy. If they refused to do so, the government was not hampered but had perfect liberty to proceed with settlement and development of the country, displacing the aborigines if necessary. He agreed with Ontario that the Proclamation of 1763 had been superseded by the Québec Act of 1774 and was obsolete. Boyd’s judgement continued: ‘Before the appropriation of reserves the Indians have no claim except upon the bounty and benevolence of the Crown. After the appropriation, they become invested with a legally recognized tenure of defined lands; in which they
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have a present right as to the exclusive and absolute usufruct, and a potential right of becoming individual owners in fee after enfranchisement.’
“Boyd’s decision was maintained through three appeals, one to the Ontario Court of Appeal . . ., the second to the Supreme Court of Canada (judgement, June 20, 1887, with two lengthy dissenting opinions), and finally to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (1888). The Privy Council, however, did not accept Ontario’s argument that the Proclamation of 1763 was obsolete and upheld its legality. In its view, that did not alter the fact that title to the soil had rested with the Crown even before Treaty Three: ‘The Crown has all along had a present proprietary estate in the land, upon which the Indian title is a mere burden.’ . . . One of the lords, however, did hold that Indians had held a right of occupancy before Treaty Three, but it was ‘a personal and usufructuary right, dependant upon the good will of the Sovereign.’ . . .The St. Catherine’s Millling decision still remains in effect, despite some monumental legal battles since. . . .” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 339-4
ACHIEVING A RESERVE DESPITE SETTLER FOLK
Robinson’s 1850 treaty with the First Nations of the Lake Superior basin provided for only three reserves, the one at Fort William, a second at Michipicoton, and the third on Lake Nipigon at Gull Bay (see page 304 of Morris, The Treaties of Canada with the Indians.) Over the next 160 years, other reserves were created. The achievement at Pays Plat, on the new line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, was particularly interesting, as Indian Agent J. P. Donnelly revealed in his report for 1885:
“On the 14thof August I left Red Rock and arrived at Pays Plat River the following day where I found the surveyor engaged by me laying out one mile square on Lake Superior coast with the river running through Plan of parts of Ontario and Quebec showing the lands affected by the Robinson treaty and treaty its centre, and farm lots being laid out fronting on both sides of the no. 3, along with the un-surrendered land. river, four hundred feet frontage by half a mile in length, giving each Courtesy of LAC Indian family a good farm of about thirty acres, situated on the best river on the coast for fine trout and whitefish. I may mention that about a year ago two white men had this same one mile frontage surveyed. The Indians came to me stating that they were about to lose their homes where they had lived for the last thirty years. I immediately represented their case to the Crown Lands Department, Toronto, mentioning that the Indians had settled upon land at Michipicoton River, Pic River and Pays Plat River for upwards of thirty years, and as they had no protection asked for some way of securing them in their improvements and homes. I wrote to the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, enclosing the letter and received instructions to have surveys made; this was done, much to the pleasure and comfort of these different bands, who now feel safe and encouraged to improve their own homes. I remained here three days and paid the Indians after they had chosen and elected their chief, Tom Eagle; had some of the band vaccinated, and proceeded with the surveyor and party to Pic River where we arrived on the night of the 18th. The following morning the surveyor commenced his survey of three miles up the Pic River—[ad]joining the Hudson[‘s] Bay Company’s land or post—and portioned the land into farms of about twenty-five acres to each family fronting on the Pic River. The chief and band expressed themselves very thankful for having had their land surveyed and homes secured to them. They have a church and good school house about the centre of their settlement . . .” Canadian Parliament, Sessional Papers for 1886, Report of the Department of Indian Affairs 4, 94-95
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TREATY PROMISES AND THE IMPERIAL SYSTEM
The Queen’s representatives negotiating the original numbered treaties had to deal with leaders of the Indigenous People determined to provide for their future. In the case of Treaty Six (in present-day Saskatchewan), this led to the promise of a medicine chest, which provided a basis in later years for provision of health care. Chiefs had been unanimous in asking for their children to be educated so they would be prepared for the situation in which they Distant view of Fort Qu'Appelle Indian Industrial now found themselves. When a parsimonious government began to School with tents, [Red River] carts and teepees outside the fence, Lebret, Saskatchewan, [May respond to these demands, they found the Christian churches eager 1885?] Credit: O.B. Buell / Library and Archives to join in the work of cultural change. Over the succeeding century, Canada / PA-182246 the residential schools carried out a policy of genocide that extended to inadequate nourishment and led to the kinds of illnesses that kill people confined in limited space:
“Politicians and bureaucrats thought that [such coercive policies as banning the sun dance] were but temporary measures that would be needed only until the great social curative in which Victorians believed so fervently could do its work. Education was held to be the universal panacea for all kinds of social and economic problems in the nineteenth century. Prime Minister Macdonald acknowledged this implicitly in his defence of the 1885 grant of the vote to eastern Indians: ‘So I say that the Indians living in the older Provinces who Cross Lake Indian Residential School, female students and a nun in a classroom, February 1940. have gone to school—and they all go to school—who are educated, Courtesy of LAC who associate with white men, who are acquainted with all the principles of civilization, who carry out all the practices of civilization, who have accumulated round themselves property, who have good houses, and well furnished houses, who educate their children, who contribute to the public treasury in the same way as the whites do, should possess the franchise.’ In 1892 the superintendent general said ‘that the sacred trust with which Providence has invested the country in the charge of and care for the aborigines committed to it carries with it no more important obligation than the moral, social, literary and industrial training of the Indian youth of both sexes.’ Money spent on Indian education was ‘well spent,’ for it would mean ‘not only the emancipation of the subjects thereof from the condition of ignorance and superstitious blindness in which they are, and their parents before them were sunk, but converting them into useful members of society and contributors to, instead of merely consumers of, the wealth of the country.’
“Experience in Upper Canada had already demonstrated that the Indians desired access to education for their children and that day schools were not effective. In the treaties of the 1870s many western Indians had been promised that they could have schools on their reserves when they wanted them, and in the years following the making of the numbered treaties some steps were taken to support the schools that missionaries had already established or wished to erect near or in Indian settlements. In the 1880s the educational policy for western Canada and British Columbia shifted to boarding institutions.
“The theory behind residential schooling had not changed since Ryerson’s day: it was still an experiment in social engineering. As the DIA 1889 Annual Report put it: ‘The boarding school disassociates the Indian child from
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deleterious home influences to which he would otherwise be subjected. It reclaims him from the uncivilized state in which he has been brought up. It brings him into contact from day to day with all that tends to effect a change in his views and habits of life. By precept and example he is taught to endeavour to excel in what will be most useful to him.’ The underlying purpose of residential schooling was what the Americans called ‘aggressive civilization.’
“Initially, Indians welcomed offers of education for their young in western Canada as they had in the east. . . . Indians wanted enough schooling to enable them to cope with the new order . . . From 1883 onward the federal government established ‘industrial schools’ off the reserve at which Indian children would be educated and trained far from parental and band influence. . . . A parallel system of boarding schools, which were less ambitious and less well financed than the industrial schools, persisted after 1883. Industrial and boarding schools both aimed at the assimilation of the Indian children.
“The residential schools were operated in uneasy tandem by government and the missionary societies of the Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. Part of the unease arose from denominational rivalries among churches in various locations. More stemmed from the tug of war over funds between Indian Affairs and the missionaries. . . . Parliament was forever complaining about the heavy costs of Indian Affairs. . . . Moreover, both teachers and officials encountered substantial Indian opposition to residential schooling. In some cases parents complained that their children worked too long in fields and shops, while learning too little in classes. In other cases they objected to the harsh discipline, including corporal punishment, and the poor food. By the early twentieth century the escalating death rates were becoming a public scandal as well as reason for both parental and student refusal to cooperate with the residential schooling experiment. . .” J. R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 195-97
CHALLENGES TO THE TRADITIONAL WAY OF LIFE
Treaty negotiations, to the extent they were actually negotiations, always included Canada’s promise that the Indigenous People would be able to live by their traditional pursuits of fishing, gathering, and hunting on lands not required by the Crown and not alienated to Euro-Canadians for resource development. In Northern Ontario, however, these assurances were challenged in a variety of ways: by the entry of Euro-Canadian trappers and American fishing companies, the imposition of Ontario’s game laws, the limitations
Caribou Lake [Ont.] Indian Boys with their bows and on hunting involved in the Canada-US Migratory Birds Convention, arrows with which they can shoot very accurately. and the creation of parks in which Indigenous People were denied Credit: Canada. Dept. of Indian Affairs and Northern the right to hunt while Euro-Canadians hunted there all too freely. Development / Library and Archives Canada / C-068930 According to anthropologist Ken Dawson:
“. . . Based on oral and other records, there appears to have been a substantial number of prosecutions under the Game and Fisheries Act. The legal records show few cases but this reflects the defendants’ . . . inability to finance appeals which would appear in the official legal records . . . Examples of the Province’s approach follow.
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“At Nipigon, the trader William McKirdy, whose livelihood depended on trappers, was incensed with the continuing police actions of the province. They were constantly arresting Indians under the game laws. He wrote the Attorney General in 1892 posing the question of special Indian rights and pointing out that the Indians in the region had no means of living except by hunting. The province’s reply stated that laws in Ontario apply equally to all, Indians and settlers like. They could kill game for food but not for sale. McKirdy wrote again stating that Indians had an absolute need to sell furs. The reply was evasive reflecting a pattern of selective enforcement (Harring 1998:122). In another situation in 1902 W. F. Langworthy, the Provincial Crown Attorney at Port Arthur, wrote for instructions after a Federal Indian Agent defended two Indians for shooting a moose off their reserve near Sturgeon Lake. The Provincial Attorney General replied that the fish and game laws applied to them the same as anyone else. Ontario later argued that treaty promises were subject to the future government regulations [Provincial laws] (Wright R 1994). This certainly was not discussed at the treaty [making]. The Indians had no choice but to continue to hunt and fish while risking arrest. The province has consistently attempted to limit the exercise of treaty rights and if defeated in a lower court it changes tactics withdrawing for a time or shifting to a different region or administration but restricting their appeals if any to lower courts.” K. C. A. Dawson, Original People and Euro-Canadians in Northwestern Ontario: The Road West, The Hinge of a Developing State, Northern and Regional Studies Series, Volume 11 (Thunder Bay: Lakehead University Centre for Northern Studies, 2004), 45 [The bracketed references are to Sidney L. Harring, White Man’s Law: Native People in Nineteenth-Century Canadian Jurisprudence (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), and Ronald Wright, “The Public Right of fishing, Government Fishing Policy and Indian Fishing Rights in Upper Canada,” Ontario History 86, no. 4 (1994): 327-62]
THE CREATION OF A NATIVE CHURCH
If the missionaries of the Church of England did not follow Henry Venn’s admonition to plant the seed and withdraw to let Indigenous Christian fellowships develop, the work of Methodist missionary Frederick Stevens produced a remarkable Native church built on a point into Caribou Lake in 1917. The story of Adam Fiddler is presented in the book, Killing the Shamen, based on the oral testimony of Chief Thomas Fiddler and other Indigenous people and compiled by James Stevens:
“When he was a young man Adam Fiddler, younger brother of the Sucker clan leader, Robert Fiddler, was known to have had ‘a remarkable spiritual experience.’ A figure of Jesus Christ, the white leader in after-life came to Adam in a dream. This revelation occurred sometime after Adam’s 1901 journey to Norway House with the Methodist missionary, Frederick Stevens. Jesus Christ, another-than-human, became a guide, for Adam was able to learn much of Christianity through the syllabic bibles that had been printed and from his conversations with Stevens. Literate in syllabics, as were most members, Adam kept records of his spiritual activities in a set of books.
“Adam, however, was cautious in what he accepted from Christian spiritualism for he was not a foolish man. He did not discard what he found good and necessary in his forest beliefs and he is best described as a Holy Man among the clansmen rather than a Methodist Christian. Adam Fiddler was a Sucker clansman who could confront windigo, utilize the shaking tent, issue prophecies, and sing over his drum. Adam Fiddler was more than a Christian.
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“Adam’s adoption of some Christian beliefs, though, did start a process of change away from some of the ancient ways.
“Thomas Fiddler: When Adam Fiddler was married, he dreamt a vision—a certain light came and after that he knew he was going to receive the Lord Jesus. After this, things started to change. Religion caused people to reject supernatural powers.
“. . . they believed, before, when a baby died in a tikanogan, the spirit of the baby was still in that tikanogan. People believed that through the shaking tent a person could relive, even babies could relive. Through the shaking tent, they asked the dead baby—now in the grave and the beyond—to do favours for the people.
“People kept certain things that belonged to a dead person. For dead men they keep items that were used in living—an axe, gun, or trap. For dead women they keep the clothes that the deceased wore. For babies they keep clothing. People who believe in the shaking tent would take these belongings and communicate with the dead person. They would ask the dead person to help them cure illness. People had majestic powers to do this.
“In Adam’s dream, it was shown that people shouldn’t falsely use the shaking tent between the living and the dead. Adam believed the personal things of the dead should be put away and not used. Adam believed that it was better to burn the belongings of the dead people; leave them dead and not communicate with them anymore“.
“At this time of Adam’s vision, people started to question conjuring. A controversy occurred between Adam and the rest of the Sandy Lakers, for Adam was introducing Christianity. It was Adam who turned everyone toward Christianity.
“’No more,’ Adam told the people, ‘if you don’t believe in conjuring it won’t happen. What you do not believe in, will not happen.
“Adam still used the shaking tent after this but it was for good. He used the shaking tent to get rid of bad things. Adam said: ‘As the wind blows and the tent shakes, it washes our sins away.’
“Adam still beat his drums as an expression of joy to Manitou. When Adam used these powers, he didn’t do it secretly.
“It was a minister from Island Lake [the Reverend Frederick George Stevens] that persuaded Adam that he should become a minister for the Methodists.” Chief Thomas Fiddler and James R. Stevens, Killing the Shamen (Moonbeam, ON: Penumbra, 1985), 173-75
DENIAL OF THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE
One of the ways in which the Indigenous People experienced Canada’s imperial system was in the Canadian government’s refusal to let them organize beyond their reserves. Only as the imperial era came into question did the government’s attitude change:
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“. . . In 1927, political organizations beyond local levels of government were in effect banned when Amerindians were denied the right to raise funds without permission. The department had always looked askance at Indian attempts to organize politically and had barely tolerated the first successful effort, the Grand Indian Council of Ontario and Quebec, launched by Iroquois and Ojibwa in 1870. Eventually the department forced its dissolution by cutting off its funds. The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 shifted official attention to other areas, particularly those of business and economics; Indian affairs drifted into a state of flux and ad hoc decisions, in contrast to the directed policies that had marked the period from Confedera-tion to the end of the First World War. In 1936, Indian administration was absorbed by the Department of Mines and Resources, which was far more concerned with development than with the social problems of the Natives. In fact, in the Far North, economic considerations overtook the civilizing program, and the Amerindians were encouraged in their traditional hunting and trapping activities as that enabled them to be self-sufficient instead of becoming a burden on the public purse.
“During this period a Mohawk veteran of the First World War, Frederick Ogilvie Loft . . ., tried to organize Amerindians into a national group he called the League of Indians. His proposals included giving the Indians the vote without losing their special status and allowing them greater control over band properties and funds, which in any event should be better managed and accounted for. The department branded him an agitator, placed him under police surveillance, and sought to nullify his efforts by attempting to enfranchise him against his will. The League came to nought, but the need for a pan-Indian organization was recognized, and would be realized in the National Indian Brotherhood, which originally was only for treaty Indians but soon after its founding in 1968 expanded to act on behalf of Native groups across Canada; it lasted until 1982, when the still-existing Assembly of First Nations emerged as the national Native voice.” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 328
THE BENEFICENT ROLE OF ONE INDIAN AGENT
We lack a history of the imperial system of the Department of Indian Affairs and its agents across the country. Some of the Indian Agents were conscientious in their defence of the people living on the reserves in their districts, as was true of Indian Agent Donnelly who succeeded in establishing the reserve of the Pays Plat First Nation in 1885. Historian Mark Kuhlberg has provided a detailed assessment of another Indian Agent:
“James Gerry Burk . . . as the Indian agent for roughly 30 years (1923-53) in much of what is now Ontario’s Thunder Bay District, . . . was motivated by neither the fanciful notions of a romantic idealist nor the racist assumptions of his contemporary Euro-Canadians. Instead, Burk’s motivation was to help his Native clients in simple and innovative ways that would produce concrete and meaningful improvements in their lives at a time when their very survival was cast into doubt. His actions demonstrated that he believed the Natives were just like him, keen to enjoy an independent existence and capable of adapting to the ‘modern’ economy by being employed in both low- and high-skilled jobs within it. This perspective spurred Burk to formulate multiple plans to facilitate economic development in his bailiwick, with the ultimate aim being the creation of a group of autarkic communities. Remarkably, even though this goal resonated with those set out by the [Department of Indian Affairs]’s senior policy-makers, Burke’s superiors in Ottawa threw myriad obstacles in his way because of their obsession with parsimony, strict insistence upon adherence to their rules and regulations, and a concomitant uncompromising refusal to support initiatives—however prudent—proposed by field officers. Notwithstanding these perpetual encumbrances, he demonstrated a steadfast devotion to staying the course. Burk’s career thus testified to the
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indomitable spirit of at least one departmental official who battled tenaciously to improve the lives of the Aboriginal peoples.” Mark Kuhlberg, “’Mr. Burk Is Most Interested in Their Welfare’: J. G. Burk’s Campaign to Help the Anishinabeg of Northwestern Ontario, 1923-53,” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes 45, no. 1 (Hiver 2011 Winter): 58-89
A LEADING ANTHROPOLOGIST ENVISIONED EXTINCTION
Diamond Jenness was appointed the Chief Anthropologist at the National Museum of Canada in 1926 and had a long and illustrious career. Although his greatest contributions were made in the Arctic, The Indians of Canada first published in 1932 lived up to its name in providing both a historical survey and a national view of all of the Indigenous People. The last chapter of the historical survey considered “Interaction of Indians and Whites,” and one paragraph is particularly noteworthy:
“The tribes north of the St. Lawrence, and the Ojibwa bands north of the Great Lakes, have readjusted their lives less perfectly [than the tribes of the Maritime Provinces and of the St. Lawrence valley who bore the brunt of the first invasion]. Their territories were heavily forested, permitting of agriculture only in certain localities, and then only after extensive clearing. The fur trade kept them moderately prosperous in earlier days, but the game has greatly diminished since white trappers have encroached on their domains, prospectors, mining and lumber companies have invaded the region, and finally the railways have driven thin lines of settlements through some of the best hunting-grounds. So trapping brings in ever dwindling return, while the needs of Indians have increased rather than decreased. The enterprising white man despises them for their unprogressiveness, and mining and lumber camps undermine both their morale and their morals. Miscegenation occurs slowly, but only with the lowest class of whites who bring about no improvement. So civilization, as it flows past their doors, seems to be entrapping them in a backwash that leaves only one issue, the absorption of a few families into the aggressive white race and the decline and extinction of the remainder.” Diamond Jenness, The Indians of Canada, Bulletin 65, Anthropological Series No. 15 (5th ed.; Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, 1960), 260.
REVISION OF THE INDIAN ACT AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR
The participation of Indigenous People in the war effort helped to change attitudes toward them. The revelations of Nazi anti-Semitism in the death camps of the Holocaust did even more to sensitize Canadians to the nature of Canadian Indian policy. Olive Dickason has described the result:
“The Second World War ushered in a change of attitude. Amerindians, despite the fact they were not citizens, enlisted in proportionately higher numbers than did any other segment of the general population; it has been estimated that they numbered up to 6,000. When they returned to civilian life, the restrictions and inequities of their lot on reserves became so glaringly evident that veterans’ organizations and church groups mounted a campaign that resulted in the establishment of a Joint Senate and House of Commons Committee on the Indian Act, which held hearings from 1946 to 1948. Amerindians rejected the first draft of the proposed revisions. Led by
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James Gladstone of the Blood [First Nation in Alberta] (Akay-na-muka, ‘Many Guns,’ . . .), they claimed that the draft took away almost all the things that were good about the original Act and replaced them with provisions better designed for concentration camps than for reservations. Faced with such protests, the government set about revising the revisions. This time Indian witnesses were heard, the first time for such consultations at that level. While unanimity was far from being achieved, the psychological importance of allowing some Native input would be difficult to overestimate. Treaties and treaty rights concerned the Indians most, and they wanted these left in place, but with the freedom to govern themselves; land claims were not far behind. For the government, the goal continued to be assimilation, or as it was worded, transformation from the status of wards to that of full citizenship, but by encouragement as the original Act of 1876 had aimed for rather than the compulsion that characterized the amendments between 1880 and 1951. The revised Act of 1951 can hardly be called revolutionary, but it still heralded the dawn of a new era.” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 328-29
ANOTHER ANTHROPOLOGIST FOCUSED THE FAILURE OF INDIAN POLICY
The new era that Olive Dickason saw found expression in novel actions and searching studies. Appointment of James Gladstone to the Senate in 1958 was one of the truly novel actions. Establishment of the Hawthorn enquiry led to a critical examination of the Indigenous People and revealed the shortcomings of Canada’s Indian policy:
“The obviously marginalized position of Amerindians . . . spurred the federal government in 1963 to appoint anthropologist Harry B. Hawthorn to investigate and report on their social, educational, and economic conditions. His report, which appeared in 1966, listed 151 recommendations, the underlying themes of which were that an Amerindian should not be forced to ‘acquire those values of the majority society he does not hold, or wish to acquire,’ and that the department should assume a more active role as advocate for Indian interests, both in government and in society as a whole. The report supported the continuation of the Indian Act but in modified form. It emphasized that Aboriginals were not taking advantage of even the limited opportunities for self- government allowed them by the Indian Act, and [it] revealed that their average per capita income was $600, compared to $1,400 for white Canadians, [and] that their schooling was far below the national average, with a dropout rate of 94 per cent prior to high school graduation. The report urged that Indians have available to them the opportunity of being taught in their own languages. School texts were often not only inaccurate on the subject of Amerindians, they were usually insulting.” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 384
MEANWHILE, THE DEPARTMENT REMAINED IN CONTROL
Hawthorn had noted the failure of most bands to act on the authority given them by the amended Act of 1951: “between 1951 and 1964, 118 bands (out of 577 at that time) had passed a total of 338 by-laws, an average of about three per band; only 23 per cent of all bands in Canada had passed at least one by-law. This reflected the veto over any band decision that could be exercised by the governor-in-council”:
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“In other words, the exercise of authority from without was flourishing on the reserves. According to Hawthorn, Amerindians reacted by orienting themselves primarily to family, extended kinship, and other groupings that did not necessarily relate to the reserve community as defined by Ottawa. Band councils persisted, not because they were perceived as responding to important local government needs but because the government insisted on dealing through them. This meant that local government failed on some reserves, particularly those in rural or isolated areas where the agency system continued (it lasted until 1969). By complying with the system, bands assured themselves of more generous welfare grants; the price was that they were not responsible for decisions affecting their lives. This pattern of dependency took such root that in some cases bands actually voted against local autonomy. Even some urbanized bands took that stand . . . Another consequence of the acceptance of welfare was the weakening of communal activities; welfare cheques have encouraged individualism and dependence on outside sources, and these factors have worked against community solidarity. This was a trend that had begun with the fur trade, with its emphasis on individual reward for individual effort.” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 385
THE WHITE PAPER ON INDIAN AFFAIRS 1969
The second period came to an end in the White Paper on Indian Affairs, tabled in 1969 by the Trudeau Liberal Government. Profoundly liberal in his political principles—which helped to explain his disdain for the nationalism of the Québeçois—Pierre Elliott Trudeau regarded the existence of First Nations as an anomaly in Canada and proposed the abolition of Canada’s imperial system, as well as the communities under its control. White Papers are declarations of governmental policy; this was not a document meant to elicit policy discussion:
“In 1969 Ottawa came up with what has been described as a ‘breathtaking governmental recipe for equality.’ This was the White Paper, a proposal designed to break ‘the pattern of 200 years’ and to abolish the existing framework of Amerindian administration, widely criticized for setting Amerindians apart and hindering their development.’ In part, the White Paper was a response to the American Indian Movement (‘Red Power’) that had arisen in Minnesota in 1968 and was spreading into Canada, challenging the administration to allow Amerindians a greater say in running their own affairs. The government announced it was going ‘to enable the Indian people to be free – free to develop Indian cultures in an environment of legal, social and economic equality with other Canadians’. To this end the [British North America] Act would be amended to terminate the legal distinction between Amerindians and other Canadians, the Indian Act would be repealed, and Amerindians would gradually take control of their reserves, subject to provincial laws. Indian Affairs would be phased out over a period of years, and services that had previously been provided on a special basis would be taken over by the federal and provincial agencies that serve the general public. In short, Amerindians were to become like all other Canadians; their special status would cease. Aboriginal rights were not recognized, and the significance of treaties was challenged.
“In effect, treaties would be terminated. According to the White Paper, ‘A plain reading of the words reveals the limited and minimal promises which were included in them. . . .The significance of the treaties in meeting the economic, educational, health, and welfare needs of the Indian people has always been limited and will continue to decline. . . . once Indian lands are securely within Indian control, the anomaly of treaties between groups in a society and the government of that society will require that these treaties be reviewed to see how they can be equitably ended.’ To help Amerindians adjust to this new situation, Ottawa said it would make $50 million available over five years for their economic development.” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 385-86
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HAROLD CARDINAL’S THE UNJUST SOCIETY
The White Paper on Indian Affairs aroused the anger of First Nations people across the country. Alberta provided a number of the most important reactions, including a book published that same year by Mel Hurtig in Edmonton. Harold Cardinal seized on the Liberal rhetoric of the 1968 election to produce The Unjust Society:
“The history of Canada’s Indians is a shameful chronicle of the white man’s disinterest, his deliberate trampling of Indian rights and his repeated betrayal of our trust. Generations of Indians have grown up behind a buckskin curtain of indifference, ignorance and, all too often, plain bigotry. Now, at a time when our fellow Canadians consider the promise of the Just Society, once more the Indians of Canada are betrayed by a programme which offers nothing more than cultural genocide.
“The new Indian policy promulgated by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s government, under the auspices of the Honourable Jean Chrétien, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and Deputy Minister John A. MacDonald, and presented in June of 1969 is a thinly disguised programme of extermination through assimilation. For the Indian to survive, says the government in effect, he must become a good little brown white man. The Americans to the south of us used to have a saying: ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian.’ The MacDonald- Chrétien doctrine would amend this but slightly to, ‘The only good Indian is a non-Indian.’
“The federal government, instead of acknowledging its legal and moral responsibilities to the Indians of Canada and honouring the treaties that the Indians signed in good faith, now proposes to wash its hands of Indians entirely, passing the buck to the provincial governments.
“Small wonder that in 1969, in the one hundred and second year of Canadian confede-ration, the native people of Canada look back on generations of accumulated frustration under conditions which can only be described as colonial, brutal and tyrannical, and look to the future with the gravest of doubts.
“Torrents of words have been spoken and written about Indians since the arrival of the white man on the North American continent. Endless columns of statistics have been compiled. Countless programmes have been prepared for Indians by non-Indians. Faced with society’s general indifference and a massive accumulation of misdirected, often insincere efforts, the greatest mistake the Indian has made has been to remain so long silent.
“As an Indian writing about a situation I am living and experiencing in common with thousands of our people it is my hope that this book will open the eyes of the Canadian public to its shame. In these pages I hope to cut through bureaucratic doubletalk to show what it means to be an Indian in Canada. I intend to document the betrayals of our trust, to show step by step how a dictatorial bureaucracy has eroded our rights, atrophied our culture and robbed us of simple human dignity. I will expose the ignorance and bigotry that has impeded our progress, the eighty years of educational neglect that have hobbled our young people for generations, the gutless politicians who have knowingly watched us sink in the quicksands of apathy and have failed to extend a hand.
“I hope to point a path to radical change that will admit the Indian with restored pride to his rightful place in the Canadian heritage, that will enable the Indian in Canada at long last to realize his dreams and aspirations and find his place in Canadian society. I will challenge our fellow Canadians to help us; I will warn them of the alternatives.” Harold Cardinal, The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada’s Indians (Edmonton: M. G. Hurtig Ltd., 1969), 1
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THE THIRD PERIOD
WITHDRAWAL OF THE WHITE PAPER
Olive Dickason noted the establishment by the Trudeau government of an Indian Claims Commission and pointed out that they“were following in the footsteps of two American initiatives: the 1952 termination program of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, which pauperized the once affluent Menominees and Klamath before it was halted in 1970; and the General Allotment Act (Dawes Act, 1887), which had resulted in severe attrition of American Indian lands before the Act was repealed in 1934.” Although some Indian leaders supported the goal of equality, “Ottawa had not involved Amerindians in any significant way. The result was that when the policy was issued, it hit a solid wall of opposition. . . . The National Indian Brotherhood said flatly that the proposals were not acceptable to the Amerindians of Canada: ‘We view this as a policy designed to divest us of our aboriginal, residual, and statutory rights. If we accept this policy, and in the process lose our rights and our lands, we become willing partners in cultural genocide. This we cannot do.’ And the protest grew:
“An immediate effect of the White Paper was an enormous increase in research into Indian affairs, not only by academics, government officials, and concerned citizens but also by Amerindians themselves. Among the myriad reports and papers that resulted, the one written by the Alberta Indian Association, Citizens Plus (known as the ‘Red Paper’), was adopted as the official Amerindian response. Rejecting wardship, it still advocated special status, but as defined by the treaties. Eventually the force of the opposition led Trudeau to concede that the government had been ‘very naïve . . . too theoretical . . . too abstract . . . not pragmatic enough or understanding enough.’ He assured an Amerindian delegation, ‘we won’t force any solution on you, because we are not looking for any particular solution.’ The White Paper was formally retracted on March 17, 1971.” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 387-88
HARSH REALITIES AND PROPER TERMINOLOGY
Olive Dickason has also explained the motivation of the Trudeau government and the terminology marking the Third Period:
“Rising administrative costs had been at the heart of this government initiative. There had been a doubling in parliamentary appropriations for Indian Affairs in less than a decade, with an Amerindian population explosion of almost equal proportions. There were then 2,428,114 hectares of reserve land, some in territory never surrendered by Indians. In addition, the school system for the Natives had failed, and there was a growing need for massive social services. Countering these developments, bands were taking more control of their own affairs. In some cases, agents had been asked to leave reserves.
“A side effect of the White Paper was to popularize the term ‘aboriginal rights,’ just coming into use at that time. The term ‘aborigine’ derives from the Latin ab (‘from’) and origo (‘origin’), and was first defined in international
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law in 1918: “’Aborigines are members of uncivilized tribes which inhabit a region at the time a civilized State extends its sovereignty over the region, and which have so inhabited from time immemorial, and also the uncivilized descendants of such persons dwelling in a region.’ Contemporary Natives, of course, unanimously and quite rightly reject the notion that they are ‘uncivilized descendants’ of ‘uncivilized tribes’; however, the term is useful because it takes in Amerindians, Métis, and Inuit, and so has been adopted by all three. An alternative is ‘indigene,’ which does not carry the connotation of ‘uncivilized.’ ‘Aborigine’ was being used in Canada by early in the nineteenth century’; ‘aboriginal right’ appeared in Canadian case law in 1965 in Regina v. White and Bob, a case involving hunting and fishing rights . . . ‘Indian title’ had been the term used in the St. Catharine’s Milling case. As originally used, ‘aboriginal rights’ referred only to land; in 1972 it was defined as ‘those property rights which inure to Native peoples by virtue of their occupation upon certain lands from time immemorial.’ Today, most Native speakers use the term to include rights to self-determination and self-government. . . .” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 388
THE MERCURY POISINING OF A RIVER SYSTEM
Few First Nations of Northern Ontario have been devastated by industrial activity as terribly as have those in the English-Wabigoon River system. Trappers have seen their trap lines disrupted by the cutting operations of the forest companies in many parts of the region, but the poisoning of a whole river system is far worse. Anastasia Shkilnyk experienced these realities in the 1970s:
“Pijibowin is the Ojibwa word for poison. It is used by the people of Grassy Narrows to describe the mercury that 1Grassy Narrows. Photo: Joel Theriault now contaminates their sacred English- Wabigoon River. Between 1962 and 1970, Dryden Chemicals Limited, a pulp and paper mill located about eighty miles upstream from Grassy Narrows, dumped over 20,000 pounds of mercury into the river system as effluent from its chlor-alkali plant. By March 1970, when the Ontario Minister of Energy and Resource Management ordered the company to stop discharging mercury into the environment, the damage was complete and irreversible. Over three hundred miles of the English-Wabigoon river system, with all of its biological life, would probably remain poisoned for half a century or more.
“An environmental disaster can be assessed in many ways. One can measure the sheer force of the impact, the extent of the damage, the effects on human health, the economic losses sustained, or the length of recovery time. Any major disruptive event, however, should also be judged by looking at the vulnerability of the people who are exposed to it. It seems logical that a community that has just suffered a traumatic upheaval in its way of life will
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experience the effects of yet another crisis much more acutely. In such a situation, environmental contamination can no longer be measured in isolation, for its impact interacts with previous events in a complex manner to form a pattern of cumulative injury.
“Coming only a few years after the relocation, the discovery of mercury dealt a devastating blow to the community of Grassy Narrows. Having just been wrenched from their moorings on the old reserve, the people were ill prepared to cope with another misfortune. They had but a precarious hold on the conditions of their existence on the new reserve. They could no longer draw strength either from their relationship to the land or from the well of their faith, which had once given meaning and coherence to their lives. In the context of their traditional religious beliefs, the contamination of the river could only be interpreted as punishment by the Great Spirit for some serious violation of the laws governing man’s relationship to nature. . . . To accept the fact that their ‘River of Life’ had turned into a river of poison meant to lose forever their faith in nature and in the source of life itself.” Anastasia M. Shkilnyk, A Poison Stronger than Love: The Destruction of an Ojibwa Community (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 179
A ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE NORTHERN ENVIRONMENT
After years of discussion of the mercury poisoning of the English-Wabigoon River system, the Ontario government appointed a Royal Commission on the Northern Environment in April 1977. Justice Patrick Hartt of the Ontario Supreme Court was authorized “to conduct an inquiry into major developments north of the 50th parallel of north latitude.” He came to the Whitedog reserve on 9 January 1978 to hear statements from the Grassy Narrows and Whitedog First Nations. Grassy Narrows Chief Simon Fobister “told Justice Hartt that ‘our backs are against an immovable wall.’ In an eloquent and moving testimonial, he traced the band’s history; ‘in summation,
• the intentional undermining of our religion and our way of life from the Treaty to the present day by the Roman Catholic church, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Government; • the loss of income from diminished muskrat trapping due to hydro flooding; • the Jones Road breaking the isolation factor which helped in the preservation of a way of life; • the progressive addiction due to alcohol made readily available by tourist outfitters and taxi-drivers; • the interdependency and introduction of a foreign value system; • the loss of commercial fishing due to mercury; • the loss of employment and income when Barney Lamm’s Ball Lake Lodge closed due to mercury; • the easy availability of welfare [which] discouraged men from working; • the Chief and Council’s incapability to amend the mercury situation and to provide alternative employment, caused the total physical, mental, and spiritual breakdown of our people. For seven long years we suffered. The average death rate per month was one, and other violent criminal acts were committed. Since 1970, we have had 10 chiefs. In short, we hit rock bottom . . .” Shkilnyk, A Poison Stronger than Love, 224
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GRASSY NARROWS STRUGGLED TO SURVIVE
Chief Simon Fobister described his peoples’ plight eloquently when he addressed the Royal Commission on the Northern Environment. He struggled with equal determination against the mercury pollution he mentioned twice to Justice Patrick Hart. Olive Dickason sketched the struggle over the first two decades. Twenty-five years after publication of her history in 1992, the Ontario government has finally decided to act. But not in the intervening forty-seven years: Elder Bill Fobister “The Ojibwa of the Grassy Narrows and Whitedog reserves, ninety kilometres north of Kenora, Ontario, in the area of Treaty [Three], experienced a different aspect of what could happen as a result of uncontrolled industrial activity. In the 1950s the reserves’ water supplies showed signs of mercury pollution, but it was 1970 before it was discovered that the Reed Paper Company, a subsidiary of the British multinational, Reed International, was dumping methyl-mercury into the English-Wabigoon River system. The mill, 170 kilometres upstream at Dryden, Ontario, built in 1911, had been purchased by Reed in 1961. The contamination forced the reserves to close their commercial fisheries; still, government action was slow, even in the face of growing health problems in the two communities. Eventually, the Ojibwa took matters into their own hands and invited Japanese specialists from Minimata, Japan, where a similar situation had occurred, to assess what was happening. They confirmed the presence of ‘Minimata disease,’ a motor and nervous disorder caused by mercury poisoning. Treaty assurances proved to be of little protection; when Reed announced plans for a new mill in 1974 the people had to prepare their own case on land use and forest management. In the midst of the public scandal, an agreement for the new mill, containing some provision for environmental protection, was signed in 1976. Although contamination levels have been slowly reduced so that they are ‘no longer out of whack with other systems,’ the people must restrict their intake of fish to avoid unacceptable levels of methyl-mercury in their systems, as the recent case of a three-year-old girl has illustrated. Still not considered were the possible effects of logging operations on the traditional subsistence base of wild rice harvesting, not to mention fishing, trapping, and hunting.” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 401
THE FIRST NATIONS OF TREATY NINE ORGANIZE FOR ACTION
The rebirth of indigenous leadership in the Treaty Nine communities found expression in the Grand Council of Treaty 9 in February 1973. The costs of its campaign against Reed Paper in regard to the mercury dumping by its Dryden mill and work with the Hartt Commission on the Northern Environment led to re-organization as the Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) in 1981. After the first NAN Executive Council was elected in March 1984, Grand Council Treaty No. 9 ceased to exist. According to NAN’s Website, the organization:
“represents the legitimate, socioeconomic, and political aspirations of its First Nations members of Northern Ontario to all levels of government in order to allow local self-determi-nation while establishing spiritual, cultural, social, and economic independence. In 1977, Grand Council Treaty No. 9 made a public declaration of the rights and principles of Nishnawbe Aski.
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“NAN’s objectives are:
• Implementing advocacy and policy directives from NAN Chiefs-in-Assembly • Advocating to improve the quality of life for the people in areas of education, lands and resources, health, governance, and justice • Improving the awareness and sustainability of traditions, culture, and language of the people through unity and nationhood • Developing and implementing policies which reflect the aspirations and betterment of the people • Developing strong partnerships with other organizations
“NAN is a political territorial organization representing 49 First Nations communities within northern Ontario with the total population of membership (on and off reserve) estimated around 45,000 people. These communities are grouped by Tribal Council (Windigo First Nations Council, Wabun Tribal Council, Shibogama First Nations Council, Mushkegowuk Council, Matawa First Nations, Keewaytinook Okimakanak, and Independent First Nations Alliance) according to region. Six of the 49 communities are not affiliated with a specific Tribal Council.
“Nan encompasses James Bay Treaty No. 9 and Ontario’s portion of Treaty No. 5, and has a total land mass covering two-thirds of the province of Ontario spanning 210,000 square miles. The people traditionally speak four languages: OjiCree in the west, Ojibway in the central-south area, and Cree and Algonquin in the east.” Website of the Nishnawbe aski Nation “About Us”
GULL BAY ENTERS THE INDUSTRIAL FOREST ECONOMY
In a report prepared for the Royal Commission on the Northern Environment in 1984, Professional Forester John Blair described the activities that enabled the Gull Bay First Nation to enter into the industrial forest economy during the 1970s. Blair described a fateful meeting “in July 1972 [when] I happened to meet Band Councillor Tim Esquega who then had aspirations to be elected Chief of the Band in the forthcoming election. A friendship and mutual respect that have lasted more than ten years grew out of our initial meeting:
“The large-scale logging activity of a timber contractor near the south boundary of the Reserve reminded Band members dramatically that the timber stands within commuting distance of the Reserve had now become a source of marketable forest products for mills at Thunder Bay and elsewhere in the region. This realization led Chief Esquega and his Council to pursue means of capitalizing on this renewable natural resource in order to provide the employment opportunities so desperately needed.
“The sincerity and enthusiasm displayed by the Chief and Council while consulting with the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development during the spring of 1973 encouraged me to conduct a logging feasibility study to determine the potential of the area; the study report was submitted in October 1973. Investigations quickly revealed that the 41 km2 (16 square mile) Gull River Indian Reserve was virtually devoid of merchantable timber as a result of the very severe wild fires that had ravaged the region during the 1930s and the 1950s. More promising was the discovery that excellent merchantable jack pine timber stands were growing on both sides of Highway 527 on sandy soils north of the Reserve, extending as far as Kopka Lake, 24 km (15 miles) away.
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“With the presence of merchantable timber within 24 km of the Gull River Indian Reserve, the Chief and Council engaged legal counsel to assist in the creation of the Gull Bay Development Corporation in accordance with the corporate statutes of the Province of Ontario. On March 13, 1974, the Corporation’s Charter was granted, making the Band a legal corporate entity and enabling it to enter the business world.
“With this achievement, the mechanism was now in place for the settlement of Gull Bay to become a bona fide forest community with an economy based on renewable forest resources (i.e., timber, fish, fur-bearing animals, game, tourism resources, and cones for picking). But Chief Esquega’s dream could become a living reality if, and only if, three additional ingredients were secured: first, the rights to harvest the recently discovered supply of merchantable timber; second, a market for the forest products produced; and third, and most important of all, a community work force of men and women sufficiently motivated to capitalize on the resources at hand. Suddenly the moment of truth had arrived for Band members to take a gigantic step towards becoming masters of their own destiny.
“. . .
“After several meetings at which Chief Esquega reiterated the need for employment for his people and the author explained the potential and plan of operation for the area to meet the needs of the Band, a letter dated June 7, 1973 from Great Lakes Paper Company Limited advised that the company was willing to co-operate with the band in its efforts for an improved lifestyle. Briefly stated, the outcome of discussions between the parties was that the newly formed Corporation was given a two-year time limit in which to establish a viable logging operation on a 101.5 km2 (39.6 square mile) area. A timber licence for the area was granted to the Corporation with the understanding that, if the operation failed, the area would revert to Great Lakes Paper Company Limited, to which it had been committed formerly. This co-operative action of the MNR [Ministry of Natural Resources] and the company provided the Gull Bay Band with an opportunity to demonstrate its willingness to work and its capabilities to operate and control a logging enterprise. At the same time, it protected the interests of Great Lakes Paper and fulfilled the MNR’s requirements.
“This 1973 decision of Great Lakes’ corporate management demonstrates a sensitivity to and an understanding of the poverty of northern native people as well as a willingness to work with energetic entrepreneurs such as Chief Esquega in searching out mutually beneficial solutions to problems and needs. In this case, the Band needed jobs and the company needed a sustained wood supply for its mills.” Producing and Providing: The Story of Kiashke River Native Development Inc.. a report to the Royal Commission on the Northern Environment by John H. Blair, R.P.F. Inc., 1984, 8-10
THE PROBLEM OF CANADIAN LAW
The third period required a transformation of Canadian law relating to the Indigenous People. One of the areas in which the issue became very clear was occupied by the Tema-agama Anishnabay in Northeastern Ontario. Olive Dickason has provided an insightful analysis:
“By far the most exhaustive legal examination to that time of aboriginal rights occurred in Attorney-General of Ontario v. Bear Island Foundation, 1984. At issue was the legal nature of the continuing interest of the Tema-
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agama Anishnabay (Bear Island people) in their ancestral lands, against a provincial government that wished to open up the area for resource and tourist development. The trial lasted 120 days; dozens of witnesses appeared and 3,000 exhibits were filed. The Tema-agama argued that not only was their identity deeply rooted in the region, but no representative of their people had signed the Robinson treaties [in 1850].
“Justice Donald Steele responded with a 284-page decision reiterating Judge Boyd’s position from the St. Catharine’s Milling case [in 1885]—that the British Crown was the only ultimate source of legitimate authority in Canada and that whatever rights Amerindians possess stem from the [Royal] Proclamation of 1763. In other words, in his view, the Proclamation is the source of aboriginal rights in British territories, not a confirmation of pre- existing rights. He expanded this: ‘aboriginal rights exist at the pleasure of the Crown, and they can be extin- guished by treaty, legislation, or administrative acts.’
“In Justice Steele’s view, the British Crown had acquired its rights in Canada by conquest, first against the French (he did not explain how that related to Amerindian title) and then against Pontiac in 1763. He made no mention of the Amerindian allies who had fought for the British on those occasions. The primitive level of Amerindian social organization, the judge wrote, meant that ‘the Indian occupation could not be considered true and legal, and that the Europeans were lawfully entitled to take possession of the land and settle it with colonies.’ In his view, the only law is statutory law, that which has been legislated by an organized state; according to this interpretation, common law could not be deemed law unless enshrined in a court decision. Judge Steele’s decision was upheld in 1989 on the basis of new evidence to the effect that during the Robinson negotiations the Tema-agama had sold their land for $25.
“As historian Tony Hall has pointed out, a legal problem that underlay this trial, as well as that of St. Catharine’s Milling, relates to the BNA Act of 1867. According to its terms, Ottawa was given responsibility for ‘Indians and lands reserved for Indians.’ However, Section 109 stipulated that ‘all lands, mines, minerals and royalties’ from the land were to be the proprietary interest of the four provinces who first made up Confederation. (The prairie provinces obtained control of their natural resources in 1930.) This separation of powers has meant that the provinces have a vested interest in opposing aboriginal land claims.” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 350-51
CANADA FINALLY RECOGNIZED ABORIGINAL RIGHTS
After Pierre Elliott Trudeau was able to lead his party to victory in the 1980 election, he determined to achieve the patriation of the Canadian Constitution. This required two years of far-ranging discussion and intense negotiation with provincial governments, Aboriginal organizations, and other groups. Olive Dickason has surveyed the preceding period as well as the later developments thus:
“The period between the rejection of the 1969 White Paper and the patriation of the British North America Act in 1982 was marked by protest and confrontation, bureaucratic dissension, and political confusion. This was epitomized in a clash between west coast Amerindians and an RCMP riot squad in Ottawa, 1974, that disrupted the opening of Parliament. About 200 Natives had come from Vancouver in what was supposed to have been a peaceful protest against poor living conditions. Nervous authorities called out the riot squad and then brought out the military; this was the first time that such measures were taken against Native demonstrators. The negotiations that preceded the adoption of the Canadian constitution saw considerable Native unrest. As a Dene leader
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observed to Michael Asch, ‘While others are trying to negotiate their way out of Confederation, we are trying to negotiate our way in.’
“Amerindians, Inuit, and Métis, concerned that aboriginal rights be enshrined in the new constitution and convinced they were not being given fair hearing in Canada, sent delegation after delegation to Britain and continental Europe to press their cause on the international scene. The reasoning was that since Canada was a signatory to international covenants obliging her to protect and promote the rights of her first nations, then international pressure could be influential not only in getting her to live up to the commitment but in convincing Canadians that it would be in their best interests to do so. At one point 300 Amerindians went to Britain to present their case to the Queen; at the request of the short-lived Tory government of Joe Clark (1979-80), they were denied an audience.
“Eventually, when the constitutional patriation was accomplished in 1982, Native peoples won recognition of ‘existing’ aboriginal rights, but without a definition of the term; however, there was provision that such rights could not be adversely affected by anything in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Métis were also recognized as aboriginals, a consequence of their earlier recognition by the Manitoba Act of 1870. As a sop for Natives having been excluded from the constitutional negotiations, provision was made for three conferences with first ministers after patriation.
“The term ‘constitution’ as used here is a Western political concept. It provides ‘a set of rationally conceived and formalized rules for the exercise of political powers and, equally important, for the restraint of political power.’ For Indians, the constitution embodies not only the internal sovereignty of the tribe but also symbolizes the aspiration for self-determination for the people. By this time the term ‘aboriginal rights’ was being applied to far more than just land issues; as far as Amerindians were concerned, it also included self-government. Cree lawyer Delia Opekokew elaborated: aboriginal right, she wrote, ‘recognizes our ownership over lands we have traditionally occupied and used and our control and ownership over the resources of the land – water, minerals, timber, wildlife and fisheries.’ What was more, she added, such a right ‘recognizes our Indian government’s sovereignty over our people, lands and resources.’” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 406-07
THE FAILURE OF THE FIRST MINISTERS’ CONFERENCES
The ongoing debate about Aboriginal rights found some political recognition but eventually failed politically, with grave consequences for the Canadian federation. Members of Parliament could support the principle, but the First Ministers refused to do the same. Articles published through the 1980s had argued “that Natives had a right to an ‘independent Indian community’ with powers to make their own laws, and held that this would not be a threat to Canada:
Groups of First Nations march on Parliament Hill, November 16, 1981, to protest the elimination of aboriginal rights in the proposed constitution. More “In 1983 this position received a powerful impetus from publication than one hundred people took part in the march, and a brief Photo:Carl Bigras/The Canadian Press of the Report of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Indian Self-Government, known as the Penner Report after the
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commttee’s chairman, Keith Penner, Liberal MP for Kenora. Acknowledging that Amerindians would rather have self-government than representation in Parliament, the report urged that they be allowed to establish their own level of government, distinct from those of the municipality and the Indian Act. Such changes, it stated, should be entrenched in legislation, which would involve a fundamental restructuring of the relationship between Amerindians and the federal government, including the phasing out of the Indian Act and the Department of Indian Affairs, a process seen as taking about five years. A major result would be the reinforcement of aboriginal rights.
“Hopes were high at the launching of the First Ministers’ Conference in 1983. In the words of Prime Minister Trudeau, ‘we are not here to consider whether there should be institutions of self-government, but how these institutions should be brought into being . . .[and] how they fit into the interlocking system of jurisdictions by which Canada is governed.’ Or, as the ebullient Inuit delegate Zebedee Nungak put it, ‘We’re here to do constructive damage to the status quo.’ That was just what some of the provincial premiers feared; the ideas to be explored and perhaps put into practice were largely untried in the realm of practical politics. As has so often been the case in human history, the prevailing tolerance was for the known evils, not for those unknown. On top of that, Brian Mulroney, Conservative Prime Minister since 1984, at first apparently enthusiastic about resolving the question of aboriginal rights, pulled back, so that the third and last of the conferences, in 1987, was even more frustrating than the first two.
“Not many weeks after the failure of the third conference, the Meech Lake Accord, recognizing Québec as a distinct society and granting special status, was signed by Mulroney and the provincial premiers. The disillusionment among the Amerindians and Inuit was profound: what had been denied to them was now being given to Québec. Amerindians and Inuit rallied, and when the opportunity presented itself to kill the Accord by legislative means, they took it. The occasion was when the provincial legislatures had to ratify the agreement, requiring a unanimous vote. Elijah Harper, an Oji-Cree chief from Red Sucker Lake and the only Native member of the Manitoba legislature (NDP, Rupertsland), withheld his vote, on the grounds that procedural rules were not being followed. The Speaker of the House agreed, observing that the Accord was too important ‘to open the door for some future legal challenge because all the rules weren’t obeyed.’ Time was of the essence, as the matter had been introduced [in] the legislature at the last minute. Harper’s delaying tactics meant that the deadline of June 21 could not be met, and so the Accord died. Harper, incidentally, had been one of the chiefs who had gone to London in 1980 to lobby the Queen for fair treatment of aboriginals in the patriation of the Canadian constitution; at the royal signing of the constitution in Ottawa in 1982, he had refused an invitation to attend.” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 408-09
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CHURCHES SEEK RIGHT RELATIONS WITH INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
As Olive Dickason observed, “The priority of development over local community well-being had never been seriously questioned, no matter what the degree of social disruption.” The mercury pollution of the English-Wabigoon River system might well be the worst Northern Ontario instance of the priority given economic development. Dickason went on to say:
“But times had changed. Now even the churches, traditional instruments for assimilation and upholders of government policy, were questioning the high social price of economic development undertaken without regard to local situations. Anglicans had expressed their concerns in a pamphlet titled Beyond Traplines; the Catholics in Northern Development: At What Cost? In 1986, the General Council of the United Church of Canada publicly apologized The Grassy Narrows & Islington Band to the Native peoples of Canada for seeking to impose on them ‘our civilization as a condition Mercury Disability of accepting the Gospel,’ an attempt that had left everyone involved the poorer. Recognizing Board: A Historical that an apology in itself was not enough, the General Council in 1988 established an All Report 1986-2001 Native Circle Conference as a forum of aboriginal self-government within the church. What this meant in practice, according to Sam Bull of Goodfish Lake Reserve, was that Natives could now sit as equals in church assemblies dealing with Native issues. That same year Rev. Charles Arthurson, a Cree, was elected suffragan (assistant) bishop in the Anglican diocese of Saskatchewan, a first for that church. Three years later, the Canadian Council of Churches convened at the Nayo-Skan Development Centre on the Hobbema Reserve outside of Edmonton to hear Nelson Okeymaw talk on Cree spiritual beliefs, with their stress on respect for Mother Earth. Such an interfaith event would have been unheard of as recently as a few decades. Later that summer, during the annual pilgrimage to Lac Ste. Anne, north of Edmonton, the Canadian Oblates apologized for ‘the hurts caused to some of the Aboriginal peoples by the residential schools,’ and expressed a desire to be ‘part of the healing process whenever necessary.’” Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 402
A ROYAL COMMISSION CONFRONTED THE ISSUES
The confrontation during the summer of 1990 between the town of Oka and the Mohawks of Kanesatake over the construction of a golf course and condominiums on land that included a Mohawk burial ground involved both the Sureté du Québec and the Canadian Army. This long-standing dispute became the immediate pretext for the Canadian government to carry out discussions with Aboriginal leaders across Canada and then, by Order-in-
Oka Crisis Photo: Shaney Komulainen of Council on 16 August 1991, appoint a Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples Canadian Press. to “investigate evolution of the relationship among aboriginal peoples (Indian, Inuit and Métis), the Canadian government, and Canadian society as a whole.” The seven commissioners included four Aboriginal People, with George Erasmus as co-chair with Justice René Dussault of the Québec Court of Appeal. When the Royal Commission (RCAP) released its five-volume report on 21 November 1996, the first chapter asserted:
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“The Commission concludes that a fundamental prerequisite of government policy making in relation to Aboriginal peoples is the participation of Aboriginal peoples themselves. Without their participation there can be no legitimacy and no justice. . . .
“Opening the doors to Aboriginal peoples’ participation is also a means of promoting social harmony. The unilateral exercise of federal authority to make and implement policy can no longer be expected to attract enduring legitimacy; it must be discarded in favour of the principle of participation. It is vital for Canada to be seen as legitimate by all its inhabitants. The strength of a geographically vast and culturally diverse country like Canada rests on the commitment and mutual respect of its peoples. The true vision of Canada is that of a multinational country, strengthened by the commitment of individuals to their natural and historical ties and to a federal union that promotes the equal security and development of all its partners.
“Federal policy toward Aboriginal people has its roots in a power set out in the constitution of 1867. Since early British colonial times a legislative power has been reserved to the central government to protect the interests of Aboriginal peoples, first from local settler interests and, since 1867, from provincial interests. This unique feature of Canadian federalism has continuing significance today, since it includes the means to carry out positive obligations owed to Aboriginal peoples. In this report, we explain that constitutional, legal, and political obligations proscribe the unilateral and arbitrary exercise of this federal power. It must be exercised in furtherance of the interests of Aboriginal peoples and not in derogation of those interests. This is a basic principle of the constitution supplemental to the principle of participation.
“Contemporary Canadians reject the paternalism of yesterday and recognize that Aboriginal people know best how to define and promote their own interests. This report makes a number of recommendations to ensure that the principle of participation is the basis of future federal policy.
“The federal obligation to act in the interests of Aboriginal peoples is now being recognized and implemented by the courts through the concept of fiduciary duty. This concept requires governments to acknowledge Aboriginal people as people who matter, not only in history but in real life today, and who have rights at common law and in the constitution, that it is the federal government’s duty to protect.
“The principle of fiduciary duty and the principle of participation are intimately connected. Whenever governments intend to exercise their constitutional powers to legislate or make policies that may affect Aboriginal peoples in a material way, particularly in an adverse way, they would be wise to engage first in a process of consultation. The constraints imposed by the common law and the constitution on the exercise of arbitrary governmental power would seem to require no less.” Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Volume 1 Looking Forward, Looking Backward, xxv-xxvi
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ONTARIO ARRIVED AT AN UNDERSTANDING WITH FIRST NATIONS
While the Mulroney government was consulting with Aboriginal Peoples and determining to create the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the NDP government of Ontario decided to enter into a political relationship with the First Nations of Ontario. Premier Rae, Minister Wildman, and a large number of First Nations leaders met in the Fort William First Nation on Mount McKay to sign a Statement of Political Relationship in August 1991. In a report prepared for Manitoba’s Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission in 2000, John Giokas observed:
“In 1991 the NDP government of Ontario entered into a political relationship with the First Nations within Ontario’s borders, issuing a Statement of Political Relationship reflecting the agreement between them. This was, in effect, a protocol between the government of Ontario and the governments of the First Nations in which the Ontario government accepted that First Nations exist ‘as distinct nations’ and recognized ‘that its relationships with the First Nations are to be based on the aboriginal rights, including aboriginal title and treaty rights . . .’ as set out in s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. The Ontario government also recognized that ‘First Nations have an inherent right to self-government under the Canadian Constitution’ and agreed to work with them to articulate and implement it.
“The practical impact within government was substantial at the time: the Ontario Native Affairs Secretariat was enlarged, given a new name and provided with broader influence within government, Ontario became more willing to enter with good faith into land claims settlement negotiations with First Nations and the federal government, and the groundwork was laid for legalized Indian gaming (that eventually led to the casino at Rama) which has generated considerable income for First Nations. One of the disappointing aspects for First Nations was that Ontario’s prosecutions of Indian wildlife harvesting offences continued unabated. It was also a disappointment to them that the new Progressive Conservative government [elected in 1995] has declined to act on the basis of the Statement or to enter into a new protocol with them.” John Giokas, “Recognition, Reconciliation and Healing,” paper prepared for the Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission, 15 November 2000, 25-26
ONTARIO HYDRO OFFERED RESTITUTION FOR PAST WRONGS
Whether it was a direct result of the Statement of Political Relationship or a parallel development in Ontario’s great power utility, Ontario Hydro set out to negotiate restitution to First Nations that had suffered from the actions of its predecessor. The Sand Point First Nation, Norval Morrisseau’s people, was invited into such negotiations. The history of the Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek includes the following:
“While the people of Sand Point had been occupying the land for many years, the first ‘public’ record that indicates a community of First Nation people living in Sand Point was an August 9th, 1917 letter from J.D. McLean, Assistant Deputy and Secretary of Indian Affairs, to Albert Grigg, the Ontario Deputy Minister of Lands and Forests. In the letter, McLean inform[ed] Grigg that at least fifteen families, numbering between 60 and 75 people, were living at Sand Point and had been for 50 years, in the area that ‘the Indians desire a reserve for themselves.’ . . . Indeed, in 1918, Indian Affairs directed the surveying of the Sand Point Indian Reserve on Lake Nipigon.
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“Unfortunately, Grigg refused McLean’s offer to [buy] the land for the purposes of creating a reserve, and instead recommended a ‘License of Occupation’ for those living at Sand Point. Ontario government officials were opposed to allowing the people of Sand Point to determine their own destiny . . .
“Throughout the twentieth century, Ontario Power Generation’s predecessors, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario (HEPC) and Ontario Hydro, built several facilities on the Nipigon River, including the hydro- electric generation facilities of Cameron Falls, Alexander Falls, and Pine Portage, as well as the now- decommissioned Virgin Falls Dam. . . . In June of 1927, Indian Agent Burk wrote to the Superintendent of HEPC complaining of high water levels on Lake Nipigon, and attached a written complaint signed by 30 members of the Gull Bay Band and ’28 members of the Sand Point Reserve’ regarding damage from high water levels caused by the Virgin Falls Dam. All of Sand Point’s docks were washed away . . . as well as cellars flooded, gardens . . . eroded,, cabins undermined, and most disturbingly, the Indian Graveyard was impacted. . . . “. . .
“The 20th Century was clearly not kind to the people of Bingwi Neyaashi. Their livelihood and land were destroyed by outside forces: First due to the flooding from the activities of the Hydro-electric Power Commission . . .and then at the hands of the Federal and Provincial governments, who chose to cancel Sand Point’s License of Occupation . . . and turn the reserve into a park. . . . bnafn.ca “However, as determined as ever before, Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek continues to move ahead. First, the settlement by Ontario Power Generation for their predecessor’s damage to Lake Nipigon was a first step in re- building the trust that had been lost after generations of activities without consultation and adequate compensation. And most importantly, in April 2010, an Order-in-Council was passed which finally created a Reserve for the people of Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek. . . .” Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek Website, BNA’s History
CANADA’S RESPONSE TO RCAP
When the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples released its report in 1996, the government of Canada had passed into the hands of Liberals led by the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien, who had been the Minister of Indian Affairs when the Trudeau government tabled its White Paper on Indian Affairs in 1969. The responses to the RCAP report by the Canadian government are summarized in a Wikipedia article on the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement:
“In November 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) issued its final report with 440 recommendations. Indian residential schools were the topic of one chapter. In 1998 in response to the RCAP the Canadian federal government unveiled Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan, a ‘long-term, broad- based policy approach in response to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples which included the ‘Statement of Reconciliation: Learning from the Past,’ in which the ‘Government of Canada recognizes and apologizes to those who experienced physical and sexual abuse at Indian residential schools and acknowledges its role in the development and administration of residential schools.’
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“In 2001, the federal Office of Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada was created to manage and resolve the large number of abuse claims filed by former students against the federal government. In 2004. An Assembly of First Nations Report on Canada’s Dispute Resolution Plan to Compensate for Abuses in Indian Residential Schools led to discussions to develop a holistic, fair and lasting resolution of the legacy of Indian Residential Schools.
“On 23 November 2005, the Canadian federal government announced the [Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement] compensation package. It represents the largest class-action lawsuit in Canadian history. On 11 June 2008, Prime Minister Harper ‘apologized on behalf of the Government of Canada, and all Canadians, for the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their homes and communities to attend Indian residential schools. In this historic Apology, the Prime Minister recognized that there is no room in Canada for the attitudes that created the residential school system to prevail.’
“The [Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement] was announced by the . . . federal government on 8 May 2006 with implementation in September 2007. The five main components of the IRSSA are the Common Experience Payment (CEP), [the] Independent Assessment Process (IAP), the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Commemoration, and Health and Healing Services.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
NEW REALITIES IN INDIAN LAND
The Ipperwash Inquiry, which revealed the role of Premier Mike Harris in pushing the Ontario Provincial Police into actions leading to Dudley George’s being shot by a member of its Tactical Response Unit, heard from the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Services Board about civil disobedience. Bill Gallagher provided an extract from the record of 26 August 2006: Dudley George’s siblings Caroline (Cully) George and Pierre George with Grand Council Chief Patrick Madahbee. Photo by Nicole Latulippe “Nishnawbe-Aski Police Services undertook the task of addressing confrontations, protests, and road blockage over resource development.
“Today, First Nations traditional land occupiers have re-emerged and revitalized their rights to their traditional lands.
“. . . At times, it appears to First Nations that Ontario is taunting them to take more aggressive actions.
“[The] Nishnawbe-Aski police services examined three (3) road blockages erected by First Nations in Northern Ontario. . . . We have included certain parts of Kitchinumaykosib Inninuwug (Platinex) protest.
“Ontario and resource developers are the two (2) main proponents consistently targeted in the direct actions. Ontario government has been consistently negligent through its policies and regulations to accommodate First Nations and their interests in the planning of natural resources.
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“This has led to complete marginalization of the First Nations resulting in abject poverty, anger and frustration, that developer interests have been targeted because of continued negligence to comply or meet undertakings according to negotiated terms and conditions of agreement. Direct action has been a means to force the developer to the table.
“Many times First Nations have been considered on an afterthought basis. Ontario has intentionally ignored Supreme Court of Canada rulings on First Nations rights. Ontario needs to be compelled.
“As stated previous without drastic changes in laws and policies to accommodate First Nations, direct actions in various forms will continue and escalate.” Submission by Nishnawbe-Aski Police Services Board, Chief Mike Metat (quoted in Bill Gallagher, Resource Rulers: Fortune and Folly on Canada’s Road to Resources (Waterloo, ON: Bill Gallagher, 2012), 1)
ONTARIO’S REFUSAL TO REFORM THE MINING ACT
The inadequacies of Ontario’s Mining Act became all too clear when a mining company, Platinex, insisted on pursuing work in traditional lands of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) near Big Trout Lake and precipitated judicial proceedings in which Chief Donny Morris and five other members of the KI Council were found in contempt of court on 17 March 2008 and imprisoned in the Thunder Bay District Jail. The Ontario Court of Appeal allowed the appeal of sentence on 28 May 2008 and the KI Six were released. As Rachel Ariss with John Cutfeet have stated:
“The conflict between the constitutional duty to consult and accommodate [First Nations] and the free entry provision of Ontario’s Mining Act was present, but almost invisible, until the KI community invoked Kanawayandan D’aaki in order to protect their land. This invocation was the community’s response to Platinex’s unilateral decision to begin mining exploration at Nemeguisabins Lake. While Kanawayandan D’aaki plays an important role in the way of life of the community—like much of First Nations jurisprudence—it was not visible in Canada’s legal system. Two conflicts made Kanawayandan D’aaki visible: one between the section 35 duty to consult and Ontario’s Mining Act, and another between Platinex’s actions and the duties owed to the land by the community. Further, the community’s response to Platinex’s actions, through Kanawayandan D’aaki, brought the conflict between the duty to consult and the free entry provisions of the Mining Act into sharp relief as it brought the community’s own law into public view.“.
“The social context of legal disputes matters because law is not separate from various social worlds, but embedded in them in various ways. Legal decision making is relatively autonomous in Canada, that is, law as a separate institution is primarily required to conform to its own norms and structures, within the common law and statute law. Socio-cultural norms and beliefs, however, do influence legal decision making in at least three ways. The first two of these three ways come from within legal structures and processes. First, legal actors such as lawyers, judges and police are all people that act within a set of social norms and cultural knowledges. Judges do acknowledge that times and beliefs change, and often (not always) interpret the law accordingly. Second, legislatures, which make and change statutes, reflect socio-cultural beliefs and norms as well as politics and changing positions in power structures.” Rachel Ariss, with John Cutfeet, Keeping the Land: Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Reconciliation and Canadian Law (Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2012), 65-66
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THE TRUTH AND RECONCILATION COMMISSION
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, required as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, was officially established on 2 June 2008 but began its work slowly. Prior to its creation, on 21- TRC.ca 22 January 2008, the King’s University College in Edmonton held an interdisciplinary conference on the truth and reconciliation process and in March 2008 Indigenous leaders and church representatives embarked on a multi-city “Remembering the Children” tour to promote the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Final Report, released in conjunction with events in Ottawa during 31 May-3 June 2015, stated:
“For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as ‘cultural genocide.’
“Physical genocide is the mass killing of the members of a targeted group, and biological genocide is the destruction of the group’s reproductive capacity. Cultural genocide is the destruction of the group’s structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next.
“In its dealings with Aboriginal people, Canada did all these things.
“Canada asserted control over Aboriginal land. In some locations, Canada negotiated Treaties with First Nations; in others, the land was simply occupied or seized. The negotiation of Treaties, while seemingly honourable and legal, was often marked by fraud and coercion, and Canada was, and remains, slow to implement their provisions and intent.
“On occasion, Canada forced First Nations to relocate their reserves from agriculturally valuable or resource-rich land onto remote and economically marginal reserves.
“Without legal authority or foundation, in the 1880s Canada instituted a ‘pass system’ that was intended to confine First Nations people in their reserves.
“Canada replaced existing forms of Aboriginal government with relatively powerless band councils whose decisions it could override and whose leaders it could depose. In the process, it disempowered Aboriginal women, who had held significant influence and powerful roles in many First Nations, including the Mohawks, the Carrier, and Tlingit.
“Canada denied the right to participate fully in Canadian political, economic, and social life to those Aboriginal people who refused to abandon their Aboriginal identity.
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“Canada outlawed Aboriginal spiritual practices, jailed Aboriginal spiritual leaders, and confiscated sacred objects.
“And, Canada separated children from their parents, sending them to residential schools. This was done not to educate them, but primarily to break their link to their culture and identity. . . .
“These measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal people as distinct peoples and to assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will. . . .” Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume One: Summary Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future (Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, Ltd., 2015), 1-3
ONTARIO ACHIEVES A POLITICAL ACCORD
Almost a quarter century after the Rae NDP government signed a Statement of Political Relationship with First Nations, Premier Wynne’s Liberal government arrived at a Political Accord with First Nations in 2015. In the intervening period, Premier Harris’s Conservative government had turned its back on the 1991 Statement and entered into a confrontation at Ipperwash, in which an Indigenous man died. And the McGuinty Liberal government had done little more to partner with First Nations. But times were changing, as the Premier’s news release on 24 August 2015 made clear:
“Today the Chiefs of Ontario and the Government of Ontario signed a historic Political Accord that will guide the relationship between First Nations and the province.
“Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne signed the accord for the Province, while Ontario Regional Chief Isadore Day signed on behalf of the Political Confederacy and Chiefs-in-Assembly. The Accord creates a formal bilateral relationship framed by the recognition of the treaty relationship.
“The Accord:
• Affirms that First Nations have an inherent right to self-government and that the relationship between Ontario and the First Nations must be based upon respect for this right. • Commits the parties to work together on issues of mutual interest, including resource benefits sharing, the treaty relationship and jurisdictional matters. • Sets a path for further reconciliation between First Nations and the people of Ontario.
“The Accord also commits the Premier and First Nations’ leadership to meet twice yearly in order to further advance their efforts on shared priorities.” Premier Wynne’s Office news release, 24 August 2015
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ONTARIO COMMITS TO RECONCILIATION
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne responded to the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at a special session of the Legislative Assembly on 30 May 2016. In the presence of Indigenous leaders and residential school survivors, the Premier said:
“Indigenous Peoples are the original occupants of this land we call Ontario and, over Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne apologizes for the thousands of years, they developed distinct languages, cultures, economies and ways of 'abuses of the past' in her life. This long history means that we’re assembled in a sacred and traditional gathering official response to the Truth place for many peoples of Turtle Island. I want to show respect for this by acknowledging and Reconciliation Commission report. (CBC) that we’re on the traditional territory of several Indigenous Nations and pay special recognition to the Mississaugas of the New Credit, and by recognizing the history and contributions of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples.
“Our shared history begins around 400 years ago. When Europeans first arrived, the generous partnership of Indigenous Peoples helped them establish profitable enterprises and settlements. In 1763, the Royal Proclamation confirmed the original occupancy of Indigenous Peoples and paved the way for nation-to-nation treaties between the British Crown and Indigenous Peoples. Treaties were negotiated and signed with the intent of delivering mutual benefits.
“In Ontario, most of this happened hundreds of years ago. To some, seven generations ago can seem disconnected. Yet we know that our history is always shaping the present. And for some of us, treaties are part of the history that shapes our prosperity. Treaties granted us land to live on and water to drink. They are the foundation on which the short history of our country has carried forward—a history in which every generation has built a better life by building on the achievements of the past.
“But it’s only one side of our story. For Indigenous people in Ontario, this same history created a very different reality. Despite the promise of early treaties and the respectful, nation-to-nation partnerships they established, Indigenous Peoples became the target of colonial policies designed to exploit, assimilate and eradicate them. Based on racism, violence and deceit, these policies were devastatingly effective. They disempowered individuals and disenfranchised entire communities. When Canada became a country 149 years ago, the legacy of violent colonialism only gathered momentum.
“From coast-to-coast-to-coast, the residential school system set out to ‘take the Indian out of the child,’ by removing Indigenous children from their homes and systematically stripping them of their languages, cultures, laws and rights. Children were physically, emotionally and sexually abused. Many died.
These heartbreaking stories are hard to hear. For generations of Indigenous people, these stories were their lives. Canada’s residential schools are closed, but they have been closed for not even one generation. Echoes of their racist, colonial attitudes can still be heard. And the echoes of a society-wide, generational effort of cultural genocide continues to reverberate loudly and painfully in the lives of Indigenous people today.
“However we measure a person’s opportunity and security in life, a disturbing gap exists between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous population. It is the gap created by a country that abused and betrayed its Indigenous Peoples. It is a gap that swallows lives and extinguished hope across generations. For a long time, Indigenous
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Peoples’ calls for justice could not be heard across this yawning gulf because Canada did not want to hear them. It is thanks to the resiliency of those who endured the abuses of the past that we are finally listening.
“Thank you for finding the strength and courage to come forward and tell your stories—and the stories of those who were lost. In opening our eyes, you have given us this chance to move forward as partners and the opportunity to say we are sorry. So before I go on, I want to show my respect for all the survivors and all the victims by offering a formal apology for the abuses of the past.
“As Premier, I apologize for the policies and practices supported by past Ontario governments and for the harm they caused. I apologize for the province’s silence in the face of abuses and deaths at residential schools. And I apologize for the fact that the residential schools are only one example of systemic, intergenerational injustices inflicted upon Indigenous communities throughout Canada.
“By adopting policies designed to eradicate your cultures and extinguish your rightful claims, previous generations set in motion a force so destructive that its impact continues to reverberate in our time. And so I want to apologize for all of this by saying I am sorry for the continued harm that generations of abuse is causing to Indigenous communities, families and individuals.
“No apology changes the past, nor can an act of apology alone change the future. In making this apology, as in making the Political Accord last summer, I hope to demonstrate our government’s commitment to changing the future by building relationships based on trust, respect and Indigenous Peoples’ inherent right to self-government. The act of apology is not the end, nor is it the beginning. It is but one step on the journey to reconciliation and healing that we are committed to walking together.
“Last year at this time, we took one of these steps when Canada’s Truth and Reconcilia-tion Commission held its closing ceremonies in Ottawa. I was honoured to participate in the Walk for Reconciliation . . .
“Ontario has already taken first steps on this journey forward. They are highlighted in The Journey Together, the report we are releasing today. It outlines how Ontario is further responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s findings and calls to action.
“Today, Ontario commits to working in partnership with Indigenous leaders and their communities to undertake 26 new initiatives that will help build trust and respect into our relationships and build opportunity and security into the lives of Indigenous people. These next steps begin, as I have today, with efforts to help everyone in our province understand the truth about our history.” Premier Kathleen Wynne’s speech in the Ontario Legislative Assembly, 30 May 2016
ARE FIRST NATIONS RESOURCE RULERS?
Although the Harris Conservative and McGuinty Liberal governments had appeared contemptuous of the First Nations, the Supreme Court of Canada has been carrying out a constitutional transformation of Canada that impacts Ontario, too. A guiding principle was recognition of the Honour of the Crown and the actions required as a result. One Canadian lawyer sought to explain the result to the readers of his self-published book:
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“Who really controls Canada’s resources? It’s a fair question, especially now, given that natives have amassed the longest running, most impressive legal winning streak over resource access in Canadian history. Their success in the courts has accorded them de facto control over their ‘traditional’ lands, making them Resource Rulers throughout broad regions of the country. As a direct result, native demands today often challenge the ability of both government and industry to satisfy. Indeed, the rise of native empowerment is dramatically changing the political map of Canada. And new rules of engagement for accessing our natural resources are urgently needed if Canada’s resource-dependent economy is to remain competitive in the global marketplace.” Gallagher, Resource Rulers: Fortune and Folly on Canada’s Road to Resources, 1
RESPONDING TO THE UN DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
The United Nations General Assembly adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on 13 September 2007. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission challenged Canadians to make this Declaration the framework for reconciliation in Canada. The Canadian Parliament has accepted the Declaration as an aspirational statement. How the churches should respond to the Declaration was the basis of an interview with Judge Murray Sinclair, former Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, by Steve Heinrichs, Director of Indigenous Relations for Mennonite Church Canada:
Cover of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People “Heinrichs: So, when you say traditional knowledges, we’re talking spiritual matters. Are you saying that churches involved in residential schools and, more broadly, the Christian community—which had denigrated Indigenous spiritualities for 100 plus years (generally speaking)—has some redress to do?
“Sinclair: Well, the Declaration is very specific that it is not for governments or other entities to actually do that, because the right to cultural protection and cultural knowledge and utilization of language is a right that Indigenous peoples have. What the Declaration talks about is that those entities that played a role in destroying or attacking that knowledge base have an obligation to provide assistance to Indigenous people in their own attempts to recover that knowledge and awareness.
“The Declaration and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are not suggesting for a moment that churches should be engaged in cultural revival activities. We think, in fact, that that would be inappropriate, because Christian entities can only go so far before they begin to lose consistency with their own internal rules of belief and behaviour. Because of that potential for conflict, what we’re saying is, basically, help Indigenous peoples when they want it and need it, particularly in the areas of financial help. Or in many cases, churches are holders of artifacts and religious information; the Jesuits, for instance, have an incredible amount of historical documentation about their early contact with Indigenous peoples that contains information on traditional practices that were in place at the time, and names of Indigenous leaders, and locations of Indigenous boundaries and borders. The
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suggestion is that those entities that have access to or have in their possession things they have taken from Indigenous people have an obligation to return them and assist Indigenous communities to regain them.
”Does the Church Have Hope for Relationship? An Interview with Justice Murray Sinclair on the Declaration, in Wrongs to Rights: How Churches Can Engage the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples A Special Edition of Intotemak (Winnipeg: Mennonite Church Canada, 2016), 25-26
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