PUBLIC EXPRESSIONS OF FIRST NATIONS PROTEST

IN CANADA’S SIXTIES

A Thesis

Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

Master of Arts

In

History

University of Regina

By

Brian Eric Warren

Regina, Saskatchewan

March 2020

Copyright 2020: Brian Warren

UNIVERSITY OF REGINA

FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH

SUPERVISORY AND EXAMINING COMMITTEE

Brian Eric Warren, candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in History, has presented a thesis titled, Public Expressions of First Nations Protest in Canada’s Sixties, in an oral examination held on March 17, 2020. The following committee members have found the thesis acceptable in form and content, and that the candidate demonstrated satisfactory knowledge of the subject material.

External Examiner: *Dr. John Meehan, University of Sudbury

Supervisor: Dr. Ken Leyton-Brown, Department of History

Committee Member: Dr. Philip Charrier, Department of History

Committee Member: Dr. James Daschuk, Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies

Chair of Defense: Dr. Dongyan Blachford, Department of International Languages

*via Teleconference i

Abstract

Much of the literature about modern First Nations activism in Canada has left the impression that it began, in earnest, in protest of the federal government’s controversial

1969 White Paper. As a result, several significant and well-publicized expressions of

First Nations protest in the preceding decade, have been widely ignored. This thesis explores the growth and diversification of First Nations protest, from the eve of the sixties, through the White Paper backlash, to demonstrate how the groundwork for future activism, was laid amid the political foment of the sixties. It chronicles Six Nations’

Declarations of Independence from Canada; the heated debate among Status Indians over voting rights in 1960; the 1965 demonstrations at Edmonton, Ottawa, and Kenora; the

Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67; the birth of the militant Red Power movement; and, the ascendancy of the National Indian Brotherhood and its provincial affiliates in the wake of the White Paper. The analysis of these events, as well as significant contextual undercurrents such as the Civil Rights Movement, draws on indigenous-authored retrospectives, subsequent academic studies, and a wealth of primary research from a diverse array of contemporary newspapers, periodicals, and other media.

ii

Acknowledgments

This thesis evolved over the past two-and-a-half years amid my ongoing work as a high school history teacher. I owe its existence to the patience, encouragement, and guidance of those who supported my efforts. Before I began my research, I had the honour of speaking, at length, with the late elder, life speaker, and former chief of the National

Indian Brotherhood, Noel Starblanket. As a young activist and leader-on-the-rise during the 1960s, his firsthand insights and recollections, as well as his belief in the importance of my project, provided me with a strong sense of purpose, direction, and inspiration.

Moving forward, my supervisor, Dr. Ken Leyton-Brown, guided my efforts and helped me to stay focused. He always read my drafts with care, and provided vital feedback with candour and precision, which continually challenged me to better my work. I am also indebted to Dr. Dawn Flood, whose graduate seminar on Black Power in US History, provided me with an early opportunity to investigate connections between African

American and indigenous protest movements in the sixties, especially their cross-border dynamics. Several of the findings presented in my term paper for that course, which benefitted immeasurably from Dr. Flood’s knowledge, guidance, and feedback, have been utilized in this thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. Philip Charrier, Head of the

Department of History, and longtime mentor, for his continued support, encouragement, and for his critical contributions as my instructor in research methods. Finally, I am grateful to Dr. Charrier, along with Dr. James Daschuk—whose 2013 work, Clearing the

Plains, has been a significant influence—for serving as committee members.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... i

Acknowledgements ...... ii

Table of Contents ...... iii

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

PART 1: Historiography ...... 2

PART 2: Public Expressions of First Nations Protest, 1959-1970 ...... 12 2.1 The “Iroquois Revolt” of 1959 ...... 13 2.2 The Spectre of the Vote ...... 22 2.3 First Nations on the March ...... 31 2.4 Protesting Canada’s Centennial at Expo 67 ...... 44 2.5 Forging Red Power ...... 53 2.6 The White Paper Backlash ...... 64

CONCLUSION ...... 77

REFERENCES ...... 80

1

INTRODUCTION

In the summer of 1969, the Canadian government proposed, in an infamously ill-fated white paper, to abolish the Crown’s treaties with First Nations, along with the federal legislation and bureaucracy that allowed for First Nations’ separate legal status and entitlements.1 This prompted an immediate and sustained backlash from First Nations individuals, communities, and organizations. Their provincial and territorial leaders rallied swiftly and effectively against the government’s stated intention to extinguish its treaty obligations, along with all remaining semblance of indigenous sovereignty, eroded as it was by a century of assimilationist policy.2 In light of its withdrawal in the face of

First Nations opposition, the 1969 White Paper, or, “Statement of the Government of

Canada on Indian Policy,” has been widely cited as the catalyst that initiated modern indigenous activism, which has persisted in various forms to the present day. Such narratives have often ignored the preceding rise in public protest activity among Canada’s geographically fragmented and culturally diverse First Nations, which aimed to assert their sovereign indigenous rights within the Canadian state; to remind politicians, and the public-at-large, of their historic treaties with the Crown; and to address desperate socioeconomic inequalities among them. This thesis analyses diverse public expressions

1 Indigenous, Aboriginal, and Native, are inclusive terms that define anyone who traces their ancestry to the original inhabitants of a particular place. First Nations—the focus of this thesis—are the largest subgroup of indigenous peoples in Canada, followed by the Métis, a nation born of early interactions between First Nations and European newcomers, and the Inuit peoples, which are indigenous to the Arctic. In the 1960s, the most common term used to classify First Nations people was, “Indian,” as had been the case for centuries. Although some continue to self-identify in this way, many others find the term offensive, inaccurate, or both. It persists due to the legal fact that most First Nations individuals are entitled to Indian status, which legally designates them as Status Indians. Furthermore, the federal legislation that provides for the administration of Status Indians, and defines who is considered as such, is called the Indian Act. For the purposes of this thesis, the term “Indian,” will therefore be used in those legal contexts, and in direct quotes. 2 John L. Tobias has demonstrated that Canada’s policy on First Nations, always meant to “protect” them from exploitation so they could be separately “civilized” in advance of their “assimilation” into the dominant culture. See “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation: An Outline History of Canada’s Indian Policy,” Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology 6, 2 (1976), 13-16. 2

of First Nations protest, chronologically, in the decade leading up to the White Paper, and demonstrates that indigenous upheaval in Canada, and across North America, was already well underway throughout the 1960s—a transformative era that laid the groundwork for future activism.

PART 1: Historiography

Relatively little has been written about First Nations activism in Canada during the

1960s. Of what is available and pertinent, there are two distinct bodies of literature to consider: the contemporary writings of indigenous activists themselves in the wake of that decade, and the more recent scholarly literature that has sought to interpret their activities. Almost none of the early works by indigenous authors appeared until the 1960s had ended, but developments in that decade inspired and informed much of their writing in the early to mid-1970s, which provides salient firsthand insights into the diversity and divergences of thinking among First Nations activists in the sixties. A subsequent historiographic survey of relevant secondary scholarship, reveals a sparse and slow- growing field of inquiry. Until recently, this literature has generally focused on particular expressions of a multifaceted movement, such as political organizing and lobbying, to the exclusion of others, such as grassroots militancy, or it has failed to properly distinguish between them.

Although the indigenous-authored literature on sixties activism began, in earnest, with a forceful assault on the White Paper, not all First Nations were opposed to its proposals, resulting in an equally passionate counterattack: Harold Cardinal’s The Unjust

Society (1969), and Ruffled Feathers (1971), the emphatic antithesis by William 3

Wuttunee, illustrate a striking divergence of opinion between two prominent First

Nations activists and leaders. Cardinal, the youngest-ever elected chief of the Indian

Association of Alberta (IAA), then in his early twenties, directed blame outward at

Canadian society and its institutions for the socioeconomic disparities and prejudice facing indigenous individuals and communities; Wuttunee, the first indigenous lawyer in western Canada, and a trailblazing political organizer, directed blame inward, at indigenous leaders, many of whom he saw as backward, autocratic, and opportunistic. He also blamed those organizations that promoted, what he referred to as, a “buckskin and feather culture” at the expense of tangible material progress for indigenous peoples.3

Further, whereas Cardinal saw their treaties with the Crown as the “Indian Magna Carta,” with no way forward for his people unless the Canadian government fulfilled its treaty obligations, Wuttunee countered that the treaties were “not worth the paper they were written on,” because, in his view, they did not address the present struggles facing indigenous peoples.4 Wuttunee believed that the federal government had not only kept its treaty promises, but that First Nations had been adequately compensated for their land, and more urgently, that the treaties were chiefly responsible for perpetuating their dependency on the state.5

Such fiercely opposed points of view between Cardinal and Wuttunee mirrored the central social debate of the sixties, which questioned whether segregation or integration was the solution to interracial harmony. For Cardinal, integration was

3 William I.C. Wuttunee, Ruffled Feathers: Indians in Canadian Society (Calgary: Bell Books, 1971), 1. 4 Harold Cardinal, The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada’s Indians (1969; Madeira Park, British Columbia: Douglas and McIntyre Limited, 2013), 24. Wuttunee’s comments were made in Calgary on January 5, 1970, in a verbal response to Cardinal’s book. See “Wuttunee lashes new policy objectors,” Indian Record, January-February, 1970, 2. 5 Wuttunee, Ruffled Feathers, 107-108. 4

tantamount to “cultural genocide” or “extermination through assimilation.” 6 He resented those among his people, whom he and others called “Uncle Tomahawks” for cozying up with government officials and blaming indigenous people for their own problems, instead of systemic factors, such as substandard education in residential schools, the government- appointed Indian Agents who micro-managed First Nations life on reserves, and the lack of economic opportunity that fueled perpetual welfare dependency.7 For Wuttunee, however, these oppressive realities were the very reasons why indigenous people needed to integrate with the rest of Canada, instead of remaining on reserves, under treaties, in

“voluntary exile.”8 He called Cardinal a “bitter person” who had not “forgiven the white man” for past transgressions, and was unsparingly critical of those whom he called the

“rebellious few” who advocated segregation from white people, preferred communal possession of reserve land over individual property, and risked “being left behind” in bemoaning the injustices they faced.9 In a televised interview on The Pierre Berton Show in 1969, Wuttunee declared: “The past is dead; it’s as dead as a doornail… We’ll start from today… we can’t weep about the past.”10 His preference to leave the past behind did not find a great deal of sympathy among other outspoken indigenous activists, with many making concerted attempts to revise Canada’s historical understanding, in which they saw major omissions and distortions that contributed to indigenous marginalization.

Throughout the 1970s, as increasingly militant proponents of pan-indigenous activism rallied under the banner of Red Power, new literature attempted to capture its

6 Cardinal, The Unjust Society, 1. 7 Ibid., 19. 8 Wuttunee, Ruffled Feathers, 113. 9 Ibid., 2, 12, v. 10 Wuttunee, speaking on The Pierre Berton Show, August 8, 1969, transcribed in The Indian: Assimilation, Integration, or Separation? R.P. Bowles, J.L. Hanley, B.W. Hodgins, G.A. Rawlyk, eds. (Toronto: Prentice-Hall of Canada, 1972), 2. 5

meaning in broader contexts, each one casting light on its origins in the latter 1960s.

Waubageshig (Harvey McCue), an Anishinabe academic, argued in 1972 that a failure among indigenous peoples to present a unified front, had diluted their collective strength.11 He believed Canada’s power over indigenous people was facilitated, in large part, by their cultural and geographic fragmentation, which made violent revolution an unlikely prospect in Canada. Rather, Waubageshig felt that “Indians in general have been content and are willing to remain so,” citing their “exceptionally sedate” organizations, which he saw as “marked by a desire to construct communication lines” with the government.”12 His commentary on the organizational developments of the 1960s was almost wistful, implying missed opportunities for indigenous peoples to undermine the

Canadian state, to unite, and to construct a coherent ideology that would enable them to pursue their own self-determination.

The Fourth World (1974), represented a considerable attempt to articulate a vision to that end. George Manuel, a nationally active First Nations leader from the early 1960s onward, and Michael Posluns, a journalist and advocate for indigenous rights, contended that it was a mistake to view indigenous resistance as a new phenomenon, as “there was never a time since the beginning of colonial conquest when Indian people were not resisting…”13 They challenged the notion that First Nations were “only now coming alive,” when rather, it was their contemporary political and social climate that allowed a long legacy of resistance—“the fruit of the accumulated labour of our grandfathers”—to

11 Waubageshig, “The Comfortable Crisis,” The Only Good Indian: Essays by Canadian Indians, Revised Edition, Waubageshig, ed. (Don Mills: New Press, 1974), 96. 12 Ibid., 95. 13 George Manuel and Michael Posluns, The Fourth World: A New Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1974), 69. 6

emerge into view.14 The 1960s, in their view, was “the decade in which we were rediscovered,” likening the process to contact with Europeans four centuries earlier; a renaissance of curious explorers entering and probing indigenous society.15 These new explorers included disillusioned youth, anthropologists, and government consultants, whose preconceived notions of who indigenous people were, how they lived, and what they wanted, hampered genuine understanding. Whereas the term, “third world,” designated those developing states that had separated from the empires that had colonized them, The Fourth World presented a non-separatist vision of indigenous self- determination, in which First Peoples would become sovereign partners within their colonizers’ states.16 Its influence was far-reaching among indigenous peoples. Vine

Deloria Jr., the famed Standing Rock Sioux scholar, activist, and author of Custer Died

For Your Sins (1969), the seminal American work of indigenous protest literature, declared Manuel to be “Canada’s greatest prophet.”17

The 1970s also bore important contributions from Métis writers, and those of mixed indigenous heritage, who had actively participated in indigenous protest during the sixties. This was especially true of Howard Adams, a self-described “half-breed patriot”, and Lee Maracle, a Stó:lō author and academic of Métis and Salish ancestry. Raised in northern Saskatchewan, Adams earned his PhD at Berkeley, where he found common cause with African American activists: “like the Indians and Métis of Canada, black people face discrimination, economic oppression, and political powerlessness…we

14 Ibid., 70. 15 Ibid., 156. 16 Ibid., 217. 17 Deloria’s quote is the epigraph in Peter McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood: George Manuel and the Making of the Modern Indian Movement (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1993), 11. See also, Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died for your Sins (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1969). Prior to the book’s publication, chapters one and four were deemed enticing enough for extended excerpts in Playboy, 16, 8 (August 1969). 7

understood one another immediately.”18 Prison of Grass (1975) was his ground-breaking effort to rewrite the history of Canada from a Native point of view, to build on the indigenous “red awakening” of the mid-1960s, and to plot a radical course forward.19

Maracle’s Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel—Struggles of a Native Canadian Woman (1975), chronicles that awakening as a novelized oral account of her early life and activism. Her memoirs provide a first-person glance into indigenous protest activities that were flourishing in the Pacific Northwest throughout the mid-to-late sixties, on both sides of

Canada’s border with the United States, and their connections to the fervid leftist- radicalism of the era.20 Adams and Maracle were also among an increasing number of indigenous people who self-identified as Native at that time, a term that was increasingly en vogue in the 1960s and 1970s—especially among indigenous people who identified in this way “with the shared understanding of themselves as a cohesive indigenous body united in a common struggle,” regardless of differences in legal status or ethnicity.21

Apart from the indigenous-authored works, discussed above, indigenous activism in sixties Canada has received very little scholarly attention, and until recently, much of what was available greatly obscured its complexity. Stan Steiner’s The New Indians

(1967) billed itself as “the first full-scale report on the gathering ‘Red Power’ movement” but its American origin and focus understandably excluded much of what was going on in

18 Howard Adams, Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View, Revised Edition (Calgary: Fifth House Publishers, 1989), 152-153. 19 Ibid., 157. 20 Maracle’s account was recorded and edited by Don Barnett and Rick Sterling, and published by the Richmond, British Columbia-based Liberation Support Movement, chaired by Barnett, who died just before the book’s publication. Lee Maracle, Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel—Struggles of a Native Canadian Woman (Richmond: LSM Press, 1975), 5. 21 Emma Larocque, When the Other is Me: Native Resistance Discourse, 1850-1990 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2010), 7. 8

Canada.22 The earliest attempted academic account of indigenous activism in Canada, by a non-indigenous author, followed in Ronald G. Haycock’s, The Image of the Indian

(1972), which surveyed representations of indigenous Canadians in popular periodicals, over several decades. While Haycock compiled valuable primary source evidence on significant moments of indigenous protest in sixties Canada, his analysis betrayed the whiggish idea that indigenous peoples’ assimilation was a foregone conclusion. In his view, their “Absorption and incorporation into Canadian life” was a “fact and also a demand of a certain section of Indians themselves who want full civil and social rights for their race. Whether or not this will mean the complete extinction of the unique cultural entity remains to be seen.”23

Myrna Kotash’s 1980 history of Canada’s sixties generation, Long Way From

Home, also employed valuable anecdotes and documentary evidence, but offered a deeper explanation of how the American Civil Rights Movement and its late-sixties offshoot, Black Power, prompted the pan-indigenous Red Power movement in response to the socioeconomic hardships of indigenous life.24 Still, her analysis assumed that all indigenous activists were united in a common cause, with no distinction made between the activism of an elected provincial chief such as Harold Cardinal, lobbying against the

White Paper; that of the Vancouver-based radicals who founded the Native Alliance for

Red Power in 1967; or that of Indians of All Tribes, an ad hoc group of young indigenous activists that seized and occupied Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay for nineteen months, beginning in late 1969. Kotash made it seem that anyone who was indigenous,

22 Stan Steiner, The New Indians (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). 23 Ronald G. Haycock, The Image of the Indian (Waterloo: Waterloo Lutheran University, 1972), 66. 24 Myrna Kotash, Long Way Home: The Story of the Sixties Generation in Canada (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1980), 150. 9

and an activist, or a militant (terms she used interchangeably), was part of the same movement, thereby obscuring the wide differences in their identities, politics, objectives, strategies, and tactics.

The trend of referring to Red Power synecdochically would continue in scholarship throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with selected parts of the movement treated as if they represented the whole movement. Sally Weaver, whose excellent 1981 analysis of the White Paper’s development is still the most comprehensive study available, notes the ensuing uproar of Red Power activism, but offers only the activities of the National

Indian Brotherhood and its provincial affiliates as examples,25 even though prominent leaders in those organizations, such as Cardinal and Manuel, distanced themselves from the radical militancy of Red Power. In 1986, J.L. Granatstein referenced Red Power’s

American origins without alluding to preceding indigenous attempts to organize militant resistance in Canada, though he did imply the breadth of the movement when he cited a lack of consensus among “native groups” on how to remedy the disastrous failures of

Canada’s paternalistic policies.26 J.R. Miller, took a decidedly narrower approach in his ambitious 1989 history of indigenous-white relations in Canada, Skyscrapers Hide the

Heavens, by discussing only those indigenous political organizations and leaders who lobbied through official channels. He made no mention of public demonstrations, grassroots organizing, militancy, or Red Power.27 Doug Owram’s Born at the Right Time

(1996), one of the more comprehensive and oft-cited histories of the sixties in Canada,

25 Sally M. Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy: The Hidden Agenda, 1968-70 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 61. 26 J.L. Granatstein, Canada, 1957-1967: The Years of Uncertainty and Innovation (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986), 8. 27 J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Native-Newcomer Relations, Fourth Edition (1989; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 253-276. 10

was even more neglectful in this respect, as it avoided any direct discussion of Canada’s indigenous peoples during that era, mentioning only “Native poverty” and “Native issues” alongside other concerns of politically-involved Canadian youth.28

The most valuable secondary literature to have informed this study, is that which has examined and contextualized specific manifestations of indigenous protest in the

1960s. Laurence Hauptman’s study of Haudensaunee militancy; James Pitsula’s research into the controversy surrounding First Nations voting rights; Scott Rutherford’s analysis of indigenous activism at Kenora in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and global decolonization; Myra Rutherdale and Jim Miller’s study of the Indians of Canada

Pavilion at Expo 67; and, the development of the National Indian Brotherhood as analyzed in Peter McFarlane’s biography of George Manuel, have been especially useful in that regard.29 Still, there have been few attempts to amalgamate these fragmentary events into a coherent explanatory narrative of the period. In the 2000s, scholars began the task of synthesizing the complex history of indigenous activism, with Anthony J.

Hall’s American Empire and the Fourth World (2003) as a formidable early example.

Hall delivered a substantial study of diverse manifestations of indigenous resistance throughout North America, which further illustrated Manuel’s conception of an emerging fourth world.30 Sociologist Howard Ramos followed by cataloguing and categorizing all

28 Doug Owram, Born at the Right Time: A History of the Baby Boom Generation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 217, 221. 29 Laurence M. Hauptman, The Iroquois Struggle for Survival: World War II to Red Power (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986); James M. Pitsula, “The Saskatchewan CCF Government and Treaty Indians, 1944-64,” The Canadian Historical Review 75, 1 (March 1994); Scott Rutherford, “Canada’s Other Red Scare: Rights, Decolonization, and Indigenous Protest in the Global Sixties,” PhD Dissertation (Kingston, Ontario: Queen’s University, 2011); Myra Rutherdale and Jim Miller, “It’s Our Country: First Nations’ Participation in the Indian Pavilion at Expo 67,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 17, 2 (2006), 148-173; McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood. 30 Anthony J. Hall, The American Empire and the Fourth World (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), see especially, Chapter 3: Globalization, Decolonization, and the Fourth World, 209-294. 11

aboriginal protest events in Canada—as reported by the Globe and Mail—from 1951-

2000, which demonstrated the lack of a coherently pan-indigenous movement in Canada, where divergent interests between competing groups undermined such a possibility. 31

This echoed Waubegashig’s argument of three decades earlier, that the effectiveness of indigenous organizations had been “diluted by the failure of the Indians to present a unified front on any particular issue.”32

To date, the public emergence of indigenous protest and its many manifestations in the 1960s, have been best synthesized by Bryan Palmer. According to Palmer,

Canada’s indigenous peoples “rediscovered, revived, and reconfigured their history” to challenge their assimilationist, overwhelmingly white, colonial state, resulting in a mutual process of discovery.33 In charting new paths of opposition, indigenous people contributed to their “discovery” by Canadians, echoing Manuel and Posluns; equally important, was the reciprocal “discovery,” by indigenous peoples, of their own capacity to effectively challenge entrenched Canadian institutions.34 Unfortunately, the longstanding tendency to ignore this formative period is still evident in much of the more

31 Howard Ramos, “Divergent Paths: Aboriginal Mobilization in Canada, 1951-2000,” PhD Dissertation (McGill University, 2004), 163. Ramos examined the relationship between indigenous organization and indigenous protest tactics, finding that protests through the legal system and through public demonstrations had a positive effect on organizational growth, but that the use of violence had a negative impact. See Ibid., 130. As for the most important factors involved in facilitating indigenous protest, Ramos’ data shows that during the last half of the twentieth century, the founding of new organizations, the availability of federal funding, media attention, and the successful resolution of land claims, were most decisive. See “What Causes Aboriginal Protest? Examining Resources, Opportunities and Identity,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 31, 2 (2006), 228. 32 Waubegashig, “The Comfortable Crisis,” 96. 33 Bryan D. Palmer, “Indians of All Tribes: The Birth of Red Power,” Debating Dissent: Canada and the 1960s, Lara A. Campbell, Dominique Clement, Gregory S. Kealey, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 209. 34 Palmer, Canada’s 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2008), 378. 12

recent scholarship on modern indigenous activism in Canada, which fails to discuss any of its developmental manifestations in the decade before the White Paper.35

PART 2: Public Expressions of First Nations Protest, 1959-1970

From the eve of the 1960s onward, diverse contingents of indigenous activists engaged increasingly in public attempts to bring awareness and change to a variety of social, political, and historical concerns. Their wide-ranging activities included: attempting to gain independence from Canada; speaking out, for and against, the prospect of First

Nations voting rights; marching publicly on all levels of government; organizing a pavilion at Expo 67 to bring international attention to historical and contemporary grievances; and, contributing to the militant, pan-indigenous, North American movement for Red Power. As these events unfolded, there were also renewed efforts to organize

First Nations nationally, which began with the National Indian Council in 1961, and culminated with the formation of the National Indian Brotherhood, late in the decade.

First Nations protest initiatives often drew explicit inspiration and support from the Civil Rights Movement, a dominant force for social change that originated in African-

American struggles for racial equality in American South. The gravity of this movement fostered a tendency, among non-indigenous Canadians, to conflate the plight of First

Nations with that of racially segregated African Americans, which fuelled longstanding beliefs about the need to fully integrate First Nations individuals into Canadian society.

Conversely, First Nations activists, almost all of whom sought to safeguard and

35 See, for example: Harry Swain, Oka: A Political Crisis and its Legacy (Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2010); Edward J. Hedican, Ipperwash: The Tragic Failure of Canada’s Aboriginal Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013); Ken Coates, #IdleNoMore and the Remaking of Canada (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2015). 13

strengthen their limited autonomy, tended to recoil at the prospect of integration, which they equated to assimilation, annihilation, and even genocide; an existential threat to their culture, sovereignty, and treaty entitlements. These fears were at odds with the prevailing views of Canadian politicians and concerned citizens, who repeatedly contended that the continued segregation of First Nations—whether on reserves, in residential schools, or under the separate legislation of the Indian Act—was the cause of their socioeconomic inequality and would only exacerbate racial strife. First Nations’ activism, in the decade leading up to the White Paper, reveals that the subsequent backlash was not the beginning of modern indigenous activism; it was the decisive turning point in a social debate that had long questioned whether First Nations were more likely to thrive if better integrated, as Canadians were inclined to believe, or more independent, as so many First Nations voices had long contended.

2.1 The “Iroquois Revolt” of 1959

The first and most extreme example of First Nations protest, in the ten years that preceded the White Paper, was undertaken by separatists who sought to reclaim absolute sovereignty over their community. In early 1959, approximately one thousand people joined forty hereditary chiefs and marched on the house of the elected council at Six

Nations reserve, near Brantford, Ontario. The chiefs ousted their elected counterparts, and cabled a declaration of independence to Ottawa, Washington, and London. On the eve of the 1960s, this short-lived coup d’etat, discussed more fully below, failed to achieve Six Nations’ independence, but demonstrated the extent to which some First 14

Nations rejected integration, and the notion that the federal government held constitutional authority over “Indians and the lands reserved for the Indians.”36

The community of Six Nations refers to Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga,

Seneca, and Tuscarora peoples, known collectively as the Haudenosaunee, and historically as the Iroquois Confederacy. Settled on both sides of the Canada-US border, in communities across Southern Ontario, Quebec, and upstate New York, the

Haudenosaunee celebrate a long history of indigenous democracy, and an accompanying resistance to the imposition of colonial governance.37 Whereas many First Nations to the west of Haudenosaunee territory signed numbered treaties with the British Crown, beginning in the 1870s, Six Nations’ relationship with the Crown was established almost a century earlier, by the 1784 Haldimand Proclamation.38 This not only affirmed Iroquois sovereignty over a considerable tract of land, but also recognized Iroquois peoples as

“His majesty’s faithful allies.” By interpreting this proclamation as a treaty with King

George III, Six Nations maintained that it was an ally, rather than a subject, of the British,

36 “Indians and the lands reserved for the Indians,” are listed among matters given to federal legislative authority, in section 91 of the 1867 Constitution Act. See Canada, A Consolidation of the Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982 (Ottawa: Department of Justice, 2013), 27. 37 Jeanette Rodriguez, A Clan Mother’s Call: Reconstructing Haudenosaunee Cultural Memory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017), 7. Six Nations, one of over a dozen Haudenosaunee communities, notably rejected John A. Macdonald’s attempts to extend the franchise to Registered Indians prior to the dominion elections of 1885. See Hall, The American Empire and the Fourth World, 496. 38 For a concise analysis of the Haldimand Proclamation, and the context in which it was produced, see Timothy C. Winegard, “Your Home on Native Land? Conflict and Controversy at Caledonia and Six Nations of the Grand River,” Blockades or Breakthroughs? Aboriginal Peoples Confront the Canadian State, Yale Deron Belanger and P. Whitney Lackenbauer, eds. (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2014), 414. While Six Nations is the subject of this analysis, Winegard’s study is focused on the use of barricades as a means of protest in the 1990s and 2000s; he does not mention attempts from within the community to secede from Canada in previous decades. 15

and that as a result, neither Canada, nor the Indian Act it had enacted in 1876 to subjugate

First Nations, held legitimate jurisdiction over them.39

The late-1950s saw a rise in nationalist sentiment throughout Haudenosaunee territory, particularly after the St. Lawrence Seaway, constructed between 1954-1959, connected the St. Lawrence River with the Great Lakes. This project resulted in the inundation of Mohawk lands, the ruining of their fishing and dairy cattle industries, and environmental degradation that followed from the region’s industrialization.40 It is clear that Haudenosaunee communities understood the advent of the Seaway as an unprecedented existential threat, and one which did great harm to any trust they maintained in Canadian and American authorities, for whom this was an ambitious joint venture.41 As Laurence Hauptman has argued, the expropriation and submerging of

Mohawk lands, most dramatically those at the communities of Kahnawá:ke, near

Montreal, and Akwesasne, near Cornwall, Ontario, “contributed to a powerful Indian backlash which led directly to the rise of Red Power militancy.”42 In early 1959,

39 The Indian Act was based largely upon the pre-Confederation Gradual Civilization Act (1857) and the post-Confederation Gradual Enfranchisement Act (1869), thus betraying its ultimate underlying objectives, and taking them much further.39 Self-government was abolished, and control over virtually every aspect of life on reserve was consolidated at Indian Affairs. Renowned Mohawk scholar and activist Taiaiake Alfred has called the Indian Act, throughout its many revisions and amendments, an “inherently assimilationist document” aimed at “placing Native peoples within Canadian society—but to be sure, by creating a lower status and maintaining racially segregated political institutions.” See Gerald R. Alfred, Heeding the Voices of our Ancestors: Kahnawake Mohawk Politics and the Rise of Native Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 67. Six Nations’ long opposition to the Indian Act dates back to its initial passage, with a letter of protest from thirty-three Six Nations chiefs to Indian Affairs, dated 17 August 1876. See Strange Visitors: Documents in Indigenous-Settler Relations in Canada from 1876, Keith D. Smith, ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 16-17. 40 Edmund Wilson claimed to have “discovered the existence of a nationalist movement among the Iroquois Indians,” in October 1957. He mentions the inundation of homes at Caughnawaga (Kahnawá:ke) and the land at St. Regis (Akwesasne) among the factors. See his book, Apologies to the Iroquois (1960; New York: Random House, 1966), 40-41, 252. 41 See a concise review of the literature on this topic in Stephanie K. Phillips, “The Kahnawake Mohawks and the St. Lawrence Seaway,” MA Thesis (Montreal: McGill University, 2000), 2. 42 Hauptman, The Iroquois Struggle for Survival, 123. 16

however, it was the largely Onondaga leadership at nearby Six Nations,43 emboldened by

American Tuscarora activist Wallace “Mad Bear” Anderson,44 that struck a genuine attempt to permanently decolonize their nation, re-affirm their sovereignty, and restore their traditional governance structure.

On the morning of 5 March, Six Nations’ forty hereditary chiefs took to the streets of Oshweken, the reserve’s central townsite, with an estimated one thousand supporters, intent on declaring full independence from Canada. Their first objective was to undo the federal government’s decision, thirty-five years earlier, to usurp the legitimacy of hereditary chiefs across the country, and replace them with elected councils.45 At approximately 10:00 a.m., the crowd of chiefs and supporters marched to the steps of the town’s Council House, while the thirteen elected councillors were in session. There, an eight-point proclamation was read aloud, stating that the elected council, defined as the “puppet government of the Indian Act and the Dominion of

Canada,” would no longer be recognized, and instead, its powers would be vested within

“the absolute control of the council of chiefs, clan mothers and warriors of the Six

Nations Indians.”

The proclamation also called for the expulsion of the Royal Canadian Mounted

Police (RCMP), who were to be treated henceforth as trespassers; an “Indian Police”

43 Ibid., 208. 44 Mad Bear had been active in the years leading up to the revolt at Six Nations—he was involved in the 1957 march of several hundred Mohawk from Akwesasne to Massena, New York, to burn summonses for unpaid taxes in front of the courthouse. In 1958, he participated in fighting the expropriation of Tuscarora lands seized by the New York Power Authority for a dam and reservoir, lying on the road with 150 demonstrators to deny access to the 100 state troopers and police that were sent to remove them. See Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee, Bruce Elliott Johansen and Barbara Alice Mann, eds. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000), 24. 45 In 1924, Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s Liberals invoked section 74 (1) of the Indian Act, which provided the statutory authority impose the selection of the ‘council of the band’ based on Indian Act guidelines. See Canada, Parliament, Senate Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, First Nations Elections: The Choice is Inherently Theirs, 40th Parliament, 3rd Session, May 2010, 18n50. 17

force was to be deputized in their stead. Hereditary chiefs claimed sole judicial authority, discretion over band membership, and all property, buildings, land titles, and leases, that had been “illegally confiscated or let by virtue of the Indian Act.” Finally, anyone caught

“defacing, marring, or destroying” the proclamation itself—which was nailed to the council house door after being read to the crowd—would be subject to “fine, imprisonment, or punishment as decided by the Confederate Council of Chiefs.” 46 With the proclamation read, the crowd demanded entry, and when no one inside obliged, supporters, calling themselves warriors, simply dismantled the hinges and took the doors off.47 Once inside, the elected council was removed, and telegrams were sent to notify

Prime Minister Diefenbaker, US President Eisenhower, and Queen Elizabeth II, of Six

Nations’ secession.48

Canadian authorities did not act immediately to regain control of the community, which witnessed an eight-day occupation of Council House by the chiefs, their supporters, and clan mothers. Diefenbaker passed the file onto his Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Ellen Fairclough, whose portfolio included Indian Affairs.49 Fairclough wired Oshweken to make clear that Canada would act to restore and maintain peace and order.50 Speaking for the chiefs, Mad Bear threatened that they would appeal their case to the United Nations if Canada refused to recognize the legitimacy of their secession. The chiefs also publicized plans for their community’s economic future, which involved the establishment of a canning plant to process agricultural products, a livestock abattoir, a clothing factory, and a tobacco processing facility that would manufacture a Six Nations

46 “The Iroquois Revolution of 1959,” Tekawennake, 11 March 2009, 11. 47 “Chiefs to Supervise Six Nations Affairs, Form Own Government,” Globe and Mail, 6 March 1959, 1. 48 Newsweek, 23 March 1959, 66, cited in Haycock, The Image of the Indian, 53. 49 “Iroquois May Ask UN Help,” Globe and Mail, 7 March 1959, 1. 50 Newsweek, 23 March 1959, 66, cited in Haycock, The Image of the Indian, 53. 18

brand of cigarettes.51 At 3 a.m. on 13 March, however, RCMP officers returned to make good on Fairclough’s ultimatum. Wielding “swagger sticks,” they forcibly ejected

Council House’s one-hundred occupiers, resulting in a few minor injuries, and the accidental smashing of a CBC television camera.52 Twenty-three supporters were arrested on charges of kidnapping, obstructing police, and impersonating police officers, among other offences. A warrant was issued for Mad Bear, who hailed from Tuscarora

Reservation in Niagara County, New York, but he apparently evaded capture by crossing back into the United States.53 That summer, he surfaced in Cuba, alongside a delegation of other indigenous sovereigntists, to exchange letters of recognition with Fidel Castro, whose communist revolution had overthrown the government of Fulgencio Batista on

New Year’s Day.54 Ten years later, Mad Bear would again evade the RCMP, re-entering

Canada in a “battered old car” in violation of a deportation order against him, to join in protesting the White Paper.55

Public opinion within and outside of the community as to the significance of the

1959 uprising are difficult to gauge due to the scant available sources. The chiefs reportedly took a poll of the reserve to determine how much support they enjoyed, but threatened to exile those who did not support them. Even so, only half of residents pledged their support, many of whom were minors.56 In a letter printed by Six Nations’

51 “Iroquois May Ask UN help,” Globe and Mail, 7 March 1959, 1. 52 “Indian activist to speak at U of W,” The Cord Weekly, 6 March 1975, 7; “50 years later, echoes of revolt still sound,” Brantford Expositor, 5 March 2009, http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/2009/03/05/50-years-later-echoes-of-revolt-still-sound . 53 “May Suspend Terms if Indians Convicted,” Globe and Mail, 20 March 1959, 8. 54 Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee, 24. 55 “Mad Bear Slips Into Canada,” Standard-Freeholder, 29 August 1969, reprinted in Akwesasne Notes, September 1969, 2. 56 Kathryn V. Muller, “Holding Hands With Wampum: Haudenosaunee Council Fires from the Great Law of Peace to Contemporary Relationships with the Canadian State,” PhD Dissertation (Kingston, Ontario: Queen’s University, 2008), 188. 19

newspaper, Tekawennake, George Beaver, a twenty-six-year-old teacher, claimed that the thousand supporters cited in the media were mostly children, citing photos as proof.

Furthermore, many of the adults who joined the march were merely there to “see the excitement,” while the rest were “largely malcontents who saw a chance to humiliate the

RCMP.”57 For writing his letter, Beaver was charged with treason—an offence deemed punishable by two warnings and then exile from the reserve. When Fairclough wired

Oshweken again, this time to appeal for Beaver’s release, and to warn chiefs to stop arresting people and holding trials, Mad Bear read the telegram before the packed council house, and replied, “she can go jump in the lake.”58 Beaver was nonetheless freed once he signed a statement promising not to write any more letters to the editor, which is ironic, as he would go on to become a regular columnist for the nearby Brantford Expositor.59

Other editorials expressed sympathy with the aims of the uprising, as with the Globe and

Mail’s dual acknowledgement that the chiefs acted in the “symbolic tradition of the

Iroquois confederacy,” but were nonetheless “injuring their own cause,” by declaring

Canadian law to be no longer in effect, and subjecting their citizens to mock-trials.60

Other commentators were more dismissive of their actions, admonishing chiefs for attempting an “abortive and rather naïve coup.”61

The Ontario government dropped all related charges by month’s end, but members of Six Nations continued to challenge Canada’s jurisdiction over their lands and people, promising to take the question of their sovereignty before the Supreme Court of

57 “George Beaver charged for treason,” Tekawennake, 11 March 2009, 14. 58 “Go Jump in the Lake, Indian tells Fairclough After Trial Scolding,” Globe and Mail, 12 March 1959, 1. 59 “George Beaver charged for treason,” Tekawennake, 11 March 2009, 14. 60 “Injuring their own cause,” Globe and Mail, 13 March 1959, 6. 61 An undated column from the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, reprinted in Indian Record, May 1959, 7. 20

Canada.62 This was a curious strategy, as it implied the belief that Canada’s highest court could legitimately rule in their favour, even as the substance of their appeal rejected the notion of Canada’s jurisdiction in their community. There was a similar irony in Six

Nations’ appearance, in June, before a Joint Parliamentary Committee on Indian Affairs, spearheaded by Fairclough.63 The community’s representatives demanded the restoration of their right to self-government, but also the acquisition of the federal vote, and an end to compulsory enfranchisement.64 It would seem that, having failed to secure their independence, the chiefs wanted, in the interim, an equal voice in Canada’s democracy, without having to give up their Indian Status or treaty entitlements.

Parliamentarians, however, were unimpressed, mainly because Six Nations’ position on expanding their sovereignty countered “the prevailing policy orthodoxy of

Indian integration.”65 Conversely, those First Nations communities that acceded to integrate within Ottawa’s criteria, were rewarded with greater ostensible autonomy, albeit under the express supervision of Indian Affairs. Mere months after the revolt at Six

Nations, the 1,850 Mohawks of Tyendinaga reserve, three-hundred kilometers to the east,

62 Six Nations withdrew its supreme court appeal in the following January. See “Six Nations Withdraws Court Appeal,” Globe and Mail, 19 January 1960. 63 The committee, approved by the House of Commons and the Senate on 29 April and 5 May, 1960, had a broad mandate to: “examine and consider the Indian Act… suggest amendments as they may deem advisable to investigate and report upon Indian administration in general and in particular, on the social and economic status of the Indians.” See John F. Leslie, “Assimilation, Integration, or Termination?: The Development of Canadian Indian Policy, 1943-1963,” PhD Dissertation (Ottawa: Carleton University, 1999), 315-316. 64 Enfranchisement was an assimilative legal mechanism embedded in the Indian Act, by which First Nations individuals were encouraged to renounce their Indian Status in exchange for full Canadian citizenship. It promised enfranchised individuals the right to vote and own property, including their apportioned share of reserve lands, which were otherwise held collectively by their community. It also meant renouncing one’s identity, paying taxes, and since ordinary Canadians could be charged with trespassing for setting foot on a reserve, it legally cut them off from their own peoples. Enfranchisement was therefore not an attractive option for the overwhelming majority of Status Indians, who wanted to remain as such. Its unpopularity was the main reason it was made compulsory at various times, often as a consequence of university education or military service. Status Indian women who married men without status, regardless of whether they were indigenous, were also infamously stripped of their status, until the Indian Act was amended to end that practice, in 1985. 65 Leslie, “Assimilation, Integration, or Termination?”, 318. 21

became the first band in Canada to assume control of its own expenditures, through a provision that had been added to the Indian Act as part of a major attempt to modernize that legislation, in 1951.66

Six Nations’ hereditary chiefs, however, remained committed to their ultimate goal of full sovereignty, and returned their case to the joint committee, in June 1960. Joe

Logan, a hereditary chief for over fifty years, told parliamentarians, “We haven’t the right to rule you and you haven’t the right to rule us… I advise you to study the treaties.” His delegation held that the Haldimand Proclamation precluded the Federal Government’s jurisdiction over Six Nations. Another Chief, Emerson Hill, reaffirmed their refusal to comply with the legal framework that dominated First Nations life, because of its integrationist aims: “We cannot subject ourselves to the Indian Act… It is leading us eventually to citizenship. The handwriting is on the wall.”67 In the previous autumn, Dr.

Gilbert Monture, a Six Nations chief, a respected former civil servant with the federal

Department of Mines and Resources, and a veteran of both world wars, had been profoundly more explicit in his assessment of Canada’s assimilationist agenda, calling it

“less brutal and less certain than the gas chambers,” but “genocide just the same.” 68

It is remarkable that the so-called “Iroquois Revolt” of 1959 is almost totally absent from Canada’s historiography, since it was front-page, national news. By the sheer numbers involved, it was likely the largest popular uprising undertaken by First Nations

66 “Indian Band Takes Control Own Revenues,” Indian Record, September 1959, 8. The Indian Act was overhauled in 1951, resulting from the recommendations of a joint parliamentary committee, assigned in 1946. Tobias has argued that, although as many as fifty sections and subsections of the act were scrapped, and ministerial authority over bands was reduced, speedy assimilation was upheld as the ultimate goal. The 1951 amendments merely removed the successive measures that had been adopted to achieve that end in the decades since the Act was first put into force. See “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation,” 25-26. 67 “Six Nations Demand Right to Rule As Sovereign State,” Globe and Mail, 23 June 1960, 8. 68 “Monture Fears Indian Genocide Canadian Risk,” Indian Record, October 1959, 1. 22

since Confederation, and a harbinger of the indigenous militancy that would emerge as

Red Power, several years later. Incredibly, undeterred activists at Six Nations, albeit fewer in number, mounted another unsuccessful attempt to secede from Canada in 1969, in response to the White Paper. These attempts to gain independence, however unsuccessful, represented a new willingness to resist Canada’s jurisdiction over Six

Nations’ lands and people. The 1959 revolt, in particular, brought national attention to the fact that there were First Nations in Canada who were diametrically opposed to the notion of integration. Its aftermath also indicated to First Nations across the country, that the

Diefenbaker government preferred diplomacy, but was willing to use force to maintain its authority over First Nations communities. This, at a time when the federal government, and many of the provinces that not already done so, were moving imminently and irreversibly toward greater integration by granting universal suffrage to First Nations. 69

Not all were in favour. Voting rights proved to be a fundamentally divisive issue among

First Nations in Canada, especially at the federal level, and one that further drew the debate over integration into the national spotlight.

2.2 The Spectre of the Vote

The Progressive Conservative government of John Diefenbaker that extended the federal vote to Status Indians in 1960, like the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau that attempted to end Indian Status in 1969, shared the basic view that segregation was

69 Some provinces already allowed Status Indians to vote. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland had never prohibited First Nations from voting, and during the immediate post-war decade, provincial voting rights were extended to Status Indians in British Columbia (1949), Manitoba (1952), and Ontario (1954). In 1960, the federal government, along with Saskatchewan, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories, granted full suffrage to First Nations, and by the end of that decade, the remaining provinces of New Brunswick (1963), Prince Edward Island (1963), Alberta (1965), and Quebec (1969), had followed suit. See John F. Leslie, “Indigenous Suffrage,” The Canadian Encyclopedia (Historica Canada, 2016), https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indigenous-suffrage. 23

anathema, and that integration was absolutely necessary.70 The sixties thus began and ended in Canada with major developments in federal policy, designed to advance the socio-political integration of Status Indians. Both policy announcements played well to the progressive integrationist ethos of the era, not to mention the “combination of individualistic and egalitarian values” that Diefenbaker and Trudeau shared.71 These proposals were easily interpreted by many First Nations, however, as merely the latest unilateral attempts from Ottawa to abolish their traditional governance structures, disregard their sovereignty, and impose Canadian democracy on their people and communities, whether they wanted it or not.

For Diefenbaker, it would have been hypocritical to persist in prohibiting

Canada’s First Nations from voting, as he was outspokenly critical of apartheid policy in

South Africa, which had been modeled, in part, on Canada’s longstanding segregation of

First Nations.72 Diefenbaker was also in the midst of drafting his hallmark Bill of Rights, to be adopted later that year, emphasizing equal rights for all Canadians.73 While he is

70 James Pitsula has similarly argued the “remarkable congruity” in the basic principles behind extending the provincial franchise to First Nations in Saskatchewan, in 1960, and those behind the federal 1969 White Paper: “The conceptualizing of the ‘Indian dilemma’ and the prescription of remedies, were virtually identical.” See “The Saskatchewan CCF Government and Treaty Indians,” 23. 71 Michael Bliss, Right Honourable Men: The Descent of Canadian Politics from Macdonald to Chrétien (Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004), 186. 72 Diefenbaker’s Liberal predecessors, Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent, had avoided overt criticism of apartheid in South Africa—a significant Canadian trading partner and Commonwealth ally—due to Cold War pressures for western solidarity, and the precarious state of the British Empire in an era of increasing decolonization. See Peter Henshaw, “Canada and the ‘South African Disputes’ at the United Nations, 1948-1961,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 33, 1 (1999), 27. Diefenbaker’s “commitment to individual rights and freedoms,” and his “strong stand in parliament against racial discrimination,” facilitated a change in policy, which was best demonstrated by Canada’s vote in favour of a UN resolution condemning South Africa’s racial policies, in 1958. See ibid., 29. Diefenbaker, and subsequent prime ministers, however, remained cautious, and fell short of supporting sanctions against South Africa, until 1977. See ibid., 36. For evidence that South African officials visited Canada, from the early twentieth century onward, to study Indian residential schools, the reserve system, and the administration of native peoples—even after 1961, when South Africa was forced out of the Commonwealth—see Linda Freeman, The Ambiguous Champion: Canada and South Africa in the Trudeau and Mulroney Years (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 16, 309. 73 Leslie, “Assimilation, Integration, or Termination?” 320. 24

rightly lauded as the Prime Minister who “finally” granted First Nations their unconditional right to vote,74 this nonetheless represented a notable about-face on his part. During the campaign that delivered his party’s unprecedented electoral victory in

1958, Diefenbaker had warned First Nations chiefs that there would be consequences if they voted “alongside of the white man and white man sees that you get the same equal rights as the many that pay taxes.”75

Diefenbaker’s words of caution validated longstanding indigenous fears that participation in Canadian democracy was a slippery slope that would erode their sovereignty. Andrew Paull, the Squamish leader who had formed the North American

Indian Brotherhood (NAIB) in the mid-1940s, notoriously split from the Native

Brotherhood of British Columbia (NBBC), which sought the provincial vote for Status

Indians; a right that was conferred in 1949.76 Paull continually opposed participation in any Canadian elections for fear that it would undermine First Nations’ special status.77

Such concerns would echo throughout an immediate and adamant backlash, following the throne speech of January 1960, which confirmed Diefenbaker’s intentions to extend the franchise to First Nations. One letter to the Prime Minister, from a resident of Oka,

Quebec, posed questions that reflected likely anxieties among First Nations across the country at the prospect of gaining the vote. Would they have to pay property and lands taxes? Would they lose medical and hospital care? Would they still receive relief

74 A History of the Vote in Canada (Ottawa: Chief Electoral Office of Canada, 2007), 86. 75 Diefenbaker’s words were paraphrased in a letter to Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas from Angus Mirasty and William Charles, the leaders of two northern First Nations communities. See Pitsula, “The Saskatchewan CCF Government and Treaty Indians,” 33. 76 British Columbia was the first province to extend provincial voting rights to Status Indians, which resulted largely due to the efforts of the Native Brotherhood and its newspaper, The Native Voice—the first indigenous newspaper in the country. See Eric Jamieson, The Native Voice: The Story of How Maisie Hurley and Canada’s First Aboriginal Newspaper Changed a Nation (Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia: Caitlin Press, 2016). 77 McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood, 42. 25

payments? Finally, would they be enfranchised? “We would be foolish to vote to change our treaties,” he asserted, “the majority would starve.”78

On 31 March, federal legislation repealed the discriminatory provisions of the

Canada Elections Act, giving 60,000 registered Status Indians across Canada the right to vote federally. Or, according to the recollections of John Tootoosis, provincial chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians at the time, Diefenbaker “shoved the federal vote down Indian throats.”79 Opponents and skeptics responded swiftly. In a letter to the

Globe and Mail, Big White Owl of Toronto expressed that “Many Indians in Canada look upon the granting of the Federal vote with suspicion, skepticism, distrust, and fear,” and that the best way to allay their concerns would be to repeal “the Enfranchisement sections” of the Indian Act. While he believed the vote would be a great asset to First

Nations people, he also thought they would be “very foolish” to accept the vote until the aforementioned sections, 108 through 112, were repealed.80 Compulsory enfranchisement, which remained in force until March of the following year—and which continued to apply to Status Indian women who married non-status men, until 1985—was certainly the greatest concern associated with gaining the voting franchise, not least because those who lost Indian Status, voluntarily or otherwise, were automatically subject to taxation.81 Irvin Logan, speaking on behalf of the Six Nations reserve—which was still embroiled in its legal fight to reinstate its hereditary chiefs—warned that his

78 The handwritten letter bears the stamp, “Seen by John G. Diefenbaker.” See “Letter from George A. Cree to John Diefenbaker,” 20 January 1960, https://www.usask.ca/diefenbaker/virtual- exhibits/aboriginal-enfranchisement.php. 79 Pitsula notes that while Tootoosis was correct that First Nations people had not been consulted as to whether or not they wanted the vote, they made no concerted effort to reverse the decision. See “The Saskatchewan CCF Government and Treaty Indians,” 39. 80 “The Indian and the Vote,” Globe and Mail, 4 April 1960, 6. 81 Bill C-61, An Amendment Removing Provision Respecting Compulsory Enfranchisement, was assented to on 9 March 1961; Bill C-31, An Act to Amend the Indian Act, was assented to on 28 June 1985. 26

people might refuse to accept any legislation that gave them the vote, as they were “well aware of the soundness of the argument that there cannot be taxation without representation.” With the franchise extended, Logan believed taxation would be the inevitable next step, in spite of Diefenbaker’s assurances that gaining the vote would not affect treaty rights.82 Importantly, this represented a full reversal of Six Nations’ stated position before the June 1959 Parliamentary Committee on Indian Affairs, when, having failed to secure their independence, their delegation had demanded the acquisition of the federal vote.

First Nations were not alone in believing the vote to be the harbinger of integration that would bring an end to treaty rights and the reserve system that facilitated their cultural continuity. Many non-indigenous Canadians believed the same, but saw this as a desirable and even inevitable outcome, rather than cause for concern. Non- indigenous Canadians generally seem to have experienced difficulty in understanding

First Nations resistance to the notion of becoming part of their cherished democracy, and their tendency to favour what so many outsiders regarded as socio-political isolation.

Even as politicians were assuring First Nations that gaining the franchise would not undermine their treaty rights nor the status of their reserve lands, a multitude of non- indigenous voices betrayed an unabashed belief that the vote was a positive step toward assimilation, and away from the segregation they associated with reserve life. One

Progressive Conservative member of Parliament explicitly described the vote as a measure toward breaking down the isolationism, segregation, and paternalism of the reserve system; a move toward integrating Canada’s first peoples for the first time.83 A

82 “Indian Franchise Bill Introduced in House,” Globe and Mail, 19 January 1960, 11. 83 “The First Canadians Finally Recognized,” Globe and Mail, 12 March 1960, 8. 27

Globe and Mail contributor in Calgary, offered an even more blatant response to First

Nations in Alberta who feared the vote would erode their treaty rights and push them off their reserves, declaring it “obvious to any observer that at some time the Indians have to move off the reservations if there is ever to be a successful program of making the

Indians full citizens of this country.”84 Rather than seeking to allay their fears about the franchise, many skipped directly to addressing First Nations fears about the end of the reserve system, believing it to be inevitable. Jesuit Reverend Peter Brown characterized the reserve as “a stone wall that segregates the Indian from our fellow Canadian,” which, if left intact, could “create in the mind and heart of the young generation, the feeling that they are segregated, very much as the Negro feels in the south today…” 85 This was an early example of the tendency, among non-indigenous and indigenous Canadians alike, to compare the marginalization of First Nations with that of African Americans; a tendency that would only increase throughout the decade, as interest in civil rights activism expanded.

The incorporation of the Toronto-based Indian-Eskimo Association (IEA) in

1960, organized and administered by a concerned white majority, represented the willingness of many non-indigenous Canadians to ease the integration process by focusing on practical forms of assistance such as fundraising, housing improvement, and economic development for indigenous communities.86 Harold Cardinal has argued, however, that IEA became more of a hindrance than a help, by siphoning funding from

84 “Votes vs. Treaty Rights: Indians Skeptical of Motives,” Globe and Mail, 19 January 1960, 7. 85 “Indian Segregated, Just Like Negro,” Indian Record, September 1960, 6. 86 The Indian-Eskimo Association, while white-dominated, did maintain an approximately twenty-five percent indigenous membership, as well as representation on its board of directors. See “History,” Indian-Eskimo Association of Canada fonds. -- 1957-1970, http://www.trentu.ca/library/archives/95- 006. 28

Indian Affairs that could have bolstered First Nations-led organizations, and by increasingly speaking for, rather than just supporting, indigenous Canadians.87

The most prevalent commonality between indigenous and non-indigenous perspectives on the matter, was their interpretation of the vote as a definitive step toward the end of the reserve system and treaty rights, even though the vote officially came with no strings attached. Regardless, for those who believed integration was imperative, this was a positive and progressive step away from segregation, and for those who sought to affirm and protect First Nations sovereignty, this was a negative step toward assimilation.

Importantly, the latter was by no means a consensus point of view among all First

Nations, and those who voiced resistance to the vote were considerably outmanoeuvred by those who favoured integration, and full citizenship for indigenous Canadians.

This divergence partly explains why the early 1960s were scant on examples of indigenous protest in Canada, and were rather characterized by the development of the government-friendly, integrationist, National Indian Council (NIC), which first met in

Regina in August 1961, with co-founder William Wuttunee as its first leader. He described the council’s basic approach in Ruffled Feathers, as an embodiment of indigenous Canadians doing things for themselves rather than “depending on the white man” and “crying about past mistreatment.”88 The only grassroots community-based activist elected to the original six-member NIC executive, which was otherwise dominated by indigenous urban professionals, was George Manuel, who was then chief of the Neskainlith Shuswap band, and more significantly, Andrew Paull’s successor as

87 Cardinal, The Unjust Society, 88. 88 Wuttunee, Ruffled Feathers, 20. 29

NAIB president.89 “For the first time in our North American history,” Manuel proclaimed in early 1964, “there exists an Indian sense of identity and common interest with other

Indian tribes.”90 The NIC, however, struggled greatly to represent that common interest.

In Cardinal’s estimation, most of the council’s membership and leadership were based in urban areas which undermined their connectedness to First Nations culture and community.91 Moreover, they were further detached in their inability to communicate efficiently with countless reserve communities due to a simple lack of telephone infrastructure. The NIC’s penchant for exhibitions of indigenous arts and crafts, as well as “Indian princess” pageants, accompanied its failure to adequately address indigenous peoples’ most pressing concerns.

Similarly, the sparsity of indigenous-focused news media, until the end of the decade, undermined First Nations’ ability to share and relate to common indigenous struggles and aspirations across the country.92 The Catholic Indian Record, which had been published by the Oblate Fathers of Mary Immaculate since 1938, was perhaps the most comprehensive source for Canada-wide reporting on indigenous current affairs until the late sixties. Its promotion of Catholicism and an inherently paternalistic approach to community development were accompanied by remarkable diligence in covering a wide range of social, economic, political, and cultural affairs, as well as opinion-editorials

89 McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood, 61. Manuel remained the elected president of the NAIB until his defection to the NBBC, in 1963. See ibid., 68. In spite of this, there is a persistent, erroneous belief that the NAIB died with its founder, Paull, in 1959. See, for example: Rauncie Murdoch-Kinnaird, “The Union of Saskatchewan Indians: An Organization of Indian People for Indian People,” Past Imperfect 5 (1996), 121; and, Jean Goodwill and Norma Sluman, John Tootoosis (Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications, 1984), 201. 90 Manuel, “A Sense of Identity,” reprinted in Indian Record, February 1964, 3. 91 Cardinal, The Unjust Society, 93. 92 This exemplifies Benedict Anderson’s famous contention that print media has played an essential role in reinforcing collective national identities around the world for centuries. See Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983; London: Verso, 2006), 24-26. 30

from a wide range of indigenous and non-indigenous perspectives. John Jerome of the

MicMac Indian Rights Association at Restigouche, Quebec, went so far as to write, “if it were not for this paper, I would believe that we were the only Indians in Canada. I am constantly starved for news of our Red Brothers.”93 Several provincial First Nations organizations had followed with their own periodicals, beginning with the NBBC’s

Native Voice in 1947, but the scope of such publications was fairly region-specific.

Indian Affairs also published its own quarterly, Indian News, from 1954 until 1982.94

Aside from print media, the weekly Indian Magazine, which hit airwaves in February

1964 as CBC’s first major effort to allow indigenous people to produce their own radio programming, was characterized by its first host, Russell Moses of Six Nations, as “a nice light program” that could hardly be classified as radical.95 The public expression of urgent regional and national grievances among First Nations was subsequently spearheaded, not through the activities of the NIC, nor through indigenous-focused media, but through sporadic demonstrations of public protest, organized by grassroots activists. At mid-decade, their initiatives drove an increase in the visibility of indigenous protest activity, and the national conversation that it generated.

93 “Lack of National Unity Weakens Indians’ Stand,” Indian Record, January 1965, 4. 94 The rise and fall of the Native Voice, and the story of the non-indigenous woman who ran it until her death in 1964, is chronicled in Jamieson, The Native Voice. Other provincial First Nations periodicals included NAIB’s The Thunderbird (1949-55), the Vancouver-based Pan-American Indian League’s Indian Time (1950-1959), and the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians’ Indian Outlook (1960-1963). See Valerie Alia, Un/covering the North: News, Media and Aboriginal People (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999), 76. 95 The tapes from the early years of the Montreal-produced Indian Magazine, which was initially broadcast exclusively on CBC’s Northern Service, did not survive, but the recollections of Moses, his producer, John Barbarash, and others, were documented in a twentieth anniversary special: Brian Maracle, “Rise of the Native Rights Movement,” Our Native Land, Toronto: CBC Radio, 4 February 1984, http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/our-native-land-rise-of-the-native-rights-movement. 31

2.3 First Nations on the March

1965 was a pivotal year for public expressions of First Nations protest and organizing in

Canada, during which community members and their leaders organized public demonstrations to bring their grievances directly to Canadian authorities. These culminated in November of that year, at Kenora, Ontario, where a significant and well- publicized protest march by First Nations from across the region, shed light on common struggles facing their communities across Canada. Public reaction, in turn, revealed an elevated interest among Canadians, framed by their increasing fixation on the violent upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement, south of the border.

The First Nations marches of 1965 began in February, when more than one- hundred protestors from the Dene ‘Tha First Nation, in the extreme northwest corner of

Alberta, marched on the Edmonton Legislature.96 V.F. Valentine, head of the economic development division of the Indian Affairs Branch in Ottawa, was quickly dispatched to hear their concerns in person. His superior, John Nicholson, who served briefly as

Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, in turn denounced the ensuing media reports about the hardships facing the people of Hay Lake, as “extreme” and untrue. Still, the protestors maintained that with 600 band members living on relief and welfare payments between fifteen and twenty-two dollars per month, they desperately needed assistance to develop a viable economy, citing farming, ranching, and logging operations as potential options. Nicholson offered only a vague commitment, however, stating that he was satisfied that their immediate needs were taken care of and that any further aid necessary would be provided.97 Indeed, “Indian relief spending,” was sharply on the rise, having

96 The Dene ‘Tha were referred to in the press of the day as the “Slave band at Hay Lake.” 97 “Indian Protest Brings Official From Ottawa,” Globe and Mail, 24 February 1965, 3. 32

tripled since the beginning of the decade.98 Nicholson’s assurance, however, seems to exemplify the specific frustration inherent in the protestors’ message: that financial assistance was an inadequate short-term solution and that, rather than seeking handouts, they were seeking a viable economy.

Another notable protest march materialized in late April, when twenty activists from various Haudenosaunee communities, including Six Nations, paraded in front of

Ottawa’s Parliament Hill. Protestors, taking on a more defiant stance than had the Dene in Edmonton, were dressed in beaded costumes and feathered headdresses, and used the loaded term “genocide” to describe the Indian Act because of its assimilative aims. The placards they brandished, along with the petition they circulated, called again for the abolition of the Act, and for the reaffirmation of their treaties with the British.99 While neither march provoked a serious reaction from Indian Affairs, these events showed a significant new willingness among First Nations people to take their grievances off- reserve, and to directly, publicly, demonstrate their demands for change.

Sensitivity among non-indigenous Canadians toward the plight of indigenous peoples across the country was also increasingly visible during and after 1965, especially with the increasing political engagement of young people. Student radicals at the

University of Saskatchewan, for example, demonstrated new and genuine interest in addressing injustices faced by indigenous Canadians, by organizing a four-day mid- winter conference on “The Status of the Indian and Métis in Canada.” 100 Proponents of

98 “Poverty, Separateness Indians’ Major Problems but Integration Won’t Help All,” Globe and Mail, 27 May 1965, 10. 99 “Charge Genocide: 20 Indians Parade, Protest Against Act,” Globe and Mail, 28 April 1965, 31. 100 The conference, held in February, was officially sponsored by the Canadian Union of Students, and featured First Nations and Métis leaders, as well as various academics, among its panelists and speakers. See Murray Dobbin, One and a Half Men: The Story of Jim Brady and Malcolm Norris, Métis Patriots of the Twentieth Century (Vancouver: New Star Books, 1981), 226. 33

the youthful New Left, emanating from the US, represented a significant groundswell of protest activity in the 1960s. Their activities targeted social injustice and inequality that they saw as inherent to the established political order, under the organization of groups such as Students for a Democratic Society, across North America, and more significantly in Canada, by the Student Union for Peace Action.101

By mid-decade, as the US Civil Rights Movement exposed and inflamed increasing racial hostilities south of the border, the press in Canada featured rampant comparisons between the struggles of African Americans and indigenous Canadians. The question, “Why don’t Canadians march against discrimination at home?” arose immediately in response to demonstrations in front of the US Consulate-General in

Toronto against the brutal treatment of African Americans in Selma, Alabama.102 That city had become synonymous with the hundreds who marched on 7 March 1965 to demand the registration of black voters, only to be halted en route to the state capitol in

Montgomery by tear gas, nightsticks and whips, wielded by Alabama state troopers and volunteers from the Dallas County sheriff’s office.103 Many passing the Toronto demonstrations reportedly asked questions such as, “Why don’t you protest against problems in your own backyard? Why don’t you march for our Indians, for example?”104

The executive director of Christian Lay Missioners likewise asked readers of the Catholic

101 Many of the works cited for their perspectives on indigenous activism, also feature substantial analyses of the New Left. See, for example, Kotash, Long Way From Home, 71-103; Owram, Born at the Right Time, 216-247; Pitsula, New World Dawning: The Sixties at Regina Campus (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2008), 34-40; and Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 245-309. 102 “Why don’t Canadians march against discrimination at home?” Globe and Mail, 19 March 1965, 7. 103 “Negro March Crushed,” Globe and Mail, 8 March 1965, 1; Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr., “Celebrating Selma: The Importance of Context in Public Forum Analysis,” Yale Law Journal 104, 6 (April 1995), 1417. The march was organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Non- violent Coordinating Committee—the subsequent break between these organizations is discussed below. 104 “Why don’t Canadians march against discrimination at home?” Globe and Mail, 19 March 1965, 7. 34

Indian Record, how long it would be “before Toronto (or any other) university students picket their own government offices on behalf of the Indians?” In his view, ordinary white Canadians were “shrugging off” their responsibilities, leaving the Department of

Indian Affairs and ordained missionaries overextended.105 Similarly, Patricia Clarke, a columnist with the United Church Observer, asked why Canadians joined sit-ins in

Alabama restaurants, “where Negroes can’t get a meal,” but not in Kenora, Ontario,

“where Indians can’t get a meal.”106 Even Saskatchewan premier, Ross Thatcher, then in his first year in office, believed that “the treatment that Saskatchewan gives her Indians is not much better than the people of Selma and Alabama are giving their negroes.” 107 This echoed journalist Peter Gzowski’s analysis of the white-mob killing of Allan Thomas, a young Saulteaux man, near North Battleford, Saskatchewan, where he believed he had discovered “Canada’s Alabama,” two years earlier.108 In that tragedy, he found an analogue to the cultural elements in the American South that still tolerated the horrific vigilante practice of lynching to assert white supremacy. “Hostility between Indians and whites,” he predicted, would “almost certainly flare up elsewhere” in the country, blaming the “all-pervasive atmosphere of unwelcome,” facing indigenous peoples.109

Moreover, in 1965, Canadians were told that the “Indian population” had surpassed

105 “Our Own Civil Rights Issue,” Indian Record, December 1965, 15. 106 Patricia Clarke, The United Church Observer, March 1965, 8, quoted in Rutherford, “Canada’s Other Red Scare: Rights, Decolonization, and Indigenous Protest in the Global Sixties,” 37. 107 Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan, Debates, 30 March 1965, quoted in Pitsula, “The Thatcher Government in Saskatchewan and Treaty Indians, 1964-1971: The Quiet Revolution,” Saskatchewan History 48, 1 (Spring 1996), 3. 108 Peter Gzowski, “This is our Alabama,” Macleans, 6 July 1963, 20. 109 Ibid., 46. 35

200,000, having doubled since 1900, and was set to increase dramatically, with a birth rate at twice the national average.110

In the United States, the extension of the Civil Rights Movement into indigenous issues was already underway in the Pacific Northwest, where for decades, Puyallup,

Nisqually, and Muckleshoot fishers in Washington State had been subjected to harassment, arrest, and imprisonment by State game wardens for fishing out of season. 111

The National Indian Youth Council, founded in New Mexico in 1961, took the lead in organising a coalition of forty-seven Native communities to mount a demonstration in support of indigenous fishing rights, adapting the sit-in strategy to a specific Native

American concern.112 Actor Marlon Brando was secured to participate in the first “fish- ins,” as they were called, held at Frank’s Landing in March 1964 near the state capital,

Olympia. Brando’s brief arrest helped the demonstration and its message gain publicity that it otherwise would have struggled to attain.113 In the ensuing years, a diverse array of activist groups came to either support or join the movement, which resonated across

110 CBC Newsmagazine, Toronto: CBC Television, 7 December 1965, http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/indians-demand-a-better-deal-in-kenora-ont-in-1965. CBC’s reported figure of 200,000 was already well out of date. The Hawthorn Report, discussed below, stated that the “Indian” population in 1965 was 217,864. See A Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada: A Report on Economic, Political, Educational Needs and Policies, volume I, H.B. Hawthorn, ed. (Ottawa: Indian Affairs Branch, 1966), 207. Historical census data states that Canada’s First Nations population underwent significant expansion in the sixties, from 208,286 to 295,215 between 1961 and 1971; the total aboriginal population, including Métis and Inuit peoples, grew from 220,121 to 312,765 within the same period. See James C. Saku, “Aboriginal Census Data in Canada: A Research Note,” The Canadian Journal of Native Studies 19, 2 (1999), 370. 111 Sherry L. Smith, Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 21. 112 Paul C. Rosier, Serving Their Country: American Indian Politics and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2009), 237. 113 For Brando’s involvement, see ibid. The fish-ins continued, as did their high-profile endorsements, and by 1966, the Survival of American Indians Association, which formed to champion indigenous fishing rights, had coopted the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union to provide legal representation to those arrested for fishing-in. See Smith, Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power, 23. 36

various anti-establishment causes.114 Lee Maracle recalled her visit to Frank’s Landing in late-October 1968, with the assembled press fixating on renowned Cree-Canadian folk- singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, preaching non-violence, and actor Jane Fonda, picking up fish and smiling for cameras.115 Sainte-Marie’s songs of protest had fueled her rise to fame in early sixties New York. She employed her notoriety to advocate tirelessly for indigenous concerns in her music and activism, in an attempt to “inform the White man how it is for the Indian.”116 While the eventual success of the fish-in movement did not come until indigenous fishing rights were upheld in U.S. v. Washington (1974), their success in publicly uniting multiple indigenous peoples behind a common cause, marked an important split from the older Native American establishment in that country, represented by the National Congress of American Indians, which held that “any kind of protest or direct action was distasteful and contrary to the Indian way”—their banner read “Indians

Don’t Demonstrate” throughout the 1960s.117

Alan Borovoy, cited as one of “the most active civil rights workers in Canada,” similarly disagreed with the applicability of tactics associated with the US Civil Rights

Movement to address discrimination against indigenous people in Canada—initially, at least. As director of the Ontario Labor Committee for Human Rights, Borovoy believed, rather, that Canadian law already dealt effectively with discrimination so long as people

114 By 1967, the fish-in epicentre at Frank’s Landing was teeming with “non-Indian communists, Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society… alienated Indian and non-Indian Vietnam War veterans, Quakers from Seattle,” and “counterculture types passing through.” Ibid., 26. 115 Maracle, Bobbi Lee, 84. 116 “Buffy Sainte-Marie,” Los Angeles Free Press, 29 November 1968. Her protest songwriting and indigenous advocacy converged most famously in the song, “My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying,” from the album, Little Wheel Spin and Spin, released 15 June 1966, which indicted American colonialism as genocide. 117 For U.S. v. Washington, see Rosier, Serving Their Country, 273; for the National Congress of American Indian opposition to indigenous protest, see Bradley G. Shreve, Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Activism (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), 119. 37

were willing to lay charges and testify to the injustices they witnessed. In short, he saw no lack of discrimination against indigenous Canadians, but believed them to be ignorant of their own rights, and reluctant to “get involved in social disputes.”118 He was not unsympathetic to indigenous plight, however, and by the end of the year, he had changed his stance on the usefulness of public demonstrations for indigenous causes, taking an instrumental role in helping to organize a large and remarkably peaceful First Nations protest event in Kenora, which was described at the time as “Canada’s first ‘civil rights’ march.”119

Kenora, a remote Ontario city near the Manitoba border, was long noted for the racial divisions, and socioeconomic disparities, endured by indigenous inhabitants in the region. Representations of the local indigenous population in the Kenora Daily Miner and News, demonstrably “reflected, fueled, denied, and abetted” entrenched racism, which had subjected indigenous people in the region to decades of “public ridicule, rebuke, and stinging prejudice.”120 Kenora came under increasing media scrutiny in the wake of the crackdown at Selma, especially after a nationally syndicated exposé by Ian

Adams appeared in July 1965, which chronicled near-segregationist practices in the community, and predicted an imminent indigenous uprising.121 Fears of indigenous unrest in Canada were further fueled in August when major rioting broke out in the predominantly African American neighbourhood of Watts in southern Los Angeles,

118 “Why don’t Canadians march against discrimination at home?” Globe and Mail, 19 March 1965, 7. 119 Scott Rutherford, “Canada’s Other Red Scare: The Anicinabe Park Occupation and indigenous Decolonization,” The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism, Dan Berger, ed. (London: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 78. 120 Mark C. Anderson and Carmen L. Robertson, Seeing Red: A History of Natives in Canadian Newspapers (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2011), 175. 121 Ian Adams, “The Indians: An Abandoned and Dispossessed People,” Weekend Magazine, 31 July 1965, 2-6, discussed in Rutherford, “Canada’s Other Red Scare: Rights, Decolonization, and Indigenous Protest in the Global Sixties,” 40-41. 38

resulting in almost three dozen deaths. The commission that attempted to ascertain the cause of the unrest, later identified the lack of jobs available for untrained African

Americans, and the lack of effective schooling designed for their children, both of which mirrored challenges facing indigenous Canadians.122

In November, Borovoy, along with Dan Hill, director of the Ontario Human

Rights Commission (OHRC),123 accepted an invitation to speak at a conference of

Kenora’s Indian-White Committee (IWC), which sought to address pervasive discrimination and inequality in the community. Its formation in the previous year was meant to challenge white racism, but also as a means to “generate enthusiasm… within the Indian.”124 As Borovoy recalled in a recent interview, his message at the IWC conference, with a substantial number of First Nations chiefs among the attendees, was simple: “if you want to get anywhere, you have to be prepared to raise some hell.

Nobody’s going to listen to you unless you make some noise.” According to his recollections, he met with several indigenous leaders later in his hotel who were “spoiling for action,” and, taking their concerns seriously, he canceled his flight home to Toronto, opting to visit several reserves in the region, and hear local grievances. He implored residents in each community to “come to Kenora” to make their demands heard, and

122 “Watts: an end or a beginning?” Globe and Mail, 7 December 1965, 4; Governor’s Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, “Violence in the City -- An End or a Beginning?” (Los Angeles: State of California, 1965). 123 Dan Hill, a Missouri-born African-American, moved to Canada in 1950 to study sociology in Toronto, where he earned his PhD with a thesis entitled “Negroes in Toronto: A Sociological Study of a Minority Group.” He became the first full-time director of OHRC in 1962; a post he held until 1971. See Dawn P. Williams, Who’s Who in Black Canada: Black Success and Black Excellence in Canada (Toronto: D.P. Williams and Associates, 2002), 170-171. 124 “Indian Problem Termed Mainly a Human Problem-Shankowsky,” Kenora Daily Miner and News, 6 February 1965, 3, quoted in Rutherford, “Canada’s Other Red Scare: Rights, Decolonization, and Indigenous Protest in the Global Sixties,” 44. 39

began drafting a brief in consultation with local chiefs, to present to the city’s town council. Hill, meanwhile, secured OHRC funding to bus demonstrators to Kenora.125

The resulting five-block march down Kenora’s Main Street, from the Knox

United Church to a packed rally at the Royal Canadian Legion Hall, where the marchers addressed the town council, garnered much-needed publicity for struggles that were common to indigenous people across Canada. In addition to the marchers, approximately one-hundred white residents were also present at the Legion rally, and local police turned dozens away at the door. 126 The stated brief that Borovoy had drafted, asked “only for

Kenora’s time and commitment,” and described how poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and alcohol were plaguing First Nations. The specific demands that followed were strikingly reasonable, practical, and measured, calling on council to pass four resolutions: to establish a mayor’s committee on “Indian-non-Indian relations” to mediate inter-racial grievances; to request that the Ontario government extend the fur trapping season to abate trappers’ off-season reliance on welfare; to seek assistance from the Alcoholism Research Foundation through the provincial Attorney-General; and, to lobby Ottawa to build a radio telephone network to allow communication between

Kenora and outlying reserves.

What is striking about the immediate journalistic accounts of the march is the extent to which they make clear that violence was expected, and yet, in addition to being non-violent, the demonstration was described as being almost serene in its peacefulness:

“They walked four abreast through the snowy streets—old men, young men in

125 Ontario Human Rights Commission, “Aboriginal Issues in 1965—you’ve got to come to Kenora,” YouTube Video, 2 August 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wh_wHtN1mE. 126 “Better deal in Kenora demanded by seven Indian bands,” Globe and Mail, 23 November 1965, 14. 40

mackinaws and shabby pants and young women with babies in their arms.” 127 The front- page of the Winnipeg Tribune called it “the most impressive display of Indian unity this region has ever seen”—“a sigh of relief” for Kenora’s town council.128 Newspaper and television coverage alike noted the lack of placards and slogan-chanting, as they had become accustomed to seeing in civil rights-era demonstrations; their expectations were clearly and blatantly shaped by events in the American South. Instead, demonstrators in

Kenora reportedly marched four-hundred-strong, in silence.129 Peter Reilly, then host of

CBC television’s Newsmagazine, mocked prior comparisons of tensions in Kenora to the situation in the southern states, while simultaneously belittling the protestors:

It was billed in the daily press as another Selma, Alabama. ‘Violence is possible,’ said headlines. But it was nothing like Selma, and anyone who knew anything about Indians knew it couldn’t be. They were almost apologetic about their march. There were no folksingers to urge them on, none of the showy trappings of the American Civil Rights Movement. It was quiet, gentle, and bashful. In other words, it was an Indian demonstration.

He described “Indians” as “a people too gentle for its own good, perhaps even for its own survival.”130 His analysis implied that First Nations were failing to conform to the sort of

127 Ibid. 128 “Unprecedented Display of Unity,” Winnipeg Tribune, 23 November 1965, 1. 129 There have been various published estimates as to the number of those who took part in the march, as well as errors in its timing and location. The Globe and Mail and Winnipeg Tribune articles cited above, published on the day following the events, reported four hundred “Indians,” as did Maclean’s in the February 1967 feature cited above. The Globe and Mail of 27 December 1967, increased its estimate of participants, reporting that “450 Indians” had been involved (see page 8). Historian Scott Rutherford wrote in his 2010 article, “Canada’s Other Red Scare,” that there were “Five-hundred people, from seven different reserves” (see page 78), but reduced that number to “four-hundred Indigenous men and women” in his 2011 dissertation of the same title (see page 29). The most curious errors appeared in an award-winning survey text, which discussed the Kenora march but stated that it occurred one year earlier than it did, in 1964, and inexplicably described it as a “march of protest on Ottawa,” instead of a march on Kenora’s Legion Hall. See Olive Patricia Dickason and David T. McNab, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from the Earliest Times, Fourth Edition (1992; Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2009), 378-379. 130 CBC Newsmagazine, 7 December 1965. 41

righteous indignation that had come to be expected in protest demonstrations of that era, thereby placing their cause in jeopardy.

Malcolm Norris, a prominent Métis activist since the depression-era, and cofounder of the Métis Association of Alberta in 1932, also weighed in on the flurry of comparisons in the wake of Selma and Kenora. He drew a clear distinction between

African Americans, whom he saw struggling against oppression, and First Nations, whom he saw struggling against indifference: “To be ignored is more vicious perhaps than to be oppressed… This kind of discrimination is hard to fight; but perhaps the Kenora affair shows us that it can, and must, be fought in the same way. Let us hope the Indians learn the same lesson.”131 Although he saw fundamental differences in their struggles, he believed First Nations would benefit greatly by employing the tactics of African

American activists. Importantly, Norris’ support for the Kenora march elicited a high- handed response from Ross Thatcher’s Liberal government in Saskatchewan: its Indian-

Métis Branch, which provided community development funding, was directed to avoid considering grants sought by anyone connected to Norris, and to portray him as someone not representing Native interests.132 Thatcher’s assimilationist preference for indigenous integration led his administration to actively undermine indigenous protest activity.

While the Kenora march simultaneously lent new national visibility to First

Nations’ concerns, it also irritated integrationists and inflamed racial tensions locally.

Kenora’s mayor, W. Edgar Norton, stated plainly his contempt for the reserve system as a form of segregation that had to “sooner or later end,” believing there was “no alternative but to one day get rid of the reserves,” which meant that indigenous Canadians had to

131 Malcolm Norris, “Militant Action,” Moose Call, November-December 1965, quoted in Dobbin, One and a Half Men, 231. 132 Ibid. 42

“adapt their way of life to industrialized society.” To that end, he proposed hiring more social workers to “show them the benefits of continuous work and salaries that would afford them the opportunity to buy new cars and television sets and houses.”133 While he was receptive to the marchers’ concerns, he resented and denied charges that racism and discrimination were contributing factors to their plight, attributing these ideas to the IWC, which he described as a trouble-making organization looking only to “produce a sensation.”134 When asked by Chief Peter Seymour, Chairman of the Grand Council of

Treaty Three, whether the IWC would be involved in follow-up talks after the march, the mayor replied, “no.”135 Norton also resented the involvement of journalists and activists whom he saw as outside agitators—a characterization used often by segregationists in the

American South who blamed activists from northern states for stirring up trouble in southern cities. Borovoy and Hill, having traveled from Toronto to assist in the march’s fruition, were obvious targets for this sort of parallel. Their involvement spurred the

Winnipeg Tribune headline: “NEGRO AND JEW SPEARHEADED MARCH OF INDIANS,” which, as noted in a Maclean’s retrospective of a little over one year later, caused people to forget that “the march had been the Indians’ idea in the first place.”136

The most prominent and outspoken indigenous activist involved in organizing the march was Fred Kelly, a Children’s Aid Society social worker with a caseload of four hundred people scattered throughout northwestern Ontario, until his dismissal in the week following the demonstration. While his employer cited a lack of formal training, Kelly believed it was his characterization as a civil rights leader in the media, along with

133 W. Edgar Norton, interviewed for CBC Newsmagazine, 7 December 1965. 134 “Better deal in Kenora demanded by seven Indian bands,” Globe and Mail, 23 November 1965, 14. 135 “400 March for Equality: Unprecedented Display of Unity,” Indian Record, January 1966, 3. 136 “Kenora just one year later,” Maclean’s, February 1967, 31. 43

accusations that he was fostering community unrest, that led to his firing.137 Journalists, once again, had drawn effortless parallels with the Civil Rights Movement, seizing on

Kelly as “the Martin Luther King of Canada.”138 After all, Kelly was integral to the organization of the march, and shared King’s belief in non-violence, stating, “Those of you who said we were doing nothing but creating another Selma, we thank you for giving us a chance to show our peaceful intentions.”139 He was also, for the time being, a cautious integrationist, telling Peter Reilly in a nationally televised interview, “I think that integration is inevitable, but the Indians don’t want to be completely assimilated… assimilation almost becomes synonymous with extermination.”140 Nevertheless, A.E.

Johansen, Ontario’s Indian development officer, implied that the marchers represented a

“small hysterical group of people,” even as he pledged to expand the province’s

“program for Indians” in light of the march.141

As scholar and commentator Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair stated recently, the

Kenora march represented “a brave splash in history” wherein participants “demanded equality and representation for indigenous peoples during a time it was not welcomed.” 142

Unfortunately, pacifist activism was no match for racial tensions in Kenora, which would only continue to rise—Kelly and his brother Peter were themselves beaten by white attackers while walking through the city at night two years later, leading them to predict race riots akin to those that exploded through American cities throughout that year.143

137 “Kenora Indian says he lost job for his role in protest march,” Globe and Mail, 29 November 1965, 4. 138 CBC Newsmagazine, 7 December 1965. 139 “Better deal in Kenora demanded by seven Indian bands,” Globe and Mail, 23 November 1965, 14. 140 CBC Newsmagazine, 7 December 1965. 141 “Better deal in Kenora demanded by seven Indian bands,” Globe and Mail, 23 November 1965, 14. 142 “The Riots that Weren’t,” Winnipeg Free Press, 21 November 2015, https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/the-riots-that-werent-352513511.html. 143 “Indian brothers predict Kenora race riots,” Globe and Mail, 27 December 1967, 8. 44

2.4 Protesting Canada’s Centennial at Expo 67

The threat of full scale inter-racial violence, however, did not materialize in Canada. In

1967, Canadians were rather riding high on self-congratulatory optimism, especially when they compared their centennial summer to America’s “long, hot summer.” Racial unrest in the United States, having escalated in successive summers of rioting, descended into more than 150 urban race riots, most devastatingly in Detroit.144 In contrast, many

Canadians had started their year with “fires of friendship”—centennial bonfires that lit communities across the country on New Year’s Eve. Their audacious ensuing year of celebration and commemoration included: a fifteen-car “Confederation Train,” which transported an interpretive exhibit on Canadian history to more than eighty cities; a hundred day canoe pageant traversing 3,500 miles of historical fur trade-era waterways; exchange programs that sent over 40,000 high school students to visit and learn about different parts of the country; the Pan-American Games in Winnipeg, then the largest such event hosted in Canada; and above all, the 1967 Universal and International

Exposition in Montreal, better known as Expo 67, which brought the world to Canada from 28 April to 27 October.145 While indigenous Canadians were involved in the year’s festivities in various ways, the epicentre of First Nations involvement, and an unexpected vehicle with which to simultaneously protest and participate in Canada’s centenary before a global audience, was the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67.

First Nations, understandably, held a complicated range of opinions about both

Confederation, and the prospect of celebrating Canada’s first hundred years, which had

144 Malcolm McLaughlin, The Long, Hot Summer of 1967: Urban Rebellion in America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 6. 145 “Centennial of Canadian Confederation,” Canadian Journal of Public Health 58, 1 (January 1967), 34- 35. 45

wrought profound hardship throughout unrelenting attempts to assimilate them. “It’s been said that Indians aren’t too interested in the last 100 years of Canada’s history,” offered an official with Canada’s Centennial Commission, “It’s the next 100 years that concerns them.”146 To that end, the NIC had risen to the occasion years earlier, seeking to represent all indigenous peoples nationally in planning the celebrations, but its credibility was dealt a serious blow when the Centennial Commission cut ties with the council, in late 1964, after one year of partnership. Months earlier, a report by Indian Affairs titled,

“Participation in Canada’s Centennial by People of Indian Ancestry,” judged the NIC’s involvement favourably, because it was seen as “committed to the ‘Canadian ideal’” and as the organization that would most readily “cooperate” with the harmonious vision of

Canada they sought to portray.147 By December, however, the backlash from other indigenous groups, which protested the Centennial Commission’s cooperation with the

NIC on the grounds that the latter did not represent their interests, precipitated the council’s dismissal from the planning process.148

Among the NIC’s strongest critics was Kahn-Tineta Horn, a Kahnawá:ke

Mohawk and a well-known New York fashion model turned activist. She was also one of the most outspoken voices for First Nations self-determination throughout the 1960s.

While she had attempted to work with the NIC early on, serving as a director on the council, her differences with Wuttunee and his government-friendly, integrationist bent, made for mutually irreconcilable differences.149 “Portrait of a Beautiful Segregationist,”

146 “Centennial Group Planners Drop Indian Council,” Globe and Mail, 9 December 1964, 14. 147 Department of Citizenship and Immigration, “Participation in Canada’s Centennial by People of Indian Ancestry – Some Policy Considerations,” 24 September 1964, 2, quoted in Ruth B. Phillips, Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2011), 31. 148 “Centennial Group Planners Drop Indian Council,” Globe and Mail, 9 December 1964, 14. 149 Rutherford and Miller, “It’s Our Country,” 156. 46

was the patronizing yet sympathetic characterization she was given by Peter Gzowski in a

1964 feature for Macleans, in which he also called her an “ombudsman for all Indians,” who often raised the ire of her elders.150 Her criticism of the NIC saw her stripped of the

“Indian Princess” title it had bestowed upon her in the previous year, and when the

Centennial Commission dropped the NIC months later, the council blamed her immediately.151 By the following summer, Horn was fully and publicly denouncing the

NIC as an organization “controlled by non-Indians,” further bolstering her anti- establishment credentials.152

As the Centennial Commission’s prime concern, Expo 67, drew closer, its officials gradually handed development of the Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic, and Western pavilions over to those provinces and regions, but continued to directly oversee preparations for the Indians of Canada pavilion.153 Decisions about which indigenous artists would be featured, were made by the Cultural Affairs Branch at Indian Affairs, which also selected their own architect to design the pavilion.154 A nine-member Indian

Advisory Committee, hand-picked by the government, was then presented with the

150 Gzowski, “Portrait of a Beautiful Segregationist,” Macleans, 2 May 1964, 13. 151 Issuing blame was Wilfred Pelletier, chairman of the NIC’s centennial planning committee, on which Horn had also been a delegate prior to her falling out with the council. See “Centennial Group Planners Drop Indian Council,” Globe and Mail, 9 December 1964, 14. 152 “Kahn-Tineta Horn Critical: Non-Indians in Control,” Leader-Post, 15 August 1965, quoted in Eve Haque, Multiculturalism Within a Bilingual Framework: Language, Race, and Belonging in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 120. 153 Phillips, Museum Pieces, 320. 154 Rutherdale and Miller, “It’s Our Country,” 156. The eleven artists selected were Ross Woods; Duke Redbird; Jean-Marie Gros-Louis; William Wuttunee’s brother, Noel Wuttunee; Alex Janvier; Tom Hill; Gerald Tailfeathers; Norval Morrisseau; George Clusti; Joe Land; and Francis Kakikya. They were given until 15 October 1966 to submit their work to Ottawa, where a panel was assembled by the National Gallery to select nine of their works as murals for the pavilion. “Expo Eyes Native Art,” Indian Record, October 1966, 15. Two of those selected, Janvier and Morriseau, along with five other indigenous artists, went on to form the Professional Native Indian Artists Incorporation—dubbed in contemporary media as the Indian Group of Seven—in 1973, to promote modern indigenous art. See Michelle LaVallee, 7: Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. (Regina: MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2014). 47

branch’s proposals for approval, in December 1965.155 The development of the Indians of

Canada Pavilion, however rife with government paternalism, still allowed First Nations advisors enough autonomy to commandeer its exhibits, and recast them as a means of protest. With little more than a year before Expo was slated to open, the advisors, with

George Manuel among them, accepted Indian Affairs’ plans, but engineered a course correction by overthrowing the government-appointed chair, Chief Gilbert Monture, and replacing him with their own choice, Kahnawá:ke chief, Andrew Delisle.156 Under his direction, ideas were solicited from bands across the country, and according to Delisle,

“the thing that kept coming up was their anger at the government.” 157 As Manuel’s biographer has noted, one of Arthur Laing’s colleagues at Indian Affairs recalled that the minister “just about shit” when he previewed the advisors’ subsequent plans for an exhibit that would indict Canadians and their European predecessors for centuries of paternalistic harm. He considered shutting down the whole pavilion, until he was convinced that the optics of doing so would only reinforce perceptions of federal paternalism.158

The pavilion’s modernistic wood and steel structure fell into disrepair and was eventually torn down,159 but it is still possible to tour the original exhibit through the

155 Ibid., 157, and Phillips, Museum Pieces, 33. 156 Monture was denounced by Manuel as a “Westmount Indian.” See McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood, 89. This moniker denotes an association between Monture and urban affluence, named for the wealthy Westmount neighbourhood of Montreal. As noted earlier, however, Monture was also a Six Nations chief, who, as discussed, had publicly stated in 1959 that Canada’s First Nations policy amounted to genocide. Further research would be necessary to determine why he was so roundly rejected in favour of Delisle. 157 “Rotted symbol restored to former glory to help mark Expo 67’s 40th anniversary,” The Gazette, 7 September 2007, A6. 158 McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood, 90. 159 Scholarly works disagree about when the pavilion was demolished. Whereas Phillips tells us it was in the mid-1970s, Rutherdale and Miller tell us it was in the mid-1980s. Neither provide sources to support those dates, and my own searches in the Montreal Gazette and Globe and Mail turned up no coverage 48

forced-perspective of Indian Memento, a short National Film Board (NFB) documentary, which was shot during the exposition. Kahn-Tineta Horn, who claimed it was her concept for the teepee-shaped building, and the walk-through narrative, that formed the basis for the pavilion’s ultimate design, later recalled her discomfort with the idea of celebrating the centenary “of a colony,” on her land, as the government sought to do. In her words,

“It wasn’t a celebration, it was a commemoration.”160 The displays and messages captured a bold effort among indigenous organizers to offer their own perspective on recent history, and to hold Canada accountable for policies marked by paternalism, ethnocentrism, and the alienation of indigenous peoples. Theirs was an explicit account of colonization, often in bold capital lettering: “WHEN THE WHITE MAN CAME, WE

WELCOMED HIM WITH LOVE… WE SHELTERED HIM, FED HIM, LED HIM THROUGH THE

FOREST.” They explained that Canada’s famed European explorers relied on First Nations technology, as they “traveled in Indian Canoes, wore Indian snow-shoes, ate Indian food, lived in Indian houses. They could not have lived or moved without Indian friends.”

The narrative then moved to tell of betrayal by the European newcomers, with

“Wars and peace treaties” depriving indigenous peoples of their land. The statement,

“Many Indians feel our fathers were betrayed,” was perched atop a massive enlargement of King George III’s Royal Proclamation of 1763 with which the British Crown first recognized First Nations’ sovereignty over their lands. In stating, “WE WANTED TO LIVE

OUR OWN LIFE ON OUR OWN LAND” and “THE RESERVE IS THE HOME OF OUR SPIRITS,” the organizers made it clear that First Nations sought to protect their autonomy, and discredit attempts to integrate and assimilate them. They targeted residential schools in particular,

of the demolition. See Phillips, Museum Pieces, 320, and Rutherdale and Miller, “It’s Our Country,” 169. 160 “Never trust a memory over 30,” Globe and Mail, 21 June 1997, C1. 49

defining that system as, “THE WHITE MAN’S SCHOOL, AN ALIEN LAND FOR AN INDIAN

CHILD.” The survival of indigenous spirituality in spite of long efforts to replace it, was also a major theme, and the one which perhaps communicated the most hopeful message, with a clear affirmation of cultural resilience:

THE EARLY MISSIONARIES THOUGHT US PAGANS. THEY IMPOSED UPON US THEIR OWN STORIES OF GOD, OF HEAVEN AND HELL, OF SIN AND SALVATION… But we spoke with God—the Great Spirit—in our own way. We lived with each other in love and honoured the holy Spirit in all living things.161

An estimated three million of Expo’s fifty million visitors toured the Indians of

Canada Pavilion.162 Delisle told Indian News that Queen Elizabeth II, whom he led through the pavilion along with Prince Philip, was among those impressed with the displays.163 He conceded that he had hoped for “a little more reaction” from the monarch, who reportedly toured the displays reservedly for thirteen minutes. Pearson, “who appeared tired and rumpled,” was said to have left to take a phone call, seconds after entering, and missed the tour as a result, which very much disappointed Delisle. 164

Reports stated that many visitors were less than elated by what they saw.165 “This is horrible. I’m not going to stay here,” was the reaction of one visiting Montrealer, but as the Delisle’s deputy-commissioner, T.R. Kelly, stated, “If it’s making some visitors angry then the message is coming through… Why should we foster complacence here when there are so many disadvantaged, undereducated and underdeveloped people in

161 The quoted statements from the exhibition appear throughout the filmed tour of the Indians of Canada Pavilion in Indian Memento, directed by Michel Régnier (Ottawa: National Film Board of Canada, 1967). 162 Rutherdale and Miller, “It’s Our Country,” 170. 163 “Queen Tours Indians of Canada Pavilion,” Indian News, August 1967, 1. 164 “Queen silent after viewing Indians’ demand for better deal,” Globe and Mail, 4 July 1967, 8. 165 “A record of failure,” Globe and Mail, 24 June 1967, 6. 50

Canada.”166 That message, however, was antithetical to the harmonious image of a united

Canada that Expo’s organizers sought to display. As much as the purpose of Expo was to bring together diverse regions, cultures, and nations, any celebration of diversity was subordinated to the optimism and unity that seemed plausible by ignoring differences between people.167 Expo’s commissioner general, Pierre Dupuy, reinforced the predominance of these themes in the official program booklet, with platitudes such as,

“what divides men is infinitely less important than that which links them together.”168 As

Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau similarly reflected on the event’s success, “visitors coming from all parts of the world, of all classes, of all religions, of all colours, felt but one thing on the site—they were all human beings.”169 Those who organized the Indians of Canada Pavilion saw an opportune moment to disrupt the integrationist harmony represented at Expo, unsettling visitors with an unfamiliar narrative that called the justice of Canada’s assimilationist imperatives into question, by showing the loss and harm they had perpetrated.

Pearson’s government, however, had already commissioned a major report that would provide much more concrete and damning evidence about the failure of Canadian policy, and its dismal outcomes among First Nations communities. This was the opposite of what the government had wanted to hear, given that the explicit task assigned to Harry

Hawthorn, head of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of

British Columbia, was to provide research and issue recommendations that would ease

166 “Indian pavilion tries not to be restful,” Globe and Mail, 1 May 1967, 17. 167 Randal Arthur Rogers analyzes the “erasure of difference” that occurred throughout Expo’s vast representations of supposed human diversity. See “Man and his World: an Indian, a Secretary and a Queer Child. Expo ’67 and the Nation in Canada,” MA Thesis (Montreal: Concordia University, 1999), 3. 168 Ibid., 6. 169 William Bantey, Bill Bantey’s Expo ’67 (Montreal: The Gazette Printing Company, 1967), 8-9, quoted in ibid., 3. 51

the integration of First Nations individuals and communities into Canadian society. 170

Hawthorn’s report, “Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada,” was released in two volumes: the first in October 1966, and the second in October 1967, just as Expo was shutting down. The report revealed dismal life expectancy for both “Indian” men and women at about half that of the total population. Standards of living were also desperately unequal: whereas ninety-nine percent of Canadians had electricity and ninety- two percent had running water, only forty-four percent of First Nations homes had electricity and just thirteen percent had running water.171 Hawthorn’s recommendations confirmed what so many First Nations people had been insisting for decades, that they were entitled to the same rights as any Canadian citizen, but also to “additional rights as charter members of the Canadian community.”172 The government of Pierre Trudeau that succeeded Pearson in 1968, however, would effectively reject Hawthorn’s interpretation, with the release of the White Paper in the following year, which aimed to extinguish the

“additional rights” that Hawthorn deemed inherent and essential for First Nations to thrive.173

170 Acting Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs, H.M. Jones, wrote to Hawthorn in February 1963, stating: “As you know, the Department is concerned with the integration of Indian individuals and Indian communities into Canadian society… With regard to the individual, we expect the project would focus its attention on identifying and studying those factors which work for and against the Indian person in his effort to find a footing in the non-Indian community. We would hope for recommendations designed to ease this transition…” See Study of the Hawthorn Report (Ottawa: Treaties and Historical Research Centre, 1976), 3. 171 Pitsula, New World Dawning, 142-143. 172 A Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada, volume I, 13. Hawthorn was not the first non- indigenous proponent for the notion of First Nations as “citizens plus.” Regina lawyer, Morris Shumiatcher, had written to Prime Minister Diefenbaker in 1959, stating that since “the Indian requires something more by way of assistance than other citizens of Canada why not, I ask, accord him the rights of citizenship, together with these additional benefits (treaty rights, tax exemption, etc.) he now enjoys.” John F. Leslie, “The Policy Agenda of Native Peoples from World War II to the 1969 White Paper,” Aboriginal Policy Research, Volume I: Setting the Agenda for Change, Jerry P. White, Paul Maxim, and Dan Beavon, eds. (Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing Incorporated, 2013), 27n36. 173 Ibid., 392. The White Paper was not entirely incompatible with the Hawthorn Report: both argued that First Nations health, education, and welfare services should be transferred from federal to provincial jurisdiction, for example. 52

The Indians of Canada Pavilion, along with the findings of the Hawthorn Report, fostered a greater degree of public awareness about the nature and severity of First

Nations’ alienation, which were further evidenced by the disintegration of the moderate

NIC, in late 1967, and the coinciding spread of Red Power militancy into Canada. The

NIC’s influence and credibility had been eroded, firstly, by the Centennial Commission’s decision to block the NIC from planning the Indians of Canada Pavilion. This denied the council their best opportunity to be seen as the legitimate intermediary between indigenous peoples and the Canadian government. Secondly, support within the NIC for indigenous peoples’ integration into the Canadian mainstream was at odds with increasingly vocal indigenous hostility toward the prospect of assimilation. Finally, the council’s mandate to broadly represent all of Canada’s indigenous peoples below the tree line, including First Nations with and without Indian Status, as well as Métis peoples, had aggravated those divisions. According to Cardinal, those First Nations seeking to protect their treaties, feared that “association with the Métis would jeopardize their relationship with the federal government and, more importantly, their treaty or aboriginal rights.” 174

In practical terms, there was also broad agreement that both groups could more easily access government funding, separately, due to Indian Act provisions and regulations that applied only to Status Indian members.175 In the wake of the NIC, First Nations leaders would shape the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB) over the next two years, to represent

Status Indians and treaty rights, with Cardinal and Manuel among its most prominent

174 Cardinal, The Unjust Society, 92. 175 Walter Dieter made the motion to split the NIC, which resulted in a vote of “28 to 12 or something like that,” in favour. He subsequently became provisional chief of the National Indian Brotherhood, crediting Walter Curry, who went on to work for Indian Affairs Education Branch, for naming the organization. See Walter Dieter, interview by Murray Dobbin, 22 September 1977 (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 2009), https://ourspace.uregina.ca/handle/10294/1317?show=full. 53

organizers, while Métis and non-status peoples would solidify the Native Council of

Canada, in 1971.176

2.5 Forging Red Power

While the breakup of the NIC undermined pan-indigenous unity, as an organizing principle, the opposite was true within the militant fringe of indigenous activism known as Red Power, which embraced the notion of a united indigenous front against the injustices they faced. This is likely why the term has so often been misused, to encompass all of the indigenous activism that occurred during Red Power’s brief arc, from the late-1960s to the mid-1970s. Rather, it was an ideal that rallied a minority of grassroots activists to organize and advocate for bold and militant demonstrations of pan- indigenous self-determination, instead of seeking incremental change by lobbying government and using the courts. The inception of Red Power followed crucially from that of Black Power, which rejected the pacifist strategy and integrationist goals of the

Civil Rights Movement, in favour of self-defense, revolutionary ideology, and the empowerment of African American racial pride. Black Power advocates and organizations served to both inspire and collaborate with emboldened contingents of indigenous activists who advanced Red Power as a blatant challenge to government paternalism, white supremacy, and social integration.

Non-violent protest marches and demonstrations had been established hallmarks of the Civil Rights Movement, until the mid-1960s, and a growing sense that nonviolence was a futile strategy in the face of the unrelenting white hostility. For African American

176 The Brotherhood later reorganized, in 1982, as the Assembly of First Nations, and in 1993, the Native Council of Canada became the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples. 54

activists like Stokely Carmichael, having been arrested twenty-seven times for participating in non-violent protests, it was time for a new strategy. He declared, in June

1966: “I ain’t going to jail no more. What we gonna start saying now is Black Power!” 177

Further, he believed that asking African Americans to be non-violent in Mississippi, for example, was “tantamount to encouraging suicide.”178 As the twenty-five-year-old chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Carmichael began pushing for African American racial independence, both culturally and socioeconomically. Such ambitions clearly diverged from the Civil Rights Movement’s primary goal of integration through non-violent civil disobedience, which was most widely associated with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership

Conference (SCLC).

The ideology and impact of Black Power were more fully defined, and most famously exemplified, by The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The staunchly

Marxist Black Panthers originated in Oakland, California in October 1966, and proliferated quickly across America through grassroots political organizing, community service, and the provision of armed protection for their people—not only to address the absence of adequate policing in predominately African American neighbourhoods, but also as a deterrent to protect against the all too common threat of police brutality.179 As

177 Peniel E. Joseph, “Toward a Historiography of the Black Power Movement,” The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era (London: Taylor and Francis, 2013), iBooks edition, introductory chapter. 178 Lerone Bennett Jr., “Stokely Carmichael: Architect of Black Power,” Ebony, September 1966, 27. Further, in seeking to steer the movement in a more racially-distinct and anti-integrationist direction, Carmichael expelled SNCC’s entire white membership, which proved to be a destabilizing move, financially, thus contributing to the organization’s collapse in the early 1970s. See Emily Stoper, “The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: Rise and Fall of a Redemptive Organization,” Journal of Black Studies 8, 1 (September 1977), 19. 179 Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (1970; Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1991), 59. 55

much as racial empowerment was a powerful component of the Panthers’ ideology and its appeal, their dedication to Marxism dictated that class was a more significant factor than race or gender.180

Black Power advocates also expressed sympathy for, and solidarity with, other minorities, including indigenous North Americans, because so many were socioeconomically disadvantaged. Carmichael had vocally supported the idea of “a red power for the Indians” during a December 1966 visit to Toronto, and by the end of the decade, cooperation between African American and indigenous radicals was well- established.181 By February 1969, Fred Kelly—no longer described as Canada’s Martin

Luther King—was an invited speaker at a rally for the fourth anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination.182 Although his slaying predated Carmichael’s first calls for Black Power by over a year, Malcolm X had been an anti-integrationist African American nationalist who espoused similar views, and was therefore posthumously reinterpreted as a martyr for the cause. He had also shown sympathy for indigenous Americans, stating in his autobiography:

Our Nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race… We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its

180 Dawn Rae Flood, “A Black Panther in the Great White North,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 8, 2 (2014), 2. Women, in particular were drawn to the organization, which was ideologically more inclined to delegate responsibility based on ability and political consciousness than on patriarchal gender roles. According to a survey taken by co-founder Bobby Seale, an estimated two-thirds of the Panthers’ membership was female within its first two years in operation. This estimate was based on a survey taken by Bobby Seale. See Kimberly Springer, Living the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 28, and Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 225n51. 181 “‘Don’t want piece of the U.S. pie,’ Black Power spokesman declares,” Globe and Mail, 9 December, 1966, 4. 182 Rutherford, “Canada’s Other Red Scare: Rights, Decolonization, and Indigenous Protest in the Global Sixties,” 112. 56

indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade.183

By May, Kelly was speaking alongside Black Panther communications secretary,

Kathleen Cleaver,184 in the same month that a photo of Crazy Horse, the legendary nineteenth century Oglala Lakota chief, filled the front page of the Panthers’ eponymous weekly newspaper. Within that issue, an article titled, “Rebirth,” cited social problems in indigenous communities and called on indigenous peoples across the continent to be reborn as nations.185 It was a passionate appeal for indigenous self-determination, positioning the Panthers in a common struggle with indigenous peoples, as opponents of integration. Two weeks before his slaying by Chicago police in December, Fred

Hampton, the Panthers’ charismatic, twenty-one year-old Deputy Chairman for Chicago, arrived in Regina, Saskatchewan for a public appearance. Among his first comments to the assembled press, was, “we don’t like what your paper prints about the Indians,” demonstrating, again, the common concern among Panthers for indigenous struggles.186

By that time, Red Power was already well-established as a fringe ideal, as a call to action throughout the continent, and as a more brazen expression of the indigenous protest movements that had developed throughout the decade. Within a month of

Carmichael’s first calls for Black Power, two Native American activists followed suit by forcing their way into a Fourth of July parade in Oklahoma City, with the words “Red

183 Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965; New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), 423. 184 Ibid., 109. Kathleen Cleaver, formerly Kathleen Neal and a member SNCC, joined the Black Panther Party and married information minister, Eldridge Cleaver, in 1967. A polarizing figure, his controversial 1968 book, Soul on Ice, written while he was serving time in Folsom State Prison in 1965, was instrumental in legitimizing the Black Power movement among radicals and progressive sympathizers. See Ashley D. Farmer, Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 66, 75. 185 “Rebirth,” The Black Panther, 25 May 1969, 9. 186 “Black Panthers Arrive,” Regina Leader-Post, 18 November 1969, 4, quoted in Flood, “A Black Panther in the Great White North,” 11. 57

Power” painted on the side of their car.187 Certainly, not all indigenous activists agreed that Red Power represented an effective approach to indigenous issues in Canada. Métis activist Jim Brady, for example, was impressed by Carmichael and the Panthers, and studied their organization and literature, but argued that whereas the Panthers relied on

“coherent urban black communities,” Canada’s indigenous peoples had no urban roots, were widely dispersed from one another, and were not integrated into the economic mainstream. He also believed that the inherent divisions between First Nations and Métis made a radical pan-indigenous front untenable.188

Nevertheless, The Native Alliance for Red Power (NARP), a small Vancouver- based organisation, emerged in 1967, within a year of the Black Panthers’ founding, and faithfully emulated their tactics and ideals. Panthers’ co-founder Bobby Seale supported his imitators, stating in an interview that, “Various ethnic revolutionary groups such as the Mexican-American Brown Berets, the Chinese American Red Guards, the Indian

NARP and others have programs similar to ours because ours is a universal program.”189

Like the Panthers, NARP would produce a newsletter, mount defensive patrols to protect their vulnerable, often-victimised peoples, and engage in various community outreach initiatives. Both groups were ghetto-based, of the far left; both with connections to

Maoist ideology.190 Lee Maracle recalled listening to and discussing Stokely Carmichael tapes over several rounds of drinks at one of the first NARP meetings she attended, and was soon riding to Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia to sell

187 Shreve, Red Power Rising, 159. 188 Jim Brady to Malcolm Norris, 20 January 1967, cited in Dobbin, One and a Half Men, 234. 189 “Interview with Bobby Seale,” The East Village Other, 30 April 1969, 4 190 The Black Panthers began funding their organisation by selling Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book to students. See Seale, Seize the Time, 82. NARP was connected to various Maoist and Trotskyist organisations along the West Coast. See Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 405. 58

The Black Panther newspaper.191 The parallels between the two organisations in terms of tactics and philosophy were clearly evident, with one glaring exception: the Black

Panthers were armed. Their weapons, displayed openly and unapologetically, empowered their image and their ability to defend themselves and their communities. Canadian gun laws precluded such a possibility for NARP, whose members, while on patrol forbade themselves to “indulge in alcoholic beverages, pot, or carry weapons.”192 Whereas the

Panthers’ gained credibility and respect within their communities through the brandishing of arms, NARP members’ only hope of elevating their standing in “skid-row” was to do just the opposite.

NARP member Henry Jack identified the organisation’s founders, himself included, as a youthful group of ex-convicts, residential school runaways and dropouts, academics—“those who suck-holed their way through school”—as well as young urban workers and the unemployed.193 As their first public act of protest, he recalls NARP picketing outside a conference of residential school superintendents, principals, and administrators, at a Vancouver motel in March 1968. Their placards read: “Priests make converts, not graduates”; “Residential schools are prisons”; and “Stop Cultural

Genocide.”194 NARP Newsletter became the organization’s principal means of publicity for community outreach, socials, educational forums, and protest events, with an eventual distribution of 5000 copies internationally.195 By the summer of 1969, NARP had announced the formation of its “Beothuck Patrol,” named for the indigenous people of

Newfoundland who were driven to extinction by disease, starvation, and systematic

191 Maracle, Bobbi Lee, 82-83. 192 Henry Jack, “Native Alliance for Red Power,” The Only Good Indian, 175. 193 Ibid., 164. 194 “White men face Red Power band,” Vancouver Sun, 13 March, 1968, cited in ibid., 144. 195 Palmer, Canada’s 1960s, 405. 59

slaughter.196 Four-man Beothuck Patrol squads toured the downtown eastside, filling logbooks “with instances of brutality and harassment of Native people,” and intervening

“on several occasions to prevent these situations from ending in arrest or injury.”197 They also made an overt attempt, like the Panthers, to “police the police,” taking down location, time of arrest, and badge numbers, whenever a Beothuck Patrol squad witnessed

“a brother” getting picked up. As Jack explained:

Policemen do not like this. They know that they are being watched and therefore cannot get away with taking out their frustration on a victim, the drunk Indian or the prostitute. They see a group of sober Indians and think we are up to no good. We have had tremendous support for this policy and we will continue this effort until our people can look after themselves.198

NARP was never the intimidating force that the Black Panthers represented south of the border; their many efforts were frustrated by a police force and city council that did not take them seriously. “As it is,” explained Captain Antoine, “we don’t have very much power to move around downtown. What can we do when City Council won’t hear us out, the police department won’t hear us out and when they give us a hassle on the street?”199

While NARP may not have evoked much fear on the streets of Vancouver, fear over the potential of Red Power to expand and precipitate civil unrest, had already become evident. Ontario’s New Democratic opposition leader, Donald MacDonald, led into his legislature’s November 1968 throne speech debate by giving voice to that anxiety:

Time is running out. Either we act quickly to remove the national shame which has characterised our treatment of Indians in the past, or the difficulties of solving Indian problems will become bedevilled by red power, with all its irrationality and violence born of years of frustration and neglect.200

196 “The ‘Beothuck Patrol’,” Narp Newsletter 4, June/July 1969, 1. 197 Ibid., 2. 198 Jack, “Native Alliance for Red Power,” 174. 199 Bob Hunter, “To-day’s Good Samaritans,” Indian Record, December 1969, 8. 200 “Neglect of Indians may bring violence, MacDonald declares,” Globe and Mail, 27 November 1968, 3. 60

Less than one month later, fears of an emboldening Red Power movement were stoked when an indigenous blockade of the Cornwall International Bridge temporarily closed the Canada-US border that cut through Akwesasne Mohawk land, which predated the superimposed borders of Ontario, Quebec, and more problematically, New York

State. Members of Akwesasne, along with supporters from other communities, blocked the bridge on 18 December in response to the insistence of Canadian Customs guards to charge community members with bridge tolls, and duty on US-purchased goods, in spite of the Jay Treaty (1794) between Britain and the US, which guaranteed their free passage.201 The events were widely covered by mainstream and underground media. 202

More significantly, they were filmed and depicted in an indigenous-produced NFB documentary titled, You Are on Indian Land, released in the following year.203 The film went on to inspire indigenous activism across the continent.204 Of the hundreds of indigenous protesters who faced-off with the RCMP and kept the border closed for three hours, forty-nine were arrested, though their charges were later dropped.205

201 Troy R. Johnson, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island: Indian Self-Determination and the Rise of Indian Activism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 40. 202 For an example of enthusiastic coverage in the radical underground press, see: “Indians Fight to Preserve Treaties,” Heterodoxical Voice, January 1969, 14. 203 You Are on Indian Land, directed by Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell (Ottawa: National Film Board, 1969). This film is considered to be the most widely distributed and successful work of the NFB’s Indian Film Crew, an experimental project under the auspices of the NFB’s “Challenge for Change” film program, which attempted to use film as a catalyst for social change. The Indian Film Crew consisted of six men and one woman from reserves across the country, and included this film’s director, Mike Mitchell of Akwesasne, Tom O’Connor of Manitoulin Island, and future NIB chief, Noel Starblanket, of Star Blanket Reserve in Saskatchewan. See “First All-Indian Crew with Film Board,” Indian Record, June-July 1968, 16. 204 Students involved in the November 1969 takeover of Alcatraz by Indians of All Tribes, discussed below, are said to have viewed and been inspired, in part, by the NFB documentary, You Are on Indian Land. Steve Talbot, “Indian Students and Reminiscences of Alcatraz,” American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk, Troy R. Johnson, Joane Nagel, Duane Champagne, eds. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 106. 205 “Drop charges for 35 Indians in bridge block,” Globe and Mail, 26 March 1969, 25. 61

Support for the blockade poured in from various indigenous organizations, with the moderate NAIB and the radical NARP, separately denouncing the arrests and expressing general disregard for Canada’s border with the United States: “we are firstly citizens of North America,” stated a spokesperson for the latter. 206 Police intervention, which one protestor exaggerated as “Gestapo tactics,” received numerous complaints.207

The Vancouver Island Tribal Association was more circumspect in calling the arrests on the bridge “an encroachment on the civil liberties of the Indian people,” while also warning, “We can no longer hold down militant young Indians if this goes on.” 208 This was evident when between fifty and sixty protestors, according to Lee Maracle’s estimate, rallied for a hastily-organized NARP demonstration on the streets of

Vancouver, to show their solidarity with Akwesasne.209 Pressing the matter further,

Kahn-Tineta Horn, who was among those previously arrested, assembled another contingent of protestors at the bridge in early January, this time with intentions of freely transporting goods across the border to demonstrate Mohawk sovereignty over the land on which it was built. They were turned back by the RCMP.210

Perhaps the most significant outgrowth of the community activism that had generated the blockade, was the Akwesasne Notes newspaper, which was first issued in the same month, as a means of documenting and promoting the rising tide of Red Power.

206 “Mohawks criticize action by Cornwall Police at bridge,” Globe and Mail, 20 December 1968, 4. 207 The “Gestapo tactics” comment was attributed to Willie Dunn, as president of the Protest Alliance Against Native Extermination. See “49 Mohawks arrested after bridge blocked,” Globe and Mail, 19 December 1968, 33. Dunn was also a founding member of NARP, and part of the National Film Board’s Indian Film Crew, all of whom were said to be members of the Protest Alliance Against Native Extermination, which was an early, little-known, proto-Red Power organization, about which almost nothing has been written. See Kristin L. Dowell, Sovereign Screens: Aboriginal Media on the Canadian West Coast (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 218n21. 208 “Mohawks criticize action by Cornwall Police at bridge,” Globe and Mail, 20 December 1968, 4. 209 Maracle, Bobbi Lee, 99. 210 “Indians are promised talks on treaty rights,” Globe and Mail, 7 January 1969, 4. 62

The publication proliferated quickly across indigenous communities and college campuses, reaching a circulation of 10,000 within its first year, and 150,000 within its first decade.211 It was unique in that it presented a collage of articles from countless newspapers across North America, rather than producing original content, to chronicle developments in indigenous resistance throughout the continent.

Some community members also sought a negotiated solution to the issues raised in the blockade. At the end of January, a delegation, including chiefs and members of

Akwesasne and Six Nations, met in Ottawa with Robert Andras, minister without portfolio, in hopes of arranging a meeting with Canada’s recently-elected prime minister,

Pierre Trudeau, to resolve the impasse.212 The delegates were sovereigntists, working apart from Akwesasne’s elected council. Some had even defected from that body, frustrated that its decisions were subject to ministerial veto, and believing that pressing for self-determination on the basis of the Jay Treaty was a more promising path to community empowerment.213 Andras’ cautiously dismissive reply, that “it might be better for the Indian people to get new rights which were more relevant in 1968 (sic) than those provided in a treaty signed 300 years ago,” foreshadowed the government’s intentions to end treaties and finalize integration, as the White Paper would soon make clear.214 In the meantime, Kahn-Tineta Horn took the fight for Jay Treaty recognition to Britain, where

211 Encyclopedia of the American Indian Movement, Bruce Elliot Johansen, ed. (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2013), 10. 212 Those included in the delegation were listed as Moses David of Six Nations, along with John Boots, Michael Mitchell (director of You Are on Native Land), Ernest Benedict (former elected councillor), Allan Jock, and Standing Arrow; they were selected at a mass meeting of the Akwesasne Long House. Ibid. 213 “Common sense in Iroquois,” Globe and Mail, 29 January 1969, 27. 214 Andras’ statement contained two anachronisms: although it was one week into 1969, he suggested negotiating new rights that would be more relevant in 1968 than those contained in the Jay Treaty, which he stated was signed 300 years earlier, but was less than two centuries old. See “Indians are promised talks on treaty rights,” Globe and Mail, 7 January 1969, 4. 63

several dailies gave her front-page exposure. When asked on BBC Television’s prime time program, 24 Hours, if she represented Red Power, she replied, “The Indians are taking my lead and becoming more militant.”215

While militancy was effective in appealing to indigenous activism’s radical fringe, many of the most prominent First Nations activists were ambivalent about Red

Power, if they supported it at all. Harold Cardinal made clear in The Unjust Society, that he stood apart from, and downplayed the importance of what he called “sporadic indications of a red power faction in Canada,” which he compared to “the rise of black power in the United States.”216 While the language in his book was tentative, his comments in the press, in early 1969, were unequivocal: “I don’t agree with Red Power or a violent philosophy … Strengthening Indian organizations and working closely with non Indians is the only viable alternative.”217 None of this seems to have mattered to

William Wuttunee, whose Ruffled Feathers began with a chapter titled, “Red Power,” which he defined, inexplicably, as the stand taken against the White Paper by Cardinal and his allies; the actual militants who rallied under that banner, were ignored.218

Provincial First Nations leaders like Cardinal, particularly those from western provinces with numbered treaty rights to defend, were rather more interested in bolstering the NIB as an effective means of representing their interests to the federal government, than they were in sporadic militant demonstrations. Since its founding in December 1967,

Walter Dieter, chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians (FSI), along with

Cardinal, and David Courchene—who were elected in the following year as provincial

215 “Miniskirt and buckskin: British press aids campaign by Indian,” Globe and Mail, 20 May 1969, 11. 216 Cardinal, The Unjust Society, 30. 217 Drees, The Indian Association of Alberta: A History of Political Action (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002), 167. 218 Wuttunee, Ruffled Feathers, 1-2. 64

chiefs in Alberta and Manitoba—had been at the forefront of negotiations to solidify the

NIB as an alliance among Canada’s existing provincial and territorial organizations.

Dieter, who was chosen as provisional president, with Courchene as Vice-President, had even re-mortgaged his house to provide the organization’s start-up funding.219 In the following year, Indian Affairs responded to the upsurge in political organizing by making per capita funding available to First Nations organizations.220 While this eased their fiscal concerns, it also increased their dependence on the very federal bureaucracy that they sought to impact. George Manuel became prominently involved in organizing the NIB around this time, especially after the June 1968 election of Pierre Trudeau, which signalled major forthcoming changes to Canada’s relationship with First Nations, and provoked grave uncertainty among them.221

2.6 The White Paper Backlash

The “Just Society” Pierre Trudeau had promised in his election campaign, reflected liberal ideals of human equality, and inalienable individual rights, which reinforced convictions about the need to integrate First Nations into Canadian society, and to do away with their special status. His appointment of Jean Chrétien as Minister of Indian

Affairs and Northern Development, along with a substantial reorganization of that department, was followed by several months of government consultations with First

Nations communities for the ostensible purpose of modernizing the Indian Act and

219 McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood, 98-99. 220 Cardinal initially refused per capita funding for the IAA as a matter of protest but began accepting grants within the year to cover operational expenses. Drees, The Indian Association of Alberta, 164. 221 Ibid., 101-105. 65

restoring trust between the two parties.222 With that objective in mind, Courchene proposed, in April 1969, that First Nations develop an improved Indian Act for the government’s consideration, rather than the other way around, so that any change in legislation would “represent the real interests of the treaties” and “stipulate the

Government’s (sic) commitment to its obligations.” For its part, the government, while avowedly committed to meaningful consultation, was concerned that involving First

Nations to that extent would add at least a year to a process they were hoping to resolve by June.223 Cardinal and Manuel were equally concerned that consultations were being rushed to conceal a hidden agenda, which, as Manuel rightly feared, would involve declaring First Nations individuals equal to other Canadians, and attempting to abolish reserve lands.224

Chrétien’s announcement of the Liberals’ white paper in Parliament, on 25 June

1969, laid bare the insincerity of the consultations that preceded it, as the government’s intended course was already decided.225 Trudeau’s contention that it was “inconceivable that one section of a society should have a treaty with another section of society,” disregarded the nationhood of indigenous peoples across Canada, and demanded a response.226 The White Paper, would have scrapped the Indian Act, Indian Status, and all of the treaty rights guaranteed to First Nations, dissolving the Department of Indian

Affairs, and shifting First Nations to provincial jurisdiction. These proposals, while touted explicitly as a “new response,” reverted shamelessly to the original intentions of

222 Andras was not pleased with the Department’s reorganization, nor the government’s lack of consultation with indigenous peoples in advance of doing so. “Indian issue creates split in Cabinet,” Globe and Mail, 1 October 1968, 1. 223 “A rewriting: Indians want in on Act,” Globe and Mail, 30 April 1969, 31. 224 McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood, 103. 225 The development of the White Paper, and its predetermination, irrespective of the consultation process, is well documented in Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy. 226 Cardinal, The Unjust Society, 24. 66

the Canadian government in the early years of confederation, which held that the treaties, reserves, and the Indian Act designed to administrate them, were designed as self- defeating means to an assimilative end.227 The White Paper fit so seamlessly into progressive, liberal ideology, however, that it appeared to many non-indigenous

Canadians as a modern manifesto for integration that would solve the county’s long- decried “Indian problem.” Indeed, numerous scholars and commentators had long been calling for exactly what the White Paper prescribed, arguing, for example, that those segregated on reserves were being “victimized by the terms of the Treaties originally intended for their protection.”228 Although countless policies had undermined the treaties since their signing, this was the first outright attempt to scrap them unilaterally. Much of the media framed the news of the White Paper, not as a proposal, but as fait accompli—it was reported as unsurprising, just, and overdue—likely contributing to the vehemence of the backlash from First Nations.229

Among First Nations, The White Paper emerged like the ghost of compulsory enfranchisement, though unlike that earlier mechanism, it would have rescinded the indigenous rights and status of all First Nations. Within a day of its announcement, the

White Paper was denounced as “cultural genocide” by NIB president Walter Dieter, who spoke to the fears of First Nations across Canada: “The Indians are deadly scared of this… They don’t want to be set up like the whooping crane.”230 Elsie Knott, Chief of the

Curve Lake Mississauga First Nation, and the first female chief in Canada, is said to have

227 “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy,” (Ottawa: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1969), http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.700112/publication.html. 228 Nan Shipley, “Twilight of the Treaties,” Queen’s Quarterly 75, 2 (Summer 1968), 314. 229 The immediate optimism of the mainstream media’s press reaction to the White Paper is thoroughly analyzed, with several newspapers cited, in Anderson and Robertson, Seeing Red, 159n22. 230 “Indians press Ottawa for policy change,” Globe and Mail, 27 June 1969, 45. Dieter’s “whooping crane” comment can be heard in CBC radio coverage of the White Paper unveiling. Maracle, “Rise of the Native Rights Movement.” 67

publicly burned a copy of the White Paper and danced on its ashes.231 Actor Johnny

Yesno, then host of CBC Radio’s Indian Magazine, was covering the White Paper’s introduction in the House of Commons, and acknowledged that until that moment, First

Nations were “polarized to a great extent by region, geography, tribal differences, and this sort of united them in some sense.”232 Months later, poet and activist Duke Redbird would offer sardonic praise to the same effect: “I rather like Chrétien’s new Indian policy because it’s finally brought it home to the Indians that we are in real jeopardy and, consequently, it has created a unity that didn’t exist before.”233 That unity, however, was lost on some First Nations militants and separatists who did not seem to favour a negotiated solution. Most notable among them, were the hereditary chiefs at Six Nations, who launched their second secession attempt in ten years, on 12 November, citing the

White Paper as cause.

The latest declaration of independence by Six Nations’ hereditary chiefs was justified in a written brief, which stated their belief that the White Paper proposal would

“no doubt be passed in the Parliament of Canada, to force Indians residing in Canada to become Canadian citizens.”234 Progressive Conservative MP Wally Nesbitt, rose in the

House of Commons on the day of the chiefs’ declaration to argue that such “extreme action” betrayed “a sense of deep frustration” with the government. Seeking to reassure

First Nations, Nesbitt moved to immediately refer questions of aboriginal and treaty rights, along with “the general dissatisfaction of the Indian peoples of Canada” to the

Standing Committee on Indian Affairs and Northern Development. When his motion did

231 This, according to her daughter, Rita Rose. See Cora Voyageur, Firekeepers of the Twenty-First Century: First Nations Women Chiefs (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), 34-35. 232 Maracle, “Rise of the Native Rights Movement.” 233 “Indian Duke Redbird turns to the soft, cerebral sell,” Globe and Mail, 10 November 1969, 15. 234 Canadian Press, “Iroquois reaffirm independence,” Akwesasne Notes, November 1969, 41. 68

not receive unanimous consent, Nesbitt asked, “who said no?” Trudeau stood and replied,

“I said no.”235 His government had not yet given up on the possibility of selling their six- month-old White Paper to First Nations. To that end, Chrétien wrote to Six Nations, requesting that they abandon their drive for independence, reiterating the spirit and intent of the White Paper, as he asked, “Is it not logical that in 1969 you should join your Indian brothers across Canada who are looking toward a future of equal status, dignity and freedom, and progress?”236 Louis Hall of Kahnawá:ke responded on behalf of the Six

Nations Confederacy, calling Chrétien the “minister of Indian misery and northern starvation,” directing him to Article 15 of the United Nations Declaration of Human

Rights, which stated that no one could be arbitrarily deprived of their nationality, nor be denied the right to change their nationality:

…the Great White Father, in his white paper on Indian policy, is trying arbitrarily to deprive us of our nationality, the same being the Six Nations “Iroquois” Confederacy, a nation centuries old when Canada and the United States came into existence… The government of Canada says it wants to give the Indians equality and self-rule. Fine! Great! … With all the empty spaces in this huge red man’s land, surely Canada’s “just” society can afford to restore a corner of it to its rightful owners. It is our human right!237

In 1969, however, the community of Six Nations, whose population had swelled beyond 8,600, appeared to be more polarized by the prospect of full sovereignty than it had been during the thousand-person march through Oshweken, a decade earlier. One resident, referred to in the Montreal Star as “a big-boned young Mohawk,” gave voice to a more militant contingent than had been heard from in 1959, and issued a warning: “if

235 “Request for Unanimous Consent to Move Motion Under S.O. 43,” House of Commons Debates, 12 November 1969, https://www.lipad.ca/full/1969/11/12/1/ . 236 Canadian Press, “Asks Indian Confederacy Drop Independence,” Akwesasne Notes, November 1969, 41. 237 “Indian white paper would deprive Iroquois of centuries-old nationality,” ibid. 69

you’re looking for trouble, you sure as hell came to the right place. Cause there’s gonna be a war here. And it’s gonna be soon. You settlers has messed us around once too often.

We not gonna stand for it no longer (sic).” Marie Jamieson, a seventy-year-old Cayuga historian who lived in Brantford, was convinced that if Ottawa did not accede to the chiefs’ demands, they would hand matters over to their warriors, who would in turn enlist indigenous support “from all over the continent and even from Central and South

America,” leading to a bloody clash. Arthur Anderson, a former secretary of the elected council, expressed sadness at the divisions between his people, and anger toward separatists, asking, “Where the hell do they think they’d be if they took this reserve out of

Canada. Lying in the mud, starving and sick, that’s where they’d be. Crazy bastards.”238

Mainstream and underground press outlets revelled in the unrest at Six Nations, but it was soon to be overshadowed by a monumental assertion of North American Red

Power, in San Francisco Bay.239 The 20 November seizure of Alcatraz Island under the pan-indigenous banner, Indians of All Tribes (IAT), became the sixties’ most symbolically powerful rallying cry for Red Power.240 Vine Deloria Jr. recalled that the news of almost three-hundred indigenous occupiers descending on one of the most storied islands in the United States, “mushroomed around the world.” Even those elders who publicly denounced public demonstrations, were said to be privately delighted that

238 “Indians talk of revolution,” Montreal Star, reprinted in ibid. 239 “Ontario Indians Say They Plan to Secede From Canadian Rule,” Wall Street Journal, 18 November 1969, reprinted in Akwesasne Notes, November 1969, 41. Georgia State University’s student newspaper went so far as to presume Six Nations independence was assured by their declaration; this story was featured directly beside coverage of the seizure of Alcatraz. See “Canadian Iroquois Secede,” Great Speckled Bird, 8 December 1969, 14. 240 Certainly, IAT had no right to reclaim the land for “all Indians.” The basis of their claim was an 1868 treaty between the US government and the Sioux nation, “which provided for the return to Indian ownership of unused federal lands.” See “A Brave Struggle,” Globe and Mail, 23 December 1969, 23. Furthermore, the local San Francisco Bay-area Ohlone nation opposed the occupation on the grounds that if anyone owned the land, it was them. See Smith, Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power, 107. 70

“some young Indians were tweaking the federal government’s nose.”241 The subsequent nineteen-month indigenous occupation, transformed Alcatraz, according to historian,

Paul C. Rosier, into “a real and metaphorical place for pan-Indian activity that would inspire similar acts of protest throughout the next decade.”242 It also incited a higher degree of publicity for indigenous issues beyond Alcatraz. The Berkeley Tribe, a radical bay-area newspaper that heavily publicized and supported the occupation, also condemned the White Paper, lambasting “Swingin’ Pierre Trudeau’s plans to abolish the reservations and the Indians’ very identity as a nation.”243

Further sovereigntist action followed in Canada amid the furor incited by the

White Paper, and the continuing occupation at Alcatraz, whose leader, Richard Oakes, hailed from Akwesasne. In May 1970, Mohawk militants seized and occupied the nearby

Stanley and Loon islands, declaring Akwesasne sovereignty over those and forty others in the St. Lawrence River, much to the bewilderment of local cottagers.244 Their leader,

Michael Mitchell, who had been active in the blockade of the Seaway International

Bridge, stated that their actions were spurred by the White Paper’s promise to “make

Indians ordinary Canadian citizens.”245

It is important, however, not to overstate the degree to which opposition to the

White Paper unified First Nations, let alone indigenous Canadians. Interestingly, there

241 Vine Deloria Jr., Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence (1974; Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 37-38. 242 Rosier, Serving Their Country, 254. 243 According to Smith, local underground newspapers like the Berkeley Tribe, went beyond simply covering the occupation; they collected such essentials as “warm clothes, firewood, blankets, food, toilet paper, Kotex...” which were then delivered by the members of a Sausalito house boat commune, who effectively evaded the Coast Guard that had laid siege to the island. See Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power, 93. For the Tribe’s condemnation of the White Paper, see “Indian Guerrillas,” Berkeley Tribe, 24 April 1970. 244 “100 Mohawks swarm ashore, proclaim island as their own,” Globe and Mail, 26 May 1970, 29. 245 “All is quiet on occupied Stanley Island,” Globe and Mail, 18 May 1970, 25; see also, Linda Pertusati, In Defense of Mohawk Land: Ethnopolitical Conflict in Native North America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 68. 71

were genuine attempts to overcome divisions between indigenous peoples in the months before the government proposed its invidious policy statement, such as the attempted merger in Alberta of the IAA, with the Métis Association of Alberta, stating in a joint brief that “Few doubt the great need for unity amongst Alberta’s native people, however much unrest is felt between north and south, treaty and metis.”246 An Alberta Native

Women’s conference shortly thereafter, called for indigenous unity along the same lines.247 It is plausible that the White Paper, while promoting unity among Status Indians and their organizations, also reinforced the divisions that separated them from the Métis and non-status people, who had nothing to lose if the government’s proposals were enacted. Not surprisingly, neither Howard Adams nor Lee Maracle mentioned the White

Paper in their accounts of 1960s activism, and both vigorously promoted pan-indigenous unity.

Further complicating matters was the fact that some First Nations supported the

White Paper, thus threatening the united front with which treaty advocates wished to present themselves. James Gladstone, Canada’s first indigenous senator, supported the policy proposal, as he had supported voting rights, nine years earlier; so too did Len

Marchand, the first Status Indian elected to Parliament, though he backtracked when

246 While the IAA represented 28,000 Status Indians, the Métis Association of Alberta (MAA) represented 40,000 non-status people. The merger was also to have included the Alberta Native Communications Society, which produced a newsletter and a Cree radio program that reached an area inhabited by 56,000 Cree speakers. The joint statement made no illusions about the difficulties of uniting mutually suspicious Blackfoot, Cree, and Métis peoples in particular. The brief is quoted in “Indian-Métis Unity: Who Speaks for Alberta Natives?” Kainai News, 15 February 1969, 1-2. Further research would be necessary to understand how and why the attempted merger failed, but the IAA and MAA remained clearly separate. 247 “We Are Responsible,” Kainai News, 15 March 1969, 1-2. 72

confronted with the ire of First Nations constituents.248 William Wuttunee, ever the unabashed integrationist, was hired by the government to tour reserves and allay peoples’ objections, but by May 1970, he announced that he would no longer advocate for the

White Paper, “because of the feelings of the majority of Indian people.”249 Of course,

Ruffled Feathers, which was published in the following year, was essentially a manifesto in support of the White Paper, and in contempt of those who opposed it. His views were so out of step with the increasingly strident anti-integrationist vanguard of indigenous activism, that he was banned from several reserves, including his own community of Red

Pheasant, south of the Battlefords in Saskatchewan; he even received death threats, which precipitated his retreat from politics and into his private law practice.250

Ultimately, the Trudeau government’s ultimatum on Indian Status and treaties, elicited such a degree of oppositional unity that the Liberals withdrew their proposal. The

Cardinal-led IAA spearheaded the First Nations front against the White Paper. Their report, a point-by-point rebuttal known affectionately as the Red Paper, was titled

“Citizens Plus,” in direct reference to the First Nations citizenship-with-benefits model advocated by the 1966-67 Hawthorn report.251 The NIB adopted the Red Paper as joint policy and delivered it personally to cabinet in June 1970, with 200 First Nations leaders

248 For Gladstone and Marchand’s support for the White Paper, see McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood, 110. Gladstone was appointed to the senate by Diefenbaker in 1958, having served as IAA president from 1949-53 and 1956-57. See Drees, The Indian Association of Alberta, 154. 249 “Indian News in Brief,” Kainai News, 15 June 1970, 3. 250 See his obituary, “William Wuttunee: Trailblazing Cree lawyer lived a life of native firsts,” Globe and Mail, 4 December 2015; updated 22 March 2018, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/william-wuttunee-trailblazing-lawyer-lived-a-life-of- native-firsts/article27616468/. For Wuttunee’s banishment, see also Neal Macleod, “nêhiyâwiwin and Modernity,” Plain Speaking: Essays on Aboriginal Peoples and the Prairie, Patrick Douaud and Bruce Dawson, eds. (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2002), 51. See also, Johanna Wenzel, “Introduction,” Ruffled Feathers, vi. 251 Alan Cairns, Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), 67. William Wuttunee mocked the IAA’s hiring of M & M Systems Research, founded by a former Alberta premier with the Social Credit Party, stating that they should have called their document the “Socred Paper.” See Ruffled Feathers, 58. 73

present. In the ensuing ceremony, which opened with an elder’s prayer, one chief handed the Red Paper to Trudeau, while another returned a copy of the White Paper to

Chrétien.252 Cardinal recalled the meeting as “the first time that Indians could sit down and have substantive discussions with the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. Diefenbaker and Pearson only met with Indians as photo-ops, when they put the feathered headdresses on.”253 The NIB regrouped over the summer, ousting the “amiable” Walter Dieter as leader in favour of George Manuel, who was widely seen as tougher, better-respected among First Nations leaders, better-connected to the grassroots at the reserve level, and a more effective opponent to Chrétien.254 Another counter-proposal, known as the Brown

Paper, followed in November from the year-old Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, which Manuel had been instrumental in bringing together. The Brown Paper spelled out much of the same as the Red Paper in terms of upholding First Nations’ self- determination, but since British Columbia’s lands had not been ceded by treaties, their concerns emphasized their desire for federal recognition of aboriginal title.255 In late-

March 1971, Chrétien finally admitted the White Paper’s defeat, stating that the government did not intend to “force progress.”256

252 McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood, 117. 253 Ibid., 116n22. 254 Dieter’s ouster in favour of Manuel was engineered by Cardinal, Courchene, and Dieter’s successor as provincial chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians, David Ahenikew. See McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood, 119. 255 While the Brown Paper was not successful in this regard, the landmark Calder et al. v. Attorney- General of British Columbia (1973) saw the Supreme Court recognize the possibility of aboriginal title, even as Chief Frank Calder’s Nisga’a lost their case in a 4-3 ruling. As a result, the federal government reversed its decades-long refusal to consider indigenous land claims, and issued new policy: the 1973 “Statement on Claims of Indian and Inuit People.” See Gérard V. La Forest, “Reminiscences of Aboriginal Rights at the Time of the Calder Case and its Aftermath,” Let Right Be Done: Aboriginal Title, the Calder Case and the Future of Indigenous Rights, Hamar Foster, Heather Raven, and Jeremy Webber, eds. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), 58. 256 “A policy on Indians that guards rights,” Globe and Mail, 24 March 1971, 7. 74

For Chrétien, and much of the Canadian public, progress may still have been synonymous with integration, but the vast majority of First Nations activists were now intent on forcing an opposing notion of progress—one that recognized their inherent rights as indigenous peoples, that reinforced historic treaties, and that embraced their distinctiveness rather than seeking to erase it. In the early 1970s, Red Power flourished across the continent with the proliferation of the American Indian Movement (AIM), which began in the slums of Minneapolis in 1968 to patrol the police and restore cultural pride—much like the Black Panthers, NARP, and others.257 Following in the momentum established by IAT at Alcatraz, AIM organized numerous high-profile occupations, most notably at Mount Rushmore and at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where they were besieged in a violent seventy-one day standoff with Federal Marshalls and FBI agents, in

1973.258 George Manuel, as president of the NIB, publicly condemned such tactics, admonished AIM’s activities in Canada, and reiterated his own organization’s commitment to negotiated solutions.259 Nevertheless, AIM went on to occupy Indian

257 The impact and legacy of AIM was such a powerful manifestation of the Red Power movement, that some have conflated the two as synonymous. Olive Dickason has argued that the White Paper was partly “a response to the American Indian Movement (AIM, or ‘Red Power’),” which falsely assumes that AIM and the Red Power movement that it co-opted, were one and the same. Further, she offers no evidence to support the contention that AIM, which was relatively unknown outside of Minnesota at the time, somehow inspired the White Paper, which was rather based on the government’s liberal philosophy, and the integrationist ethos of the period. See Canada’s First Nations, 371. Another, similar misrepresentation occurs in Harry Swain’s analysis of the 1990 Oka Crisis, a standoff between Mohawk protestors, police, and the army, in which he explains its historical background by stating that “modern Indian radicalism, if it can be said to have a single starting point, began with the founding of the American Indian Movement in the slums of Minneapolis in 1968…” This assessment ignores, in particular, the developing Mohawk radicalism in Canada that flowed in response to the St. Lawrence Seaway project, in the decade prior to AIM’s formation. See Swain, Oka, 45. 258 Smith, Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power, 183. The infamous Wounded Knee incident, followed by ninety-three percent of Americans, according to a Harris Poll, represented the climax of Red Power notoriety. See Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: The New Press, 1996), 236. 259 “No role for U.S. Indian militants north of border: Canadian leader,” Globe and Mail, 21 September 1973, 3. 75

Affairs offices in Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver.260 Red Power was also expressed through localized militant organizations known as warrior societies, most notably, the

Ojibway Warrior Society (OWS), founded in 1972. OWS’ forty-one day armed occupation of Anicinabe Park in Kenora, and a subsequent Native People’s Caravan from

Vancouver to Ottawa, in 1974, ended in a violent confrontation with police on Parliament

Hill. In 1975, the RCMP reported to the United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, that Red Power militants were a “principal threat to national stability” in Canada.261 Such threats failed to materialize, however, as militants’ influence declined alongside the continued ascent of the NIB.

By 1976, when Manuel was succeeded by FSI chief Noel Starblanket, the NIB had become “the largest lobbying organization in Ottawa with institutionalized access to cabinet and a reputation for hard but honest bargaining on behalf of First Nations.” 262 It was this organization, rather than the more sensational and better publicized activities of

AIM and the warrior societies, which came to dominate the mainstream in First Nations activism, emphasizing hard-nosed political lobbying, and litigation, over civil disobedience and militant action. In the 1970s, the NIB had set its sights on gaining

“Indian Control of Indian Education,” on improved housing, and on general economic development. Its most significant coup, however, was realized through joint efforts with provincial organizations, taken to ensure that treaty rights and aboriginal rights—terms left open to future interpretation—were entrenched in Canada’s constitution when it was

260 For reference to twenty-four hour sit-in at Indian Affairs in Ottawa, in which AIM participated, see Ibid. See also: “U.S. Indians stage protest in Calgary,” Globe and Mail, 29 November 1974, 2; and, “Indians end B.C. occupation,” Globe and Mail, 13 May 1975, 9. 261 “Indian Threat,” Globe and Mail, 7 August 1975, B1. 262 McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nationhood, 234. 76

patriated in 1982.263 This represented the ultimate repudiation of the White Paper, but also demonstrated just how formidably effective First Nations protest had become, since its modern resurgence began, less than a generation earlier.

263 The actions of the NIB, and its provincial affiliates, to protest the exclusion of aboriginal and treaty rights from Canada’s proposed constitution, represent another area of recent indigenous history in Canada that deserves greater scholarly attention. The most consequential action in this regard, was spearheaded by the Manuel-led UBCIC, which chartered two trains in Vancouver, and mobilized the Constitution Express, in November 1980. Over one thousand protesters were transported by rail to Ottawa, making stops along the way to rally thousands more. This, in addition to subsequent lobbying efforts in London, and at the United Nations in New York, were successful in securing protections for aboriginal and treaty rights the Constitution Act of 1982, and in ensuring that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with its emphasis on individual equality, would not abrogate the collective rights of indigenous peoples. For a recent account of the Constitution Express and its significance, see Arthur Manuel and Grand Chief Roland M. Derrickson, Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2015), Chapter VI. 77

CONCLUSION

One of the most enduring legacies of the 1960s was its crusade for individual rights and equality, which targeted a host of social injustices, and drove major efforts to finalise the integration of First Nations, regardless of whether or not they wanted it. To that end,

Canada’s “Indian policy” was marked at the beginning and the end of the decade, by the

Progressive Conservatives’ extension of the federal vote to Status Indians in 1960, and the Liberals’ attempt to do away with Indian status, the Indian Act, and Crown- indigenous treaties, in 1969. While the backlash surrounding the White Paper was much greater than the backlash over voting rights, both cases affirmed the extent to which integration was a polarizing issue for First Nations. This was clear, even among those who were mutually opposed to the patently assimilationist Indian Act: some fought it because it denied their sovereignty, while others railed against it because it denied their equality.

As the sixties wore on, the rising tide of First Nations activism, although multifaceted, was marked by an increasingly public resistance to the notion of integration, which was interpreted by numerous activists as a euphemism for assimilation, annihilation, and cultural genocide. In response, the latter half of the sixties, especially, witnessed a surge in indigenous political foment. Given the new assertiveness that had developed among First Nations, their emphasis on safeguarding distinct rights and treaties, and the publicity that their activism had generated, the federal government should have known, in 1969, that its plan to erase First Nations’ only remaining legal and political distinctions, would backfire. The White Paper was not merely a proposal, but an ultimatum. It provided both the impetus and the opportunity for First Nations to 78

definitively express the vehemence of anti-assimilationist sentiment among them, which, along with their urgent socioeconomic concerns, fueled the mounting protest activity that preceded it. First Nations spent the decade leading up to the White Paper, supporting the emergence of outspoken and pragmatic leaders; articulating diverse indigenous points of view; seizing opportunities to demonstrate dissent; and developing the capacity of new and existing political organizations, to represent their interests to the state.

The leadership of charismatic individuals, who could effectively organize their people and articulate their collective interests to the media and to politicians, was vital in generating public protest activity. A motley array of leaders distinguished themselves, quite separately, through grassroots organizing efforts across wide dispersions of indigenous communities. Others leveraged their notoriety in the mainstream media, to draw attention to their peoples’ continued marginalization, and to elevate Canadians’ exposure to First Nations perspectives on historical and contemporary issues. The views they espoused tended not to be overtly ideological: First Nations activists were not often beholden to systematic sociopolitical theories, and instead relied heavily on long established interpretations of history to guide their thinking on contemporary concerns.

Proponents of the Red Power movement, informed by Marxist literature and its prescriptions for decolonization, were a notable exception. By and large, however, the views expressed by activists were largely dogmatic: they tended to be rooted in First

Nations’ interpretations of historic treaties with the British Crown, which had long been established within their communities as sacrosanct.

The initiatives undertaken to express those views, to raise awareness of First

Nations’ plight, and to influence policy-making in their favour, however, were often 79

highly pragmatic and well-attuned to the sociopolitical climate of the 1960s. The Civil

Rights Movement was instrumental in promoting the politically active culture that fostered indigenous protest and allowed it to flourish: it inspired public protest marches; it facilitated collaboration with other minority activists, with African Americans in particular; and, its coverage in the media heightened the sensitivity of many non- indigenous Canadians to social injustice, which increased, to an extent, their receptiveness to indigenous concerns. First Nations activism, however, was never just about civil rights. It was also about asserting and reinforcing the collective indigenous rights of those bearing Indian Status. This was attempted through sensational declarations of independence, blockades, and land seizures. The slow evolution of political organizations in the background, and their subsequent lobbying efforts, however, proved far more consequential. Without the organizational capacity developed by indigenous peoples in the sixties, it is likely that their successful repudiation of the White Paper, and the subsequent constitutional protections they secured for aboriginal and treaty rights, would not have come to pass.

80

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