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July 1947 — Vol. 28, No. 7 — The Canadian Indians
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No one knows for sure where the
Indians came from, but if you ask an Indian he will instinctively
turn to the north.
Experts say that long before there was any civilization
in Greece or Egypt, small bands of hunters moved out of Asia
into Alaska and through there to Canada. Every party that
drifted across the Bering Strait brought its own customs,
and many had different languages. That is why the white men
found no fewer than fifty distinct tribes in North America,
speaking eleven languages.
The Indians attained a closely knit community life in this
new continent because of their loyalty to the tribe and tribal
customs, and obedience to their chiefs. This way of living
suited a country that was thinly populated, with little personal
and no economic connection between groups.
Political structure varied from tribe to tribe. Usually
it involved only recognition of a chief or headman, but in
some tribes the clan and totem organization formed a fairly
elaborate social system. T. R. L. MacInnes, Secretary of the
Indian Affairs Branch, said in a paper at the annual meeting
of the Canadian Political Science Association last year: "The
nearest approach to established government was among the Iroquois,
whose League of the Six Nations constituted an effective mutual
aid pact with quite modern connotations. None of the aboriginal
Indian tribal organizations are really adaptable to the economic
and social life of the present era. Therefore an attempt has
been made to introduce democratic, local self—government
on Indian reserves...At the present time practically all the
bands in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime Provinces are under
the elective system. In the West, with a few exceptions, mostly
in British Columbia, the Indians continue to follow their
tribal methods."
Originally the Indians were hunters. A little corn was grown
in New Brunswick and in Ontario, but mainly the Algonkians
depended for food and clothing upon deer, rabbits, small game
and fish. The Hurons and Iroquois of the St. Lawrence Valley
and southern Ontario lived in relatively permanent villages
and cultivated extensive fields of corn, but their hunting
was important. Wood was used for houses, canoes, containers
and the handles of tools. Working in stone was not very good,
but use of bone was highly developed, particularly for awls,
bodkins, and punches. Pottery was poor in quality but useful.
The prairie Indians depended upon the bison, or buffalo. Its
flesh was the most important source of food, its skin served
for blankets and as covering for tents, and its bones for
scrapers and other implements. The Pacific coast Indians were
fishermen, users of wood, and artists. Other characteristics
marked tribes of the North—West and the interior Of British
Columbia, where life was lived according to a pattern set
by natural surroundings.
It will be noted that nowhere in this picture of Indian
life is mention made of industries, wholesalers, retailers,
banks, or the other professions and businesses so necessary
to mid—twentieth—century society. The problem of
Indian adjustment has not been one merely of meeting a new
mode of life, but a mode of life controlled by entirely new
principles. The white man changed the whole shape of Indian
ways of existence.
Morally, the Indians had high standing. Their system of
ethics and code of honour was almost Spartan in its rectitude.
They had developed culturally, too. Speaking of the Blackfeet
of Alberta, Ven. Archdeacon S. H. Middleton says: "Several
of their stories, legends and myths have an equal standing
with the ancient classics. It is a little startling to see
in the story of the Medicine Pipe a close parallel to the
classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In another of their
stories is an incident which might have been taken bodily
from the Odyssey."
Then Came The White Men
Let us turn from considering the Indians as they were, their
culture, economics, ethics and political organization, to
look at what the coming of the white man meant to them. When
the first Spaniards came to America, human development on
this continent was 6,000 years behind the Old World, according
to H. G. Wells. This ancient way of living was attacked by
many new features: the white trapper, competitive trading,
efficiency of modern weapons in war and the chase, natural
catastrophies, and the operation of animal population cycles
for which the restricted areas of reserves did not allow enough
room. Habits of the Indians were broken, and their cultural
and economic patterns were destroyed. Old and noble families
lost prestige; whole tribes were degraded to pauperism when
white hunters ruthlessly killed off the buffalo and deer.
Entire forests fell before the woodsman's axe. Said Mark A.
Dawber, Executive Secretary of the Home Missions Council,
New York, at the 1939 University of Toronto - Yale University
conference: "The economic condition of the Indian is the white
man's sin. He has taken everything worth while that the Indian
ever possessed and given to him the poorest land, and he is
responsible for conditions that have always been an economic
handicap."
The British, from the time of their first contact, decided
that Indian land should be taken over only by formal agreement.
The Magna Charta of Canadian Indians is the proclamation of
1763 which set forth that no Indian could be dispossessed
of his lands without his consent and the consent of the Crown.
D. C. Scott, then Deputy Superintendent General of Indian
Affairs, was able to say in 1931: "The sacredness of treaties
and agreements with Indians has been respected."
Only 63,238 Indians are receiving the treaty annuity, but
all other Indians, with this exception, are given the same
services and benefits. By the treaties, groups of Indians
ceded to the Crown all their title and interest in the lands
over which they formerly roved and hunted, in exchange for
the guarantee of residential reserves, education, annual cash
payments, and other considerations.
Administration is carried out by the Indian Affairs Branch
of the Department of Mines and Resources, except in health
matters which were transferred in 1945 to the Department of
National Health and Welfare.
There are nearly a hundred Indian agencies looking after
600 bands on 2,000 reserves. The Indian Affairs Branch is
charged with controlling education, developing agriculture
and other pursuits, administering Indian lands, community
funds and estates, and the general supervision of welfare.
An important division of the work is collection and expenditure
of the trust fund, derived from the proceeds of sale or lease
of lands, timber or minerals and various other sources. This
fund, amounting to about $17 million, is spent as capital
for public works and community equipment, while the interest
is disbursed in cash distribution, medical attendance and
relief.
Education
Education, started by missionary enterprise, is now carried
on jointly by the government and the churches. There were
346 schools with an enrollment of 18,805 pupils in 1946.
Archdeacon Middleton, principal of St. Paul's residential
school on the Blood reserve near Cardston, Alberta, may be
quoted as one of Canada's leading authorities on Indian education.
Speaking the language fluently, he is guide and friend to
the whole Indian band, understands the Indian philosophy,
and while he believes in progressive education is also seized
of the idea of making haste slowly. Here is what he says today,
after 42 years' experience: "Our education emphasis should
be: Preparation for the utilitarian life of earning a living;
the development and inclusion of advanced education; and to
inculcate the ethics of culture for social progress on the
assumption of potential citizenship. The standardized curriculum
has not met with the success expected. A more flexible course,
allowing full scope for the individual and for natural talent
is proving beneficial. Civilized and educated, the Indian
of the better class is not less intelligent than the average
white man and he has every capacity for becoming a good citizen."
Speaking to the special parliamentary committee, the Director
of Indian Affairs suggested that the annual appropriation
be doubled to $14 million for 15 years to provide proper educational
facilities to bring the Indian nearer to achievement of rights
of citizenship.
Health
Health also demands attention. After their first collision
with white men, Indians tended to sicken and degenerate physically.
They left their tents and became shack and cabin dwellers.
They knew nothing of the sanitation needed for close—living
permanent communities. They forsook their diet, rich in vitamins,
and turned to bread and lard. They became easy prey to tuberculosis
and deficiency diseases.
Statistics are hard to come by, because of the scattered
nature of Indian settlements, and such as there are prove
to be contradictory. D. C. Scott reported in 1931 that tuberculosis
is about five times more common among Indians than among the
general population. Dr. E. L. Stone, Superintendent of Medical
Services, Indian Affairs Branch, told the 1939 Conference
that while the death rate from tuberculosis in all the population,
including Indians, in a recent year was 59.7 per 100,000 persons,
"The alleged death rate from the same cause among Indians
was 769.3 per 100,000." He went on to say: "In our opinion
the figure for Indians is exaggerated," and pointed out that
about 20,000 Indians live in remote areas where "the registrars
of vital statistics lack the knowledge necessary to determine
accurately the causes of death, and the tendency is in these
and in better organized districts to assign all deaths to
tuberculosis unless there is some other obvious cause. We
cannot tell to what extent the statistics given are distorted.
If the figures are accepted at their face value, Indians are
some thirteen times as tuberculous as white persons in Canada."
Whether five times or thirteen times, there were only 990
tubercular Indian patients being given treatment in hospitals
of various types, according to the report of the Indian Affairs
Branch for the year that ended in 1946.
Infant mortality is another matter about which it is hard
to arrive at definite figures. The Montreal Gazette said editorially
in May last year: "Indian health is a constant problem. A
study by the medical service of the Indian Affairs branch,
published in the Canadian Medical Journal in March of this
year, said the infant mortality rate among the Indians studied
reached the astounding figure of slightly under 400 per thousand
live births, as compared with the white figure of 52. Such
health conditions in any section of the population menace
the whole."
Indians are disqualified from old age pension benefits and
pensions for the blind, but they receive full benefits under
the Family Allowances Act. The 1946 annual report of the Family
Allowances Division said: "It would appear through reports
of Indian agents and others that allowances have resulted
in considerable improvement in food and clothing available
to Indian children." There were 16,215 families registered
at the beginning of 1946, representing 47,021 children.
Indians are not a Vanishing Race
This suggests that the Indians of Canada are not a vanishing
race. The best estimate available is that there were about
200,000 Indians in what is now Canada at the time of the European
invasion. The Indian Affairs Branch takes a census of Indians
every five years, and the latest, in 1944, showed a population
of 125,686 Indians. This was an increase from 118,378 in 1939
and 112,510 in 1934, or 11.7 per cent in ten years. Today's
population is divided in this way: Ontario 32,421; British
Columbia 25,515; Manitoba 15,933; Quebec 15,194; Saskatchewan
14,158; Alberta 12,441; Northwest Territories 3,816; Nova
Scotia 2,364; New Brunswick 2,047; Yukon 1,531, and Prince
Edward Island 266.
This minority race, amounting to a little over one per cent
of the total population of the Dominion, has not the rights
and powers of British subjects or Canadian citizens. Indians
may become enfranchised, but great carefulness is exercised
by the government because Indians who become enfranchised
lose the special protection provided by the Indian Act. In
most cases those who take up full citizenship are people who
have left the reserves, abandoned the Indian way of life,
and are living as white people do in settled communities.
There were 314 persons enfranchised during the last fiscal
year reported.
It is not surprising that many, especially the older people,
cling to the reserves which are the only prospect of security
open to them. It must be said that the reserves were not intended
to be concentration camps. It was thought that they would
become training schools in which the Indians could learn to
adapt themselves to modern conditions, from which to graduate
as full citizens. "By this means," said Hon. T. A. Crerar
when he was Minister of the Department of Mines and Resources,
"it was thought Canada might honourably discharge her obligations
toward the native inhabitants of the Dominion, and, at the
same time, by encouraging the Indians to become self—reliant,
change a grave financial and social burden into an asset."
There is set aside for use by the Indians 5,571,000 acres,
of which only 189,000 acres are under cultivation. This sparse
agricultural development is not such a shocking state of affairs
as the bare figures might be taken to indicate. According
to the eminent Sir John Lubbock in "The Origin of Civilization"
the North American Indians seem, as a general rule, to have
had no individual property in land. To own and develop tracts
of farm land would, therefore, be contrary to their ancestral
custom, and agriculture is not one of their strong points.
Income of the Indians from all sources - agriculture, fishing,
hunting, trapping, livestock, and wages earned - amounted
to $143 per person in the fiscal year which ended in 1946.
They had 2,300 personal savings accounts with total balances
amounting to $383,894.
Projects for Rehabilitation
It has been remarked that the Indians are natural—born
conservationists of game and fish. There is evidence that
they trapped, in their aboriginal state, according to a rotating
system which maintained the fur population. This was broken
down upon arrival of the white men. In recent years a determined
effort has been made to assist the hunting Indians toward
rehabilitation, and remarkable success has been achieved in
protected areas.
The government has undertaken a number of special projects
in accordance with needs in various parts of the country.
These include fur development enterprises, planned agricultural
operations with advice by competent instructors, and promotion
of handicrafts.
Practically, Indian crafts are outmoded by modern gadgets:
artistically, they are still of high economic importance.
Workers are keen to maintain the quality of their products,
and are winning world—wide recognition by their unique
designs and fine artistry. An official in the Indian Affairs
Branch is directly charged with promoting worthwhile handicraft
projects and sale of the goods to the wholesale and retail
trade. In addition to encouraging basketry, woodwork, carving,
pottery, weaving, leather work and wroughtmetal work, steps
have been taken to promote another industry which has great
possibilities, the cutting, polishing and mounting of native
Canadian semiprecious stones. Indian women are enthusiastic
about the Homemakers' Clubs which have brought noticeable
improvement to their living conditions.
What Does the Future Hold?
There are two schools of thought about the future: one favours
assimilation, the other seeks a separate Indian racial life
with its own distinctive culture. The most pathetic cases
are of Indians who fall between the two - Indians who have
been weaned from their ancestral ways and have not gained
the place they desire in this new order.
Perhaps it will help if we reduce the problem to a three—pronged
choice. The Hon. James Glen, Minister of Mines and Resources,
said a year ago, according to the Montreal Gazette: Either
the government must purchase at public expense the additional
lands and hunting and trapping rights for an Indian population
of 128,000 or decide on an educational and welfare programme
that would fit the Indian to enter into competition with the
white man not only in hunting and trapping but in agriculture
and industry. To these the newspaper added a third choice,
one that would need time to work out, but one that could be
worked out with goodwill on the part of the Indian and the
rest of the Canadian population. That is to get the Indian
off the reservation altogether and give him an opportunity
to become a citizen in every sense of the word.
It will be admitted that absolute preservation of native
laws and customs is impossible, surrounded as the few islands
of Indians are by bustling modernity. Annihilation of native
custom, on the other hand, would be too like the things Canada
fought the war to destroy. To find out the best course to
be taken, a special joint committee of the Senate and the
House of Commons is now in its second year of investigation.
Unanimous and sympathetic interest has been expressed in Parliament,
and it may be possible for progress to be made with changes
and improvements without waiting for the final findings of
the committee and a possible revamping of the Indian Act.
The Churches, which have been active in Indian work since
the first settlement of Canada, are urging quick and decisive
action. In March this year, the Anglican Church called on
the government for "a clear statement of national policy"
on Indian affairs. The Catholic brief, presented by a delegation
headed by Cardinal McGuigan, Archbishop of Toronto, remarked:
"One must not forget that many of the improvements which are
now suggested would have been put into effect a long time
ago if the people of Canada had been aware of their necessity,
and if the Canadian Government had been more generous in appropriating
funds for Indian education." Both Anglican and United Churches
asked for creation of a separate department to handle Indian
affairs, increased grants for education, and modernization
of the curriculum in Indian schools. The United Church recommended
establishment of Indian education "on a completely non—sectarian
basis" and deletion from the Indian Act of sections providing
for the segregation of Indian children by religion.
What Does the Indian Say?
What does the Indian himself want? He is torn between two
desires: to be modern, and at the same time to retain his
memory and love of his rich ancestry. Let us hear first of
all Buffalo Child Long Lance, a Cherokee Indian, who was made
an honorary Chief of the Blood Band of Blackfeet. He passed
through school with honours, graduated from Manlius Military
Academy, and was appointed to West Point by President Wilson.
When war broke out, Long Lance went overseas as a private
in the Canadian infantry and retired as a captain after three
years' service during which he was wounded at Vimy Ridge and
Lens. As newspaper reporter, author of several books, and
lecturer he became as well known throughout the continent
as he had been in his younger days for his racing and boxing.
Then he was given the leading part in "The Silent Enemy",
a motion picture on the life of the aborigines. And here is
how this educated, travelled and sophisticated man showed
the actuality of a dual Indian personality: "All I did in
that picture was very real. At times I felt surging within
me all the things that had been done to us, and seemingly
within me were the Spirits of our people of sixty thousand
years ago - simple, true, defiant; assertive of all the loftiness
of character which we once possessed. The other Indians felt
it too, and at times when I acted they openly cried."
There is something of calm majesty in the language used
by Indians presenting their views to the parliamentary committee:
"We, the Hereditary Chiefs of the St. Regis Reservation,
members of the Six Nations Confederacy, and the Band, assembled
to a Great Council Fire...beg to approach the Dominion Government...The
eightieth belt of wampum may be only strings of cheap coloured
beads, but to Indians its long white line parallel to the
red one symbolizes JUSTICE in peace time just as the red line
means PROTECTION in war time for our red brothers who have
buried their tomahawk, now rusty."
One Band asks that industrious and competent Indians should
be released from the permit system which hampers their freedom
of trading; others want old age pensions; the Cowichan Indians
say no objection is taken to taxes on money earned off the
reserve "if Indians are given the same rights as white men."
Spokesmen for the Six Nations ask for full control of Indian
lands and exemption from land taxation, more autonomy, abolition
of denominational schools, social services, and more power
over the use of their own band funds. In refusing to approve
taxation of Indians, the Bloods comment pithily: "The taking
of the whole of the Dominion of Canada by the government should
be sufficient taxes forever."
"Children of Our Great White Mother"
If there is something of a lament for the past in what the
Indian says today, and a groping aspiration for better days
to come, there is behind these sentiments a deep—rooted
loyalty to the Crown.
Lying side by side with white comrades in the foxholes of
every battle front, the Indian found acceptance on a basis
that brave men know. One family of the Cape Croker Agency,
the McLeods, has a magnificent record. The father served in
the first war and in the veterans' guard in the recent war;
his six sons and one daughter enlisted; two sons were killed
and two wounded. The latest message of the Bloods to the parliamentary
committee closed with this expression of loyalty: "Long may
we remain the children of our great white mother, Her Majesty
our late Queen Victoria."
Everyone with sympathy for the Indians and care for Canada's
obligations will wish success to the parliamentary committee
in its search for an honourable and thorough way of discharging
the Dominion's responsibilities to these First Citizens of
Canada. It is not enough to save the Indian from extinction.
If the Indian Affairs Branch can provide a fulcrum to help
the Indian reach a new and more satisfying; life, it will
be a fine demonstration of practical democracy.
The school crest of St. Paul's shows, against a background
of mountains and a tepee, a youthful Indian gazing into the
distance. Around the crest is a motto whose origin is lost
in the antiquity of western Indians: Mokokit—ki—aekakimat:
"Be Wise and Persevere". That is the spirit of young Indians
today, and a motto fit for all who wish to help the Indians
to find a better way of life.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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