First Nations-White Relations in Canada

SIGNIFICANCE: Historically, First Nations and White relations in Canada were characterized by European Canadians’ desire to dominate Indigenous peoples, known as First Nations, and take their lands. In the late twentieth century, the Canadian government began the process of reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples.

Relations between White individuals and Indigenous Canadians, or First Nations, began with exploration followed by invasion and domination by the European powers, spreading into and over North America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. British and French competing interests and colonialization, piqued by growing trade economies and political conflicts, decimated and divided the Indigenous nations and peoples along the Saint Lawrence Waterway and the Great Lakes. Larger confederacies that were effectively destroyed include the Haudenosaunee, known as the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy, and the Wyandot-Huron alliances. The Mohawk at Kahnesatake were particularly targeted, but they and other Iroquoian peoples have survived as a people and a nation into modern times.

Eric Wolf in Europe and the People Without History (1982) describes some of these processes from the world-systems analysis perspective, including the European Canadian expansion into and incorporation of First Nations lands through the fur trade and the incursion’s effects on First Nations across the northern woodlands and plains and in the northern tundra and arctic regions. Small wars and internecine fighting characterized much of the First Nations-White relations extending from the Great Lakes region to the western seaboard; generally, peaceful negotiations were followed by large land transfers first to the incursive colonial power of England and then to the Canadian commonwealth. Major wars connected to the formation and expansion of the United States from the eastern colonies across the Great Lakes region had generally devastating effects on Indigenous peoples and their nations. Colonial powers and the Americans forced First Nation peoples into alignments with warring governments and then punished those Indigenous Canadians connected with the other side, typically not recognizing earlier treaties and agreements. The British and Americans, after forcing the French out, rarely observed treaty agreements with those First Nations who sided with them, instead whittling away at their lands and sometimes relocating them to frontier areas and usually into further conflicts.

Cultural Genocide

These wars and a series of intertribal conflicts led to the First Nation peoples being stereotyped as “savage” and “uncivilized.” These same labels were applied to those Indigenous peoples resisting the European Canadian expansion and conquest of western and northern frontiers, pitting European settlers against First Nations in struggles over land and trade. In the 1700s and 1800s, European Canadians employed coercive assimilation practices. They forced First Nations children into residential boarding schools that attempted to eliminate Indigenous cultures and replace them with “civilized” White lifestyles. This attempt to destroy Indigenous families and their historical and cultural legacies exacerbated tensions between First Nations and White individuals. Most of these practices continued well into the 1950s and 1960s. In 1867, the British North America Act established the dominion of Canada and formalized the development of “reserves” based on diminished land claims and treaty provisions. Despite the establishment of reserves and attempts to eliminate First Nation culture, Canadian governance was often less harsh than that of the United States. For example, after the 1876 fight over the taking of the Black Hills in direct violation of an 1868 treaty and reservation boundaries, Sitting Bull fled to Canada, where he lived for five years with many Hunkpapa Lakota (Sioux). Also, northern Canadian Indigenous peoples such as the Inuit and Cree did not suffer the full effects of the reserve system until the twentieth century.

The policies of coercive assimilation, cultural genocide, boarding schools, relocation, land takings, and sociopolitical erosion of rights did not completely destroy the Indigenous peoples of Canada, although many of these groups have undergone intense social change. These patterns are especially evident in the development of the Métis, a mixture of French and First Nation peoples, usually Ojibwa or Cree, in the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan down into the Dakotas and Minnesota in the United States. In the late 1800s, Métis leader Louis Riel, Jr., led uprisings in protest of the mistreatment of Métis, the government’s nonrecognition of mixed-bloods and their French language, and discriminatory practices against Cree, Ojibwa, and other Indigenous languages and cultures. The Riel-led and similar uprisings were termed rebellions and put down by the federal and local military, leading to many indiscriminate killings. Riel was hanged for treason in 1885, as were four other Indigenous leaders. The Canadian government’s suppression of the Métis, who represented an early mixing of European and Indigenous cultures, marks the government’s division of racial identities into two definite categories: White and Indian.

Further Deterioration of Relations

First Nation-White relations continued to deteriorate in the first half of the twentieth century because unilateral government edicts, laws, and agreements eroded the cultural and political sovereignty of Indigenous peoples. In tandem with existing negative stereotypes and active social discrimination, White individuals in the dominant culture ignored or repressed First Nation people on reserves and discriminated against urban First Nation people as racial minorities. These attitudinal practices, with Canadian government support, spread throughout Canada.

Boarding school policies, land-reduction strategies, and government-appointed “tribal councils” generally had negative effects and demoralized First Nation peoples, sometimes leading to friction with White individuals living nearby. Criminal justice systems began to target First Nations peoples more actively in the 1900s. Gradually, Indigenous groups began to organize and protest against the injustices. Developments in the United States, including the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, crossed the border into Canada, resulting in the polarization of Indigenous Canadians and European Canadians. Those sympathetic to the Indigenous peoples’ causes found themselves labeled “Indian lovers” and the targets of criticism.

Conflicts and Progress

In the 1970s, provincial governments fought the First Nations in courts of law. The James Bay I and II coalitions of government and private power companies were formed to take away vast land tracts from Cree and Inuit peoples under the Northern Quebec Agreement. In the 1980s, First Nations members protested this and other governmental acts, stressing issues of sovereignty and self-determination, at meetings of the United Nations in Geneva and later in New York. Many European Canadians supported the First Nations’ efforts. In response, the Assembly of First Nations was formed to provide Indigenous peoples with access to legal and constitutional resources.

Some towns made up primarily of European Canadians resented the sovereignty of First Nation peoples. In 1990, a crisis developed between the Mohawk community, descendants of the Kahnesatake, at Oka in Quebec and the neighboring European Canadians. The town wanted to build a golf course on an area called “the Pines,” but the Mohawk people considered this area to be treaty land containing sacred burial sites. The Mohawk Warrior Society resisted the taking of the land, and armed forces were called in to “put down” Mohawk resistance without a review of the legal grounds for either side’s argument. After a long siege, the military prevailed, leading to court trials for First Nations resisters. However, because of First Nations representation and public support for the Mohawk people, positive dialogues grew out of this confrontation.

In December 1997, in Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, the House of Delgamuukw, speaking on behalf of fifty-one hereditary First Nation chiefs, won an important court victory that recognized the oral tradition as a valid historical source for land claims and cultural authenticity. Also, in 1998, the Canadian government extended a formal apology in its Statement of Reconciliation to the First Nations. This official recognition, the first of its kind in Canada, presents a potential for healing and building healthier First Nation-White relations in future generations.

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