Assignment 3.2: The Indian Act of 1876 and White Civility

Question: In this lesson I say that it should be clear that the discourse on nationalism is also about ethnicity and ideologies of “race.” If you trace the historical overview of nationalism in Canada in the CanLit guide, you will find many examples of state legislation and policies that excluded and discriminated against certain peoples based on ideas about racial inferiority and capacities to assimilate. – and in turn, state legislation and policies that worked to try to rectify early policies of exclusion and racial discrimination. As the guide points out, the nation is an imagined community, whereas the state is a “governed group of people.” For this blog assignment, I would like you to research and summarize one of the state or governing activities, such as The Royal Proclamation 1763, the Indian Act 1876, Immigration Act 1910, or the Multiculturalism Act 1989 – you choose the legislation or policy or commission you find most interesting. Write a blog about your findings and in your conclusion comment on whether or not your findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility.  

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Daniel Coleman’s argument about white civility suggests, or rather, draws attention to the paradox at the heart of this face of nationalism: the civility of the white man in Canada, fundamental to his identity, required the brutality of his ancestors and their participation in “the very uncivil acts of colonialism and nation-building” (Paterson, “Lesson 3.1”). Surely, such a statement can be used to assess any modern-day society, progressive and morally upright today only because of the mistakes it made in the past. Unfortunately, in Canadian history, the mistakes are not “in the past”; rather, they are recent and raw and with consequences far too severe to be dismissed as “mistakes.” There are many flaws in Canada’s construction of a nationalistic identity as a homogenous and proud group of people, yet few are as jarring as the Indian Act of 1876.

As it’s name immediately suggests, the Indian Act of 1876 this is a piece of  Canadian statute that concerns a diverse group of peoples and nations packaged into a singular term: “Indian.” But even prior to the creation of this legislation, the Canadian government—first as a colony of Britain and then as a Federal Dominion—assumed legislative control over the Aboriginal peoples and their lands. In an effort to implement a strategy of cohabitation between settlers and indigenous populations, King George III of Britain outlined a framework for relations with North American Aboriginals, issued in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Notably, this Proclamation called for the separation of Aboriginal lands from those belonging to the colonies with the intention of these lands to be reserved for the exclusive possession and use of Aboriginal people. Although the Crown seems respectful towards Aboriginal property with this document, it fails to recognize Aboriginals as equal, private individuals; rather, it maintains they are a distinct people within the British colonial system, regarded as many separate nations within the larger territories possessed by the Crown (Makarenko, “Indian Act: Historical Overview”).

If early legislature seems to establish a relationship between Aboriginal peoples and colonial settlers that distances the two as much as possible, the Indian Act of 1876 strives for the complete opposite: assimilation of the minority Aboriginal population into the larger European culture. The Indian Act, which consolidated all prior federal legislation concerning Aboriginal relations into one single piece of legislation, strongly endorsed a vision of assimilation by assuming a control over an array of things concerning the day to day life of Aboriginal peoples including governance, land use, healthcare, education and cultural practices. In addition to outlining the powers of band councils on reserve lands and imposing a definition of Indian status on Aboriginal groups—Metis and Inuit excluded—the Indian Act infamously introduced a mandated residential school system in 1884, a ban on religious ceremonies (the Potlatch ceremony belonging to the West Coast peoples and the Sun Dance of the Plains) in 1884, and the right for the government to remove reserves nearby towns of more than 8000 people in 1905, amongst other striking abuses of power (Makarenko, “Indian Act: Historical Overview”)

A report compiled by the Canadian Department of the Interior in 1876 can be read as a summary of sorts to the guiding motivation for the assimilation behind the Indian Act: “Indian legislation generally rests on the principle, that the aborigines are to be kept in a condition of tutelage and treated as wards or children of the State. …the true interests of the aborigines and of the State alike require that every effort should be made to aid the Red man…to prepare him for a higher civilization by encouraging him to assume the privileges and responsibilities of full citizenship” (“1876 Annual Report”).

After researching more into the history of the Indian Act—and being reminded that many of its amendment enforcing xenophobic policies and practices of cultural genocide were not overturned until late into the twentieth-century—I agree with Coleman’s argument on the project of white civility at work in Canadian history. Nobody, I do not think, can say that the intentions of the Indian Act to “aid the Red man” are noble or even that the seemingly good-hearted work of the Royal Proclamation believed that white men and Aboriginals should live in equal harmony. Likewise, nobody who was the victim of this systemized, enforced, legal, and completely unethical cultural genocide can say it played a positive role in their transition to “higher civilization”; Tomson Highway has a fantastic novel, The Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998), that documents the lifelong consequences that follow a pair of Aboriginal boys who came out of the residential school system. It is a harrowing account of the dangers of what Coleman calls a “fictive ethnicity” that plagues the white civility of Canadian nationalism. The concept of a “natural community” sounds appealing but what is natural about the forced removal of children from their homes and communities, and the painful—almost surgical—extraction of the traditions and languages they held close to their hearts. Indeed, as Coleman suggests, white civility is an enforced narrative in Canadian history that is naive and potentially self-destructive if we continue to buy into the belief that this country was built upon the acts of supreme civility of our ancestors.

Works Cited

“1876 Annual Report.” The Critical Thinking Consortium. n.d. PDF.

“A history of residential schools in Canada.” CBC News. CBC Radio-Canada. 16 May 2008. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Makarenko, Jay. “The Indian Act: Historical Overview.” Maple Leaf Web. 2 Jun. 2008. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3.1.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres – 99C Jan 2016. UBC Blogs, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

“The Potlatch: On the Suppression of the Potlatch.” The Story of the Masks. U’mista Cultural Centre. n.d. Web. 11. Mar. 2016.